(Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty)
God Save The King. The announcement yesterday that King Charles is receiving treatment for cancer has sent another tremor through a Britain that feels frailer by the day.
And yet, this reminder of our King’s frailty, at 75, also stands for a broader transformation now afoot: the Boomerdämmerung, or twilight of the Baby Boomers. In old Norse mythology “Ragnarok”, translated by the German composer Richard Wagner as Götterdammerung, or “Twilight of the Gods”, is a time of cruel weather, moral chaos, and monsters rising from all points of the compass. Mountains will fall, the seas will rise, and the world-serpent will come ashore, as the gods clash in one final, world-ending battle.
But there is hope. This fateful time, for ancient Germanic legend, is a period both of terrible destruction and also of renewal: the Götterdammerung may see Valhalla aflame, but in its aftermath the world will be rebuilt anew.
Wagner used this motif as a backdrop for the final opera in his four-part Ring Cycle, an adaptation of an old Germanic myth first performed in 1876. It premiered just a few years after the fateful 1871 union of Germany: a transformation that tipped the first geopolitical domino that would culminate in the cataclysm of two World Wars.
Living through the era from the Ring Cycle to Yalta must have felt itself like a kind of Götterdammerung. Certainly, the first generation born after its 1945 resolution were determined to build a wholly new world, amid the ruins of the old. A demographic bulge group, conceived and born amid the relief, reunion, and rebuilding that consumed Europe after the two wars, the Boomers threw out the old sexual codes, dismissed pre-war European culture as stuffy and “square”, and scorned anything that smacked of nationalism, patriotism, or old high European culture as dangerously Hitlerish. In place of all that, they dreamed of new, sunlit Valhallas, freed from the dark gods of industrialised wartime destruction.
The culture they bequeathed us — what today is denounced as the “Boomer Truth Regime” — worshipped transformation, freedom, youth, and the future. Tradition and heritage was a drag. We were all on a path toward ever more individual self-realisation. But it was two-edged.
In her 2021 book Boomers, Helen Andrews argues that in each case, this generation – from Steve Jobs to Camille Paglia and Aaron Sorkin – set out to liberate us, but “what they passed on to their children was worse than what they inherited”.
Jobs sought to free our inner rebels, but created instead the stultifying world of social media; Al Sharpton turned social justice into a shakedown geared toward making well-off liberals feel good about their opinions; Paglia profited from an academic rigour whose abandonment she helped to legitimise.
These arguments will be familiar to anyone of my age and younger, who looks askance at the generation that benefited from free university education and affordable housing, and has since presided over an era in which both have become something more like Ponzi schemes. Today the university system the boomers bequeathed us is a monolithically Left-wing and increasingly academically flaccid visa factory; housing, meanwhile, is a piggy-bank for those that have and a pipe-dream for the rest.
But the consternation that has greeted news of King Charles’ ailing health should remind us that not all boomers are created alike, or indeed all boomerism. It’s easy to dismiss this generation, with its optimism and sheer good fortune, as one characterised principally by the self-absorption and wanton destructiveness Andrews skewers in the figures she profiles. But even leaving aside the fact that the boomers are all our parents and grandparents, I don’t greet our approaching Boomerdämmerung with glee.
Andrews can say, with some justice, that many boomers have not just failed to preserve and pass on the legacy they received to their own progeny, but actively consumed that cultural and economic seed-corn for their own selfish pleasure. “Spending the kids’ inheritance” is so common and celebrated among boomers it even commands an acronym (“SKI-ing”), how-to books and celebratory articles.
But there are boomers and boomers. Much of the social fabric in my small town is held together by boomers. They show up to church. They donate their time to committees, volunteer for the council, make cakes for coffee mornings, and pick up litter. Small-town boomers are unfailingly polite, kind, generous, and public-spirited. In keeping with this spirit, boomers volunteer at much higher rates than younger generations: over 50% of those aged 65-74 do so at least once a year.
Nor is this the only store of cultural capital that threatens to expire with the boomers. As murmurs of concern grow louder over a supposed competence crisis — whether or not this is driven by “diversity” hiring practices — they are now exiting the workforce at accelerating rates. It appears, too, that they are often doing so without passing on their skills to younger generations.
