Phillip Inman’s got me bang to rights (Can a nation in crisis rely on the baby boomer generation to step up? I think the UK is about to find out, 21 August). Born in 1953, passed the 11-plus, joined the 8% who went to university and spent a lifetime in white-collar jobs that paid well enough for housing and pensions. Not all smooth sailing – four or five redundancies – but each came with a lump sum and a decent job soon after. And I was a basic rate taxpayer for all but a few years.
Now I’ve got assets far beyond my needs, and children who don’t need my money. But Inman misses why many of us hold on to what we have: we’ve seen decades of social care failure and want to ensure that we can afford the eye-watering costs ahead. The housing market doesn’t help – ageing households face an archaic property-exchange system. We tackled it when we had to, but there’s no urgency now. And the idea that the private sector will provide? Not when Guardian columns are full of service-charge horror stories. Why dive into shark-infested waters?
Every age group votes in their self-interest, not just the old. Since 1974, none of my votes were cast for personal gain. Mortgage tax relief, bus pass, triple lock – grateful, yes, but they didn’t sway me. And if they’re taken away, I won’t vote out of spite.
It’s older generations who still give time to the community. We’re no longer a clubbable society – working men’s clubs, political parties and professional associations are collapsing. People in their 30s to 50s aren’t stepping up when boomers step down. Yet Inman expects us to act collectively and patriotically.
By all means, pluck my feathers – but do it in such a way that I won’t squeal.
Ged Parker
Washington, Tyne and Wear
• Phillip Inman is correct that the over-65s own a disproportionate share of family homes, but his attack on them otherwise is rather absurd. One of the main reasons there is a housing shortage is Margaret Thatcher’s misguided selling-off of council houses that were never replaced. As he points out, many retired people would like to move, but there is a severe shortage of smaller homes, and many people, rightly, don’t want to move a long way from where they live.
Inman should quit dumping on seniors and put the blame for the housing crisis where it mostly belongs – on the UK’s complete failure for five decades to invest in building affordable housing. But his most absurd claim is that boomers should give “more of their time to local communities rather than jetting off on several holidays a year”.
First, older people do take holidays, but it is families with children who take the most holidays every year. Second, boomers are the most active volunteer sector in the UK, with 58% of those aged 65 to 74 volunteering in 2023-24. Retirees are helping run food banks, libraries, refugee centres, hospitals, charity shops and environmental groups, saving the public sector billions every year. We should be thanking them for their service.
Jean McKendree
Westow, North Yorkshire
• When I worked, and I worked for 50 years, I would have been happy with a tiny living space as I spent all my time working. Now that I’m retired, I have very little money (no final salary-based pension and holidays for me), so I need a garden and space for my hobbies, and to accommodate my grandchildren to allow my daughter to work. Why do people assume that old people need a tiny space? I need space to fill my time and keep healthy in mind and body. Tiny spaces would mean endless daytime TV for me; I’d rather die.
Mary Strode
Glasgow
• Philip Inman has hit the nail exactly. Where do boomers downsize to? Certainly not to one of the plethora of two-bed flats with tiny balconies. It isn’t just the family house that he is asking us to give up, but our gardens too. One of the real pleasures of retirement is having time to garden. It also keeps me fit. I am trying to downsize. But if I want a garden, I have to move into a family house, albeit perhaps a smaller one.
Mary Bolton
London
• I read the replies to Phillip Inman’s piece on boomer downsizing (Letters, 22 August; Letters, 26 August). Here in the US, there is the same problem, but with much more clarity. Boomers who tire of rattling around in a 2,500-plus sq ft house and paying the taxes on the same (could be $8,000 or more a year) could move to the mixed-use/multi-family developments that they have voted against for the past 20 to 30 years. If they had permitted some of that to be built, they could continue to live in the neighbourhoods they have grown old in, with the same access to healthcare, shops, restaurants etc as before. But they chose to deny young people or simply those who didn’t want a house and yard that choice. I hope they are happy with the consequences of that choice.
Paul Beard
Seattle, Washington, US
