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April 4th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
By
Andrew Alexander
16:09 EST, 3 April 2012
|
18:13 EST, 3 April 2012
‘Unfair advantage’: David Willetts has said older people don’t know how lucky they are
Like you, perhaps, I am fed up with being told that I have been ‘lucky’, like the rest of my generation which is now past retirement age or approaching it.
We didn’t know it then and we don’t believe it now. We simply worked hard with longer working hours and enjoyed the fruits of our labour.
Universities And Science Minister David Willetts has devoted one of his brains to arguing how those born between 1945 and 1965 got a particularly ‘unfair’ advantage in life by ‘concentrating wealth in the hands of their own generation’.
But Willetts’s charge has quickly broadened to say that we oldsters in general were lucky and are now cossetted.
We understand the grim arithmetic of having to pay off the monster debts the Government has inherited — not that the Tories complained much about official spending then, often demanding more. But we marvel at the idea that we somehow enjoyed an unfair advantage.
Early memories of our ‘luck’ are about rationing, which went on until the early 1950s and long after most countries had abolished it. We celebrated like mad when we could actually buy chocolate off ration.
We paid through the nose as adults to establish much of the current infrastructure now taken for granted by Willetts and his fellow moaners.
Like most of those born in the 1930s and 1940s, I had no university spell, least of all any ‘gap year’. My father saved enough and, with my small scholarship, sent me to a boarding school.
Like other schools of that time, it did not preach that we were owed a living. Whining was particularly abhorred and the phrase ‘brace up, Alexander’ springs to my mind when I showed any inclination to grumble.
My higher education was in the University of Life, unlike the ridiculously large proportion of the supposedly ‘unlucky’ younger generation, which sees a degree as an entitlement.
Like so many others I tried my hand at several things, including an engineering apprenticeship (dull and demanding) before a job in the organisation and methods department of an ice-cream giant.
Tax grab: Denis Healey
Inflation: Ted Heath
If you think that was ‘luck’, you should try recording the sales of ice cream vans all round Leicestershire, as I had to.
When Walls fired me, my search for work was constantly rejected because I had no university education.
Lucky? I stumbled somehow into journalism. And, anxious to make money, I did a second virtually full-time job in journalism — involving rushed journeys by Tube between offices, there being no computers on which to file your copy then. You, the current generation, do not know how lucky you are.
As for oppressive taxation which is generally (and properly) complained of now, it was no easier then. If you had any income from your savings, Chancellor Denis Healey grabbed an extra 15 per cent as well as his income tax top rate of 83 per cent. Saving any money was hard for us, the ‘fortunate’ generation.
Inflation also savaged the savings of our ‘lucky’ generation. Ted Heath was our nemesis, setting off a wave of rising prices which at one point hit 27 per cent.
So we were in luck, were we? Willetts, born in 1956, was not even in work by then. As for buying your own home — which is now somehow seen as grabbing the assets of the younger generation — to get a mortgage we had to show building societies we were reliable savers. So much for our good fortune.
Today’s generation also enjoys the fruits of technology. It has its mobile phones and gadgets which we thought of only as science fiction.
Times may be harsh for the young, with severe unemployment dominating the headlines. But when you contemplate the influx of Continental Europeans so ready to work, you have to wonder.
PR man: David Cameron
Cameron’s no prole model
When a Prime Minister plays the ‘I’m just an ordinary bloke’ game, you know that something is going badly wrong.
For a start, he obviously can’t be ordinary, having clawed his way up the greasy pole.
From pasties to petrol, from party funds to privileged suppers, Cameron keeps putting his foot in it. Yet it was his supposed presentational skills which helped his path to the party leadership, having been chief PR man to Carlton TV.
His inability to connect with ordinary voters is no real surprise since he has never had a proper job. Touchingly, he is precisely the sort of person he would have rejected for his favoured list of parliamentary candidates at election time — wrong colour, wrong sex, wrong background, wrong income bracket.
The snoopers’ charter which he plans to bring into law is a gift to his old rival, backbencher David Davis, who has always been very hot on civil liberties — and, tiresomely, has all the right credentials, brought up in a council house etc.
There promises to be a fascinating parliamentary battle. And we all know how ordinary blokes feel about this massive intrusion into our lives.
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“David Willetts claims those born between 1945 and 1965 got a particularly ‘unfair’ advantage in life by ‘concentrating wealth in the hands of their own generation’.”
What utter drivel. Those born between 1944 and 1960 had to contend with a nation that was, and to some degree still is, recovering from the involvement and costs of WWII, with lots of bombed out areas and housing in most of our major towns and cities; school buildings were often Victorian and dilapidated; for those born earlier we did not see fresh fruit until the mid 1950’s; much of the housing stock, especially social housing, was in a mess and under today’s standards, uninhabitable; and, the NHS was in its infancy in the early 1950’s and many diseases like TB were still rife. NO, Willetts, most of those born between 1944 and 1960 had to work to achieve and had few facilities and toys, it is successive generations who have failed to grasp the nettle and get on with it.
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I was born in the late 40s and anything I have now is through my own hard work, living within my means, and trying to raise a family that followed these simple values. My parents were poor, having lived through WW2 and had no wealth to pass on to the next generation. As soon as I was old enough (whilst still at school) I had a part time job delivering groceries, and I stll remember (not fondly) lugging the bike and groceries around. Any money I earned went to my family to help make ends meet.
So for Mr Willetts to suggest that we somehow were “lucky” is just crass stupidity. In some ways it is typical of an out of touch politician.
We weren’t lucky – we worked hard to raise and sustain ourselves and our families. Unfortunately this ethic seems to have all but disappeared in today’s society.
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Oh and to add to what I said earlier.
My mother was born in ’73 and worked hard, went to University, left with Second class honours, upper division, and became a School Teacher. All of this with no parents or family to support her.
So you can shove this drivel you call an article where the sun don’t shine ’cause all it does is generalise anyone born after 1970 as lazy.
You should be ashamed, you are supposed to support the younger generations. I know am going to do everything I can to make my (potential) children’s lives better than mine was. That’s the different between the Baby-Boomers and Generation X and Generation Y.
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Hahaha this article made me laugh..
I’m 18, work full time. During working full time I studied at college for another 16 hours a week until last year. All of this while losing my father and also my mother becoming disabled.
So don’t tell me ‘I just expect everything handed to me’, because I have earned everything I have so far, from my work experience to my qualifications.
The government has massive debts to pay. It is me and my generation that are going to have to pay for that. You will be either retired or dead.
You say you paid through the nose for infrastructure? Where? I don’t see this infrastructure. The railway network has not changed since the 1800’s. The South East is in drought from lack of investment in the water system.
There is more I could say but I would rather not waste my time.
Face facts, the baby-boomer generation has left a lot of mess for the younger generations to clean up. From financial issues to environmental issues.
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I am also a member of the “lucky” generation. Born in 1940 I was lucky enough to experience the war and it’s shortages. I was lucky not to see a banana until I was 7 and lucky not to be overfed until rationing ended when I was 13. I was also lucky when I eventually bought a house and enjoyed the super interest rates of around 15%. It is true that work was easier to get and we did enjoy the music and clothes of the 60’s and 70’s but I recall how lucky my brother was to be called up for two years and then again for the Suez crisis. We worked hard, paid our bills and didn’t expect something for nothing. The other odd thing is; the harder I worked and the more effort I put in the luckier I got. Odd that.
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“I stumbled somehow into journalism?” come off it, Alexander!
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