What will life be like once they’re gone? In the 1988 comedy Funny Farm, the character Mickey says dismissively of an unstable river crossing: “That ain’t a bridge. It’s termites holding hands”. That is: burrowing insects have hollowed out a once-sturdy piece of woodwork, and are maintaining its semblance only by clinging to one another, meaning the slightest hint of pressure will cause that solid-seeming form to collapse into powder.
And the Boomer Truth Regime is now taking on a similar character. Something once unshakeable is now so fragile that — for better or worse — it’s only the tenacity of the very creatures that caused that fragility which still holds it together. The world’s only superpower, for example, the regime surely most closely identified alike with boomer self-discovery and boomer post-nationalism, faces a Presidential election this year. And both front-runners are boomers: men older than King Charles, and yet clinging to power with every ounce of their remaining vigour.
What they’re now preserving is, ironically, a regime implacably hostile to the idea of preservation. The Boomers scorned the prewar order of patriotism and tradition. They gave us a regime of unlimited self-expression, post-national governance, and individual freedom. And it was all mythologised via the narrative of Good vs Evil that grew up around the Second World War. But as the boomers’ grip on power begins to falter in earnest, so we’re witnessing a steadily accelerating re-evaluation of the Boomer Truth Regime origin-story, the Ragnarok of that war.
As the wolf Fenrir shakes off his chains, and the mountains and oceans of Boomer Truth begin to shudder and boil, this re-evaluation of our past will also grow more febrile. Even those of us who chafe under Boomer Truth may not like the form this takes. One central pillar of that truth regime, for example, has always been a definition of the good relative to absolute evil as epitomised by Hitler and the Nazis, with the Holocaust as its central exhibit. But today, one in five young Americans thinks the Holocaust is a myth. That proportion among boomers, by contrast, is close to zero. The same stark generational shift can be seen in the rising proportion of young people who support a strongman leader.
Only a fool or ghoul would try and speculate on how our political landscape will evolve once the boomers are gone. But I suspect we’ll miss them bitterly: for though some aspects of boomerism undermined their own postwar settlement, boomers are also now the main force holding that settlement together.
King Charles surely epitomises this dual aspect of boomerism. A staunch Traditionalist and admirer of the anti-modern thinker René Guénon, he is criticised by some for being too backward-looking — while also (for example in his expressed wish to serve as “defender of all faiths”) standing accused by others of destructive progressivism and betraying the Church of England. Most likely though, as with boomers in the aggregate, he’s both: classically boomerish in his simultaneous ironclad confidence in the persistence of tradition, and certainty that traditions can and should be remixed at will in the name of progress.
Subsequent generations understand more clearly that this faith is often misplaced. Skills may be lost in generational transition, cultural reserves may be exhausted, carefully-accumulated inheritances may be frittered (literally) on cruises or (figuratively) on self-discovery and “modernisation”. But the true extent of the loss will, most likely, only become apparent as the ineluctable Boomerdämmerung approaches.
I wish King Charles a speedy recovery and a long reign yet. But in the end, as the Old Norse seeress reminds us, not even the gods can escape the cycle of death and rebirth. The growing frailty of the boomers feels like a chill wind of mortality, blowing around my own middle-aged vitals. But it blows an even more chilly wind of mortality around the world the boomers created, and whose increasingly brittle form is now fracturing at an accelerating pace.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeGod help him. And God help us all when the Boomers pass on and the ignorant and self absorbed world view of so many of the younger generation becomes the societal norm across the West.
I’m an exer and, therefore, my view is supposed to be ignorant and self-absorbed. To me, it looks different, though. On the micro level, that of a family, I spent half of my life fixing the wreckage that my boomer parents did, being fully convinced they did the right thing. My generations seems to be way more cognizant of the world around us and of the potential consequences of our actions. I think, on the macro level, the younger generations will also have to do a lot of fixing after the boomers, the clintons, bushes and blairs of the world. I just hope we do not fall for the same trap and do not inflict grand disasters by building grand schemes. Just quietly plumb the pipes.
I’m 55, so not really a Boomer, but it’s tediously typical of older generations to lecture the young on their deficiencies and how much better they, the old, were. It’s always been garbage, and you don’t seem to have fallen for it. Good for you.
I would agree with this. I work with younger people (late 20s, I’m 52) and they seem, like most people, friendly and decent enough. They certainly seem more together and responsible than us hedonistic Gen Xers.
Speak for yourself please, I’m neither of those things.
