Don't Blame the World on Me [Us]

Some days it's difficult to know where to start, things are just so fucked up. We've watched a good chunk of the Post Office Enquiry at odd times throughout the day today; with Rodric Williams - former Litigation Lawyer at Post Office Ltd and current Head of Legal (Dispute Resolution & Brand), squirming and [badly] attempting to avoid incriminating himself or fall foul of whatever covert legal legal strictures are being held over him by PO Ltd; often tongue-tied, and at times practically unable to form a complete, cogent sentence in answer to questioning by Jason Beer KC, on behalf of the enquiry.

Later on this afternoon I dipped into the documentary about Harold Shipman and was floored by some 'expert commentator' from the period - I didn't catch who it was - intoning about by such-and-such a date there would be more people over seventy than of any other age-group. I don't know whether he was advocating for Shipman's apparent crusade to cull the 'old folk', or whether he was passing comment on the over-seventies generally. Whichever, the debate over the generational imbalance is currently getting a bit heated, and as is usual with such 'discussions', 98% of the argument is just plain prejudice.

During both of the two [so far] World Wars, all of the actual combatants were drawn from the male cohort, with the vast majority being from the working classes. Therefore the means of production for the war effort had to be drawn largely from the female cohort, with just the key design, technical and organisational jobs filled as before, by men. After the cessation of hostilities in both wars, their was a paucity of work left for those [lucky enough to be] returning home. So, in both periods, and particularly after WWII, social engineering was used to redress the imbalance.

The results of these shifting social sands was the biggest baby boom in our history - I know, I'm one of them - and the producing of 2.4 children from each family 'unit' was strongly encouraged, and helped along by a burgeoning post war revolution in health and social care, child benefits, etc. In short, the Welfare State, created by Labour via the Social Contract, the long established concept of cooperation and support implicit in democratic societies [it used to apply somewhat unevenly across the social strata, but we are making some, if slow, progress]. What we have seen since the heady days of the fifties and sixties has been the accelerating erosion of the support systems necessary to enable people to both participate actively in the workplace and at the same time produce the children necessary to populate the workforce and produce the generations to come.

It's really quite simple. If you undervalue most of your working population to the extent that it can no longer afford to work and procreate at roughly the same time, you will inevitably end up where we are now. Social support on the lines of Sweden and Denmark should be the aim of government, not simply blaming it all, as usual, on the fecklessness of the hoi polloi, as they seem intent on characterising it. And while I'm at it, those of us boomers still up and running have as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as the next person: the vast majority of us have earned that right, and are now drawing down the benefit of a life of work, unlike so many before the Social Contract was ever a thing. The key is not to let crass left vs. right politicking get in the way of the fundamentals: government's only duty should be the health and welfare - medically, socially and financially - of its electorate. End of. Get on with it: at least I've got my shed door finished and painted today, what have you lot [government] achieved, apart from more destruction and corruption?