It looks like it’s only the geriocracy that Rishi Sunak has left in his camp, the so-called ‘Boomers’. ‘Booners’, more like, beholden to “a self-serving, self-aggrandising, cheating, lying bunch of chancers who’ve stolen our prosperity, our reputation and our position in the world.” Not my words, the ones in italics, but they would be if I’d had the imagination. These aren’t my words either, once more stolen from X: ‘UK politics will offer ageing boomers literally anything EXCEPT a functioning NHS and properly funded social care, ie the things that actually keep them alive.”
I promised to do my best to avoid politics in this blog during this endless election campaign, but really, how can I? I owe it, if not to you, dear reader, but to myself to call out what’s going on and why it is happening. This is not hard.
The Conservative party, you know, the one that’s formed government for the last 14 miserable years, is in chaos. It is haemorrhaging support to both a changed Labour Party and the far right Reform UK party, owned by Nigel Farage and in a desperate effort to shore up support, Rishi Sunak is handing out goodies to the only group of people who still vote Tory: the old.
We will never tax your state pension, they say, the lowest state pension in Europe by the way, and not only that we will stop the tax rises we have planned for the coming years, but only to pensioners. Everyone else will still have to pay Sunak’s cynical stealth tax as he continues to freeze personal allowances, but us old folk will have our own tax allowance. And just to make us all feel better, the grandchildren of Boomers will be forced to carry out a year of national service. You know, young people who have already lost the opportunity to live, love, study, work and retire in most of Europe, who saw university fees tripled and now find it all but impossible to get on the housing ladder. How much would us Boomers have to hate our grandchildren just for the sake of a few hundred quid on our pensions by 2030? 2030? Many of us won’t even last that long.
How can you trust these people when only a year ago, Sunak’s wet wipe DWP secretary Melvyn Stride referred to the triple lock on pensions as, and here I quote literally word for word, which is actually only one word, “unsustainable”. Now an election has been called, suddenly it becomes sustainable again, which by the way it should be given how pathetic the UK state pension is.
You cannot trust these people and I would bet my bottom dollar that Sunak will pay for the continuation of the triple lock by scrapping or means-testing winter fuel payments, something which would make most pensioners even worse off. But there is a bigger issue here. Will Sunak’s few pieces of silver be enough to keep the votes of us old people? They shouldn’t be.
Despite Boris Johnson’s promise in 2019 to fix social care and to ensure that people going into residential care wouldn’t have to sell their homes to pay for it, was a typical Johnson promise, which is to say a lie. Sunak says that pensioners will get just under £2 a week extra under his new scheme. I do not have a list of fees charged by care homes right in front of me, so I am guessing a bit here, but my guess is that his less than £2 will not quite cover it. There goes your inheritance to your children and grandchildren right there. And there’s the NHS.
On its knees after 14 years of misrule by a government that doesn’t even believe in the principles of having an NHS in the first place and a considerable number of the eight million people on waiting lists will be senior citizens. The things that make life bearable and keep people alive are of no consequence to Sunak and his snake oil salesmen. Here’s an extra £1.92 a week. Treat yourself to an extra pint every month at your local, if you still have a local.
When we brought up our children, they were our priority in life. Of course, they still are. We wanted them to go to a good, well-funded state school, we wanted them to have the best opportunities in life based on their talent and ability rather than the kind of privilege handed down to the children of the super wealthy, we wanted them to do better than we did, a low bar in my case, but I am sure you get the point. And to that end, we have, by and large, succeeded, despite the obstacles put in their way by this dreadful government.
Most parents and grandparents only want the best for their children and grandchildren. They love them beyond words and would do anything to make their lives better. In the general election of 2024, that will include voting to make their lives better, too, and ignoring Sunak’s cheap, tacky and cynical bribes.
Voting does matter, politicians and political parties aren’t all the same and we still have the power to change our country. And if you choose to re-elect “a self-serving, self-aggrandising, cheating, lying bunch of chancers who’ve stolen our prosperity, our reputation and our position in the world” that’s a matter for you. I’ll be voting for all of our futures, including, especially, the young.