I can imagine no grander schemes than (a) abandoning energy security for a Made in China energy policy based on technological fantasy; (b) experimenting with wholly unprecedented levels of immigration and demographic churn into a low growth, low build economy and (c) maintaining interest rates at there lowest level for over 300 years with a resulting inflation of asset values, particularly of property, pushing house prices out of reach for many. None of those policies were pushed by Boomers; all are of more recent vintage, and all were or are avidly supported by younger voters.
Young people are the biggest supporters of the mass immigration project.
I’m afraid I think it’s the generation younger than the Boomers who have caused most of the problems.
The boomers are the “greed is good” generation. The boomers gave us “no such thing as society”. The boomers have presided over the shrinking of the state and privatisation of previously public resources (putting them into their pensions but we won’t get into that one).
If the younger generation are self-absorbed they would have learnt it from their parents and/or grandparents. We just perfected it. The boomers made it the societal norm. The young are desperate to restore the state and to borrow and pay for things that benefit the collective – just check their social media feeds.
What you think of as “ignorance” is actually people seeing things differently to you. Often because they have a much wider range of sources of information. If the boomers weren’t so self-absorbed and ignorant they might reflect on that and think perhaps the youngsters are onto something.
Blimey, you guys do love your sweeping generalisations. Do you ever go out of the house?
> you guys do love your sweeping generalisations
Totally agree with this. Someone else will be to blame however.
“The boomers have presided over the shrinking of the state”. After 4 years of the greatest peacetime expansion of the UK state that will impact the economy, society and everyone’s health for the years to come?? Not forgetting the Government elected promising to reduce immigration, but instead passed work and study visa laws that enabled the largest ever increase in immigration to the UK.
Bliar is a boomer. Brown is a boomer yet both presided over massive expansions of the state.
Downvoted because I’m tired of “UnHerd Reader” comments.
“The boomers gave us “no such thing as society”.”
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan weren’t baby boomers.
“If the younger generation are self-absorbed they would have learnt it from their parents and/or grandparents”
No, they learnt it from social media. You know, their fabulous source of information.
‘No such thing as society” – was said by Thatcher, she was not a boomer. What actual power do you think ‘boomers’ had over politics, other than voting every four or five years? And before you blame them for voting Tory/Labour/Whatever, consider what power or foresight younger generations will have when they vote in future elections, especially the next one. None of us can ever know exactly what the people we vote for will do/change their minds about etc. nor what their true ideals, influences or incentives are.
Boomers swallowed Margaret Thatcher’s schtick wholesale (not this one, I hasten to add). Just like they swallowed and followed “child centred” parenting. Consequences play out over time and subsequent generations are the result.
Margaret Thatcher was not a Boomer, nor most of her ministers.
What’s the criteria for a downvote? I don’t think you’re quite right but I find your comment worthy of consideration.
There is a respected online English dictionary that has a complex definition for the word Carpetbagger. In addition to the standard US definition describing a lowlife opportunist who exploited impoverished citizens in the southern states after the civil war, the dictionary has a special UK entry for the same word.
In the UK the word carpetbagger describes a greedy opportunist in the 1980s who destroyed the mutual banking tier in the UK for short-term gain. These destroyers of the future are also known as The Boomers.
The Boomers are the most wretched generation of Britons in history. They broke the intergeneration covenant and broke the country.
If that is true, we just took the boomer generation’s lead and ran with it. Their legacy.
You said it better than I (a boomer) could. Having brought a Millennial and a Gen Z-er into this world, my remaining role is to try and atone for and mitigate, financially, my generation’s greatest crime: Brexit.
So the summary of this article: Boomers may be a selfish collective, but get them alone and some of them are really nice!
I don’t have a huge beef with the boomers (I mean, I’m on the cusp myself), but one thing I do hold against them is that they, being the last generation to benefit from a rigorous and classical education, quite purposely and bloody-mindedly decided that such an education would be unnecessary or even harmful for future generations, and so decided to dispense with it. In some cases, you can forgive perverse outcomes and being the unintended consequences of well-meaning gestures, but in this case I find it hard – the architects of the cultural and educational revolution knew exactly what they were doing, and did it in the full knowledge of what would be lost.
