I think the reason Polly Toynbee’s analysis “nearly caused a riot” is because it is so obviously wrong-headed (My generation is sucking Britain’s young people dry. Why are politicians too scared to admit it?, 14 February). The substitution of “generation” as an analytical tool over and above drivers of inequality such as class, race and gender will inevitably lead to the dead end of “ideas ... for relieving older people of their accretions of unearned asset wealth”.
Not all older people have unearned asset wealth. The generation of working-class people thrown on to the dole by Margaret Thatcher have no such assets. Neither do their children. If you grew up in poverty, you will likely stay in poverty, and so will your children. The key factor is not age but class. The idea of a social contract wherein each generation is better off than the last assumes that the class interests of the most powerful do not militate against that. The redistribution of wealth from poor to rich over the decades since the 1970s suggests otherwise. The argument that the struggle over redistribution is an intergenerational one confuses both what’s at stake and the forces required to change things.
Nick Moss
London
• Polly Toynbee’s opinion piece about intergenerational injustice hit me at exactly the wrong time. This older person, along with her husband (76), had spent nine exhausting hours the day before looking after four of her small grandsons so their parents could work. Rather than us wanting the blood of the young – as Ms Toynbee suggests may be the anti-ageing therapy of the future – we feel our blood is draining the other way.
Ms Toynbee conveniently fails to mention that approximately 14 million grandparents across the UK are saving the economy an estimated £7bn a year on childcare. We older people may have been “given everything” when young, but many of us are now giving back to the country – and not just to our own children.
Marilyn Sandy
London
• As one of the postwar babies born into a family from a poor mining background, my life chances benefited from all those postwar government policies mentioned by Polly Toynbee. Investment in health, housing and education – particularly free tertiary education – enabled a degree of social mobility and started to counter some of the historical inequalities.
It was the economic and industrial policies of Margaret Thatcher’s government that at a stroke sabotaged this progressive process and began to demolish the very foundations of the welfare state. Subsequent Conservative governments resolutely pursued policies that have continued to prioritise the privileged and wealthy. Rather than pillory my generation, Polly Toynbee’s ire should be firmly laid at the door of every one of those MPs who willingly colluded with this travesty. The fairest route to redress this generational disparity is to reinvest in health, housing, education and training, and to establish a tax regime which focuses on wealth, capital and property rather than income through the wage packet.
Peter Riddle
Wirksworth, Derbyshire
• It’s hard to dispute the intergenerational injustice highlighted by Polly Toynbee, but she seems to forget the fundamental differences that they reflect. The older generations that she critiques voted for, unionised for, marched for and demanded decent pensions, social housing, student grants and progressive governments. Sadly, if you don’t bother to vote, aren’t organised and get distracted by other things, you end up with the current unfairness. Go to party meetings, watch the voters at the polls – the hair is overwhelmingly grey. A coalition of the concerned older and the disadvantaged younger is possible, but both need to turn up.
Tom Cannon
Manchester
