Spit-soaked feathers lay all over the breakfast table as I was accused by Phillip Inman that I, and many others of my age group, were “in pursuit of the holy grail of wealth” (“Boomers’ mania for saving leads to economic madness”, Business).
In addition, we are held responsible for “wanting to keep saving even as they move into their 80s and 90s”. How dare we? Such irresponsible behaviour! We must be ashamed of ourselves. Or are we?
I am not. It has taken me a lifetime of hard work to accumulate sufficient funds not to have to screw up courage to open my bank statement; I now take a taxi when I wish; I can have the lobster lunch; I can buy a new hat.
I grew up in the Rhondda Valley just after the war and benefited from the Marshall Plan, Mr Beveridge’s report and Rab Butler’s Education Act. For me, there were no bicycles, no holidays, no telephone, no car, and, almost until I was on my way to grammar school, many goods were unavailable or still rationed. There was a first-class public library within reach. I persuaded my parents to join so I could use their library cards as well as my own. I read everything.
All those old-fashioned values of thrift, no waste, make do and mend, do not borrow or, worse, owe money are still very much part of my way of life. If we had not saved when we could do so, there would be fewer sources today for the younger generation to borrow from. Inman mentions that “older savers resist spending some of their pension” – that is because we lived through hard times. Now we do not know what is ahead of us, thank goodness we were prudent.
Pearl McCabe
Cardiff
I was brought up after the war with rationing and a very limited range of food. An orange was a real treat. Our houses had no double glazing or central heating. As children, we were encouraged to save. Many of us have since given our children large amounts of cash to help them to buy homes. We also look after our grandchildren to save on their childcare costs and are volunteers for numerous organisations. We use our money responsibly to help others and save to fund our future healthcare. We can’t be blamed for the failings in government policy.
Heather Danpure
Uxbridge
What will help the younger generation is investment in productive capacity thus generating stable, full-time and well-remunerated work, not the casual, part-time, zero-hours, low added-value work that has resulted from 40 years of ill-conceived economic policy. The fault lies not with the baby boomers but Britain’s political class, which has failed abysmally over the last four decades.
Chris F Waller
Bristol
Tories and the national debt
Ann Pettifor rightly points out the damage caused by George Osborne in his reduction of the budget deficit (“A triumph for Osborne austerity plan? Not when our social fabric is in tatters”, Comment). But this is only part of the story. David Cameron had his knuckles rapped in 2013 by the UK Statistics Authority when he talked about “paying down Britain’s debts”. Osborne, too, has neglected to mention that the big national debt (as opposed to the deficit) has ballooned to more than 80% of GDP for much of the Tories’ time in office as opposed to the 40% it was under Labour before the crash.
David Redshaw
Gravesend, Kent
Don’t take us back to the 50s
Andrew Rawnsley’s fiery metaphor of Theresa May pouring petrol on the fire of Brexit is appropriate (“It is beyond this prime minister to beat Brexit swords into ploughshares”, Comment). May’s “red lines” have made Brexit a raging inferno, especially on the Irish border question. How can she reconcile contradictory red lines to achieve Brexit without severe damage to Northern Irish peace and stability? Donald Tusk has stated the obvious in so far as the EU’s collective interests are concerned: Brexit Britain cannot expect to have its cake and eat it.
May is in a headlong dash for Brexit to please her Brexiters but it’s time she put the country first by grasping that she’s negotiating with 27 other member states, all with different priorities.
The Tories’ myopic English nationalism blinds them to the advantages of co-operating with neighbours. They want to return this country to the 1950s with them in charge!
Since the 2016 referendum, our country appears to become more small minded in its attitudes by the day, with its spike in hate crimes and malevolence to foreigners. I hope that Anna Soubry’s amendment is backed by Labour, the SNP, Jean Lambert and the Liberal Democrats to defeat the May government in parliament.
The alternative is for the anti-Brexit organisations to come together and co-ordinate the biggest peacetime demonstration ever on the streets of London, Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff to say an unequivocal “no” to Brexit. I want my tolerant, kind and internationalist country back! Remainers need to demand a different vision from the Brexit politicians, the rightwing tabloids and the Leave voters.
We don’t want what you self-harming, taking-Britain-backwards, unfunny comedians want! We will move mountains to stop you!
Richard Denton-White
Portland, Dorset
Left can be xenophobic too
The leaflet published by Max Mosley during the 1961 Moss Side byelection in Manchester pledged an end to the “coloured immigration” that “threatens your children’s health” (“The past haunts the present in all areas of our national conversation”, Comment).
Keir Hardie is an iconic figure on the British left. His photograph adorns the walls of Labour clubs up and down the country. Yet the Lithuanian Poles employed by the Glengarnock Iron Company in Ayrshire were described by the first Labour MP as “beastly, filthy foreigners”. He portrayed them as undercutting the wages of Scottish miners by surviving on garlic fried in oil that they stole from street lamps. Moreover, these outsiders brought “Black Death” to “decent men”.
The 1961 byelection leaflet forms part of a long political tradition that is not confined to the far right.
Ivor Morgan
Lincoln
Harmony of talk and pills
Alice Gibbs affirms the efficacy of chemical remedies for depression such as Prozac but also recommends counselling (“The pills do work, but give children the chance to talk”, Focus,). Two different views of human nature lurk behind this. One is that we are walking chemistry sets or machines exhaustively describable in scientific language. The other affirms the uniqueness and autonomy of the human mind. Gibbs is unusual and commendable in recognising both, but aren’t the two views theoretically incompatible?
Christine Avery
Plympton, Plymouth
Art of the impossible
In your editorial on Theresa May’s Brexit speech, I think you may unintentionally have hit on one of her key skills(“It’s shaping up for a dreadful deal for Britain”). You mention her “self-contradictory thinking” and “delusional politics”, but you also refer to Through the Looking-Glass. Our prime minister appears to be taking the advice of the White Queen, who tells Alice how she used to practise believing the impossible. “Why,” she (almost) tells Alice, “sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before Brexit.”
John Filby
Ashover, Derbyshire