Yes, you could counter that all the elements of what we lost are still there in books and other media are can therefore be revived. However, what many don’t realize, or like myself, are only realizing belatedly, is the paramount importance of continuity. What proponents of “RETVRN” and other such larpers have failed to grasp is the extent to which knowledge can be only be handed down from generation to generation, and once the chain is broken, such knowledge simply disappears, and disappears forever (conservative philosopher Michael Oakeshott is very good on this). Moreover, even when a revival (or “renaissance”) seems to occur, it can never be truly authentic, nor truly felt.
So here we are, floundering in the post-modern aftermath they their wanton destruction brought about. I jus re-read my first sentence and maybe I was too indulgent towards the boomers – perhaps I do have huge beef with them after all.
Will they be missed when they are gone, well their money will. What the later generations will do without the Bank of Mum and Dad, God only knows. At least it will give them an opportunity to grow up and take responsibility for their own lives before they die
Excellent, considered comment and a worthy response to another brilliant article by MH which captures where we are.
Great response, but was it the boomers that deliberately dismantled classical education? I thought that was Blair’s ilk, obsessed by the idea that the majority should go to university, had to water the whole thing down for the sake of such ‘inclusion’.
No, it pre-dates Blair by quite a while. It goes back at least to Anthony Crosland (Highgate School, Trinity College Oxford) who, as Harold Wilson’s education minster in th 1960s is alleged to have said “”If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to destroy every f*****g grammar school in England. And Wales and Northern Ireland.”
There were those of us in Balliol, right beside Trinity, (“Hearties”, I hasten to add, not me) who used to chant when sufficiently drunk:
“If I was a bloody Trinity man,
I would, I would,
I’d go into a public rear,
I’d pull the chain and disappear,
I would! I would!
BLOODY TRINITY!!!
BLOODY TRINITY!!!
BLOODY TRINITY!!!”
If Antony Crosland had succeeded, I would never have got into Balliol.
Much, much more important, I would not now have the ineffable solace of reading Latin and Greek for pure pleasure!
BLOODY BALLIOL
Jack Johnson says so
And he ought to know
Your comment illustrates the importance of personal transmission of knowledge so ably voiced by Pat Davers above. Without your contribution, this riotously rude contribution to English poetry might have been lost for ever. As it is, it has given me, and probably many others, considerable enjoyment. And it may even end up in some anthology of unofficial Oxford verse. Like the many limericks about the student of Trinity which are already in print.
Yes, but Crosland’s generation was before the Boomers, and I’d argue Blair’s generation is mostly after the Boomers. The Boomers themselves were in the middle.
Let’s face it; since it’s impossible to vote for a party whose manifesto you fully agree with, life is a series of electoral lotteries. We’ve just been repeatedly unlucky of late. And I type that knowing that things wouldn’t have been much different had voting gone the other way. The Uniparty are in power whatever happens.
It predates Blair by a few decades. Anthony Crosland (Highate School, Trinity College Oxford) as Harold Wilson’s education minister in the 1960s is alleged to have said “If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to destroy every ****ing grammar school in England. And Wales and Northern Ireland.”
In any case the issue is as much cultural as political. The Boomers may have had many great qualities, but it is their failure – or even downright refusal – to pass on these qualities for which they will be remembered.
Absolutely spot on sir!
It was Crosland & Co “wot dun it”. Loathsome little sh*tes that they were.
Tony Crosland was born in 1918. His generation had the Boomers.
I’m not sure I entirely blame the Boomers for what’s gone wrong with education. The students themselves seemed to go along with the idea that you could massively increase the number of people going to university, and that if you did that people would have to pay for it themselves, instead of it being subsidised by the government.
Young folk en masse were never likely to oppose avoidance of having to enter the job market for three or four years. Even if you don’t know what’s at the end of that delay period, at least you’ve offset the worry by that much time.
Many of us Boomers who benefited from the rigorous, classical education you laud are mortified by the transformation of the education system, and have been damn sure that our kids have access to classical schools. Classical Christian schools are growing in the US.
I’m a Boomer, and I have never made any such decision regarding the education of the generations to come after me. Such decisions were made by politicians and did not appear in any manifesto that I am aware of, since I first became eligible to vote in the mid 70s.
The dark ages came from somewhere.
I’d have said that the withdrawal of classical education was more a socialist left thing; a precursor to the current Common Purpose drones who’ve reduced time at university to avoidance of being ‘triggered’.
