Cod & Jabs for Two, Please...

 

While the events surrounding the the Capitol in Washington have revealed finally that the Emperor is actually naked, at least to those with eyes to see the truth, and will hopefully draw the sorry tale to a close; on this side of the Atlantic the long run of our very own Whitehall (that's the theatre, folks) farce continues its run apace.

Three things stood out for me this morning. I won't try and draw too much of a common thread between them and maybe each merits its own post, but whatever. The first was a comment on Amol Rajan's estimable Radio Four discussion programme 'Rethink'. The main thread of the programme looked at fairness, contrasting how young people today fare in comparison with previous generations; the general conclusion being that this will be the first generation in a very long time that will be worse off than its parents'. I wouldn't argue differently, the facts speaking for themselves: young people of working age today will almost certainly, if nothing alters in the interim, be working until they are seventy-five or eighty before the State Pension kicks in, and will on average be materially worse off due to poor pay and a lack of worker representation in the mean time.

However, it was a comment made by one of the panel about the retirement expectations of 'boomers that took my notice: that the postwar generations' expectation was to spend at least a third of their adult life in retirement. I'm afraid that's news to this 'boomer: I've only just retired at sixty-six and would have been unable to afford to do so any earlier. It strikes me there's a touch of middle-class guilt-tripping going on here: not everyone from my generation gets a final-salary pension at the end of their career. In fairness, the concept of the Social Contract did crop up in the discussion,  raising the valid notion that each generation raises the next and supports the previous as need arises. This concept is internalized and culturally embedded in many societies, where the notion of burden itself would never arise, and besides, unless someone spends their entire adulthood on State Benefits, and granted a few always will in a socialized society, the average person's contribution of a lifetime's taxes, National Insurance etc., let alone their economic contribution to society, should lend the lie to the idea that as we age beyond work, we are suddenly a drain on that society: I find that idea particularly, personally offensive.

The second thing that struck me kind of leads on from the first. Stanley Johnson, yet again putting both feet firmly in it, was heard in a recent TV interview to say he'd received his first Covid-19 jab in December and was just about to get his top-up, exactly three weeks later. Now I seem to remember, and please tell me if I'm wrong, that his son; our Prime Minister, has just recently told the public that they would now have to wait twelve weeks between shots, not the twenty-one days originally planned. Add to this that Johnson Senior is actually only seventy-nine years old anyway, and it leaves a lot of questions begging. Most people of his age will still be waiting by next summer if things carry on the way they are. Either the PM's been pulling strings in favour of his old man, which would be bad enough in itself; or the private health sector have got their hands on the vaccines, which might go some way towards explaining the glacial speed at which the public vaccination programme appears to be currently running: I said yesterday that a couple of million had been given the first jab; in fact it's closer to only one-and-a-half million: so just another sixty-six-point-three million to go then.

The third thing, whilst not following directly from the first two, is a direct consequence of Brexit and hence bound inextricably to the PM. Johnson was at pains to parade the fisheries shibboleth before us as a terrible example of the EU's villainous stranglehold over the UK. And so we did indeed 'take back control' of our fishing on finally leaving the EU. But now it seems that UK trawler-men are about to abandon their businesses in droves because the new border controls mean that it can take three days to get through the checks and paperwork: if indeed they can get it past the system in the first place; leaving otherwise fresh produce in limbo between the catch and its intended destination. EU importers are also looking to pull out due to the delays; so rather than taking back control, it looks to me more like we're losing it, instead. At least Boris' dad will be OK eating fish in France for as long as he likes, with his brand new EU passport to hand; if he's true to form, he'll travel to his second home, restrictions notwithstanding anyway. But that's fine: he's entitled. 'Nuff said.