A new anti-ageing therapy is causing Sima the lab rat to far outlive all the others in her scientific trial. What is this elixir of life? The blood of the young, whose plasma infusions reinvigorate her ageing organs. The symbolism is too good to miss: older people sucking up the housing, wealth and incomes of young people will be wanting their blood next.
Intergenerational injustice gets an occasional airing, but in budgets it gets forgotten. My generation, who were given everything, still go on taking: look at our lucky lives. The NHS was created for us to be born into. RA Butler’s Education Act provided schools, new universities opened with free tuition and grants. Many have the best ever pensions, whose excellent terms are unlikely to be repeated. The huge postwar expansion in council-house building helped many families. But then those homes were almost given away to the lucky, devastating the next generation needing somewhere affordable to live. State-owned utilities were sold off to us at knockdown prices, to make the UK Margaret Thatcher’s “share owning democracy”, leaving rip-off energy and water companies for those who came after.