Excellent points about the importance of personal mentoring continuity in transmitting skills and knowledge. In some areas that importance is blindingly obvious. The instruction manuals for an Airbus A380 may be around for ever. Anyone fancy flying on an A380 where the crew have learnt it all from books? The US Navy found out the hard way how to handle huge 16 inch guns when they tried reactivating WW2 battleships and all the WW2 gunners were dead or long retired. The fact that the long stored powder was very old and very dodgy did not help. Try learning Latin from scratch using only grammar books and dictionaries, with no enthusiastic teacher.
An interesting piece to read here given that the voice I predominantly hear in the comments of this journal (alongside The Times of London and The Spectator) is most definitely, recognisably that of the Boomer generation. It’s the way to get a portrait of a generation nowadays!
Yes it’s interesting to see what concerns the people who don’t have jobs, mortgages or childcare responsibilities. They seem to be very bothered about TV show castings and the skin colour of their carers.
Well, I suppose I’m technically a boomer and I dislike my contemporaries (collectively) just as much as you do – and mostly for the same reasons. Although I don’t share your enthusiasm for statist authoritarianism which, paradoxically, I’ve always considered to be a boomer trait.
Once the younger generation are enjoying what they wish for, socialism (see almost every failed state since Lenin) and sharia law (an inevitable consequence of islamic mass immigration) who will they have to endlessly whine about?
The younger generation would be delighted to roll back on the socialism. Let’s start with the NHS, pensions and health and social care for the elderly. Then let’s see the boomers talk about socialist failed states!
As a boomer I would be delighted if they cut back the NHS – it just isn’t working. It needs a radical shake up and governments should concentrate on drastic reform of the two main cause of illhealth, pharmaceutical companies and food manufacturing. Re social care you do realise that over half the social care budget goes on younger people under the age of 60.
Your two causes of ill-health might equally have been lack of exercise (since it’s optional) and poor food choices (again, mainly optional). Of course avoidance of ‘manufactured’ food would result in more effort being required and so unlikely to find favour, as we’re all too busy to stay healthy.
Considering only around 20% of the population is over 60 years old and they use up half the social care budget (plus the bulk of the healthcare budget) you’ve inadvertently proved Readers point
This boomer experienced two socialist states. They were appalling. And the wall supposedly built to protect them was joyfully destroyed.
But, still, one more push might do it.
I doubt whether the younger generation would delight in the cessation of pensions (into which they’ll have paid for a working lifetime) once they’re of a certain age…
Having two ‘unherd readers’ is awfully confusing. Couldn’t one of you come up with a different alias?
What like a boomer individualist? It would make it easier to allocate the prejudice…
Ah, you’re a clone? That would explain it.
I’m not this Unherd Reader!
I’m Spartacus!
You and whose army?
Which one of the two UnHerd Readers complained on here about commenters making sweepering generalities? Hmm…
I just assumed it was the same Reader engaging in the usual Boomer practice of arguing with itself. And as a Boomer myself I find that opinion laughable.
Oh, I thought he [her, it, they] were arguing with themselves
I’m the other Unherd Reader, and I didn’t see anything about creating an alias when I subscribed. I’d gladly ditch Unherd Reader if I knew how.
He might not appreciate that.
It wasn’t the young who opened the door to mass immigration (which started in the 1950s and 1960s), it wasn’t the young who voted for Labour and Democrat governments in the post-war decades, and it isn’t the young who control our increasingly deranged public institutions.
Of course, if it started in the 50s and 60s, then it wasn’t the Boomers what done it.
They’ll be arguing about whose fault it is. (Answer: anyone but theirs.)
They won’t be complaining, they will be weeping. Silently.
Please don’t concern yourself on that front…they will find something or someone to demonstrate and whinge about.
My old tutor would call this essay a hot curry – tasty but designed mainly to inflame! I am not sure this demographic argument works. As Mary notes, Boomers volunteer, know and care for History and prize many traditional values (including patriotism) far more than all the super secular entitled Me Me younger generations. The Boomers were surely divided too – only a minority fit the Jane Fonda and Steve Jobs mould! Finally, I think the Blair Generation and the 40 somethings below are guilty of far more menacing and devasting failures and crimes. These Leftist Progressives have since the 90s succumbed to several ideological cults – EU Federalism, multiculturalism, DEI and Climate Catastrophism – and are responsible for three unfolding structural horrors. Failing to provide affordable housing; failing to supply cheap energy and the crashing of our public services via the uncontrolled mass immigration of near 10 million. Nothing the older SAGA generation ever did comes close to matching these disasters.
I agree and I would further add that the Boomers had a work ethic which is not now apparent in the latest generation. I have been married almost 56 years to the same Boomer and she would say that I have ‘Lived to work’ and not ‘worked to live’ which have marginally impacted on family life. However, she would not have had it any other way and we are reaping that toil in our retirement.
I do not see that work ethic being played out at all nowadays; rather I see a young population wanting and expecting the state to look after them and a minimal input into the integrity of the country..
Well, according to the WEF, by 2030, they will own nothing and be happy – or else.
Slight difference. In your day, hard work was rewarded with promotions, pay rises and your goals were within reach. Nowadays, hard work usually just gets you more work and nothing else. Why bust your backside and struggle financially when you can coast and struggle financially?
The result is that most Millennials (and plenty of Zoomers as well) now prefer to earn enough to what they want and that’s it. Housing is beyond the reach of most of my generation with net incomes being poor, wages stagnating and houses being priced too high.
Enjoy your retirement, you’ll be one of the last generations (maybe the last) to do so.
Exactly.
Fair comment indeed, John. Our daughter is going 36, single, and a highly qualified professional (dentist). Yet, she cannot afford to purchase her own property on account of massive prices and continues to live in ‘student’-style digs – i.e. renting a room in an ‘apartment’ on the second floor of a Victorian town villa, sharing living, cooking and bathing facilities with two other professionals in similar circumstances.
I have considerable sympathy for what Walter Marvell states; and he is right about the “EU Federalism, multiculturalism, DEI and Climate Catastrophism” of the Woking Class that has so damaged, if not destroyed, our entire social fabric. But there are people like our daughter who are casualties of this egregious mangerialism and whose truly hard work and commitment is neither appreciated nor adequately rewarded and whose lifestyle is constricted on all fronts. And she is. relatively, one of the better paid of her generation.
At least we have a moderately comfortable combined vocational pension and own our home.
The bit I never understand about the ‘housing’ thing is that prices are high only because people keep affording them. As new houses are built, someone buys them. Who are these selfish folk?
As to Chuck Rex being an exemplar of anything Boomerish, pull the other one. He’s a privileged popinjay as he’s spent most of his adulthood demonstrating. And he’d happily see us all confined to the WEF’s 15-minute cities, so long as he can continue to jet to Davos every year.
With the massive amount of wealth being passed down from the boomers, many might not need the state to look after them.
Reference SKI above in the article?
There seems to be an astonishing amount of money in some hands. When I put my very modest and decrepit house up for auction, late in 2022, I could not believe that dozens of people were bidding for it. I quickly got more than I expected. And these were not traditional millionaires.
I agree. There is a massive difference between attitudes towards work and self reliance between the UK of 1990 and today (a day the Fake Tories bung yet more cash to the ever expanding millions no longer seeking work and living on benefits – to ‘help with the cost of living’/actually a tyrannical China inspired lockdown). And the cause is clear. The Progressives and their Human Rights legal revolution have nurtured a sickly culture of Me Me individual entitlement, greviance and victimhood – with our faintly East German State & its evangelical BBC blitzing the idea that self reliance, enterprise and family should determine our fate. All too late – more is already being taken from our already Bailed Out Broken State than those who contribute to it. And the battered minority of middle class strivers who contribute most are taking a terrible pasting from the Redistributive Brownite tax fanatics at the Treasury. Think on two or three decades and do the terrifying math…
As a tail-end Boomer in the medical profession, I’d agree with your assessment. The impending retirement of Boomers from medicine and nursing will leave a big hole in US healthcare staffing, and I don’t see the Gen Xers being numerous enough, or the Millennials willing enough to pick up the slack.
Just when the Boomers will be needing the most medical care…
The younger generations are just as industrious. However the system doesn’t support industry. No worries, if the west crumbles the next jurisdiction with good governance will supplant those who falter.
When I still worked in a design office, most of the younger folk spent more time on Instant Messaging than doing what they were supposedly paid for. The hapless middle-management (if that’s not a contradiction in terms) scratched its head and wondered what could be done…
Studies show that youngsters today work longer hours on average than previous generations, yet it’s always the oldies who are lauded for their work ethic
Absolutely spot on. Historians will view the Blair era and what has followed as the most destructive period of post war politics. We are only now coming to terms with what he and his ill have done. It all seemed do harmless at the time.
“[T]he Blair era and what has followed as the most destructive period of post war politics.”
I dunno though. The 1970s weren’t exactly a day at the races.
That devil eyes poster was very accurate. Blairites ( incl Cameron, May etc) have build multiple roads to hell with all their vapid good intentions
Too true. One should also acknowledge the well-meaning but disastrous uglification of the West by the generation previous to the Boomers shown in architecture and the arts generally. Nihilistic kitchen-sink drama, sneering satire, obscurantist poetry, the values-based waters into which Boomers were chucked in their formative years. Osborne, Braine, Amis, Frost even Cooke and Miller, all prewar babies. Of course, decline and cultural sabotage is a continuum arguably going back to early 19th century romanticism. But that’s too big a subject, even for a Mary Harrington Unherd article.
That 1960s satire that for decades we were told had changed society and unseated the privileged from power.
The lament ‘o tempora o mores’ goes back a little further than that, I’d suggest.
As I noted in a comment above, mass immigration started long before the 1990s. I seem to remember that a certain Mr Powell complained about it in 1968.
But not all Boomers are dreadful. I think Ms Harrington’s essay simply shows that this generation had its fine heroes and its appalling zeroes, much like any other.
No mass immigration did not start before 90s – check figures
Are we really surprised people over the age of 65 do more voluntary work? They are retired after all and likely want something to do as much as they want to help their community.
Also, it was the Boomers who voted Blair in. Millennials couldn’t vote until at least 2001 and Xers were heavily outnumbered by said Boomers.
The most enthusiastic supporters of Blair were the youngest voters at the time, not really the Boomers. (In the UK, Boomers are a much narrower range of people than in the US, ie people born between about 1946 and 1955).
The overall result in 1997 was Labour 44%, Conservative 31%. Among Boomers, it was probably more like 37% each.
From memory, they voted Major’s Tories out. The two-party FPTP system did the rest.
Youngsters are too busy having to work long hours with long commutes in order to pay the rent on a single room in a share house to have time for volunteering
Thank you. Mary Harrington has it wrong for once.
I do think the author has a point that the boomers were possibly the first recent generation that thought you could dramatically alter the structural beams of society without undermining the entire enterprise. The pace of this type of thinking has clearly accelerated – you can ban misinformation but still have freedom of speech – you can admit millions of foreigners without changing societies values – you can shut down all your nuclear power plants and still have cheap power – but the boomers were where it started.
You might have added ‘you can admit millions of foreigners while building only thousands of houses’ and scratch your head when there’s a shortage and prices stay high.
A situation that benefitted the boomers though as most already had steady employment and their own home. Rising house prices and cheaper services off the back of imported labour made them considerably wealthy at the expense of the generations that followed
This seems a bit like listing all the things you happen not to like and blaming them on another generation. I guess you are a boomer. (BTW Winston Churchhill was in favour of European federalism.)
A moments reflection will tell you that treating whole generations as if they can be blameworthy or praiseworthy is nonsense. It’s like looking at old film clips from the 1920s and noticing no one was fat and putting it down to their superior self-control when faced with a cream bun! Take those same individuals and transplant them to the present and they would be just as over weight as us. Individuals are responsible agents, the same cannot be said for generations.
Perhaps ‘boomers’ are the ones holding the settlement together because they are the only ones who benefit from it. Put yourself into the shoes of a twenty year old, and how does the UK look to you? Over that period of the ‘boomers’ it lost its shipbuilding and domestic car industries, most of manufacturing generally, as stated the very recipients of free university education and grammar schools decided to end that option for others that came after. Job security and protection is gone, zero hours contractors and zero hope of buying a house. Crap NHS. The list is endless. The country is a basket case in almost all ways. People can call the young ‘ignorant’ and self-absorbed’ all they like but I think that’s is in itself ignorant and bigoted. The young have been left a mess to clean up though I suspect they probably won’t bother as (I believe Mary Harrington herself said) the UK is just a postcode.
Yep. Cut taxes and sold off the family silver at an undervalue and stashed it all into their pension pots to secure an early triple-locked rent-seeking retirement during which they intend to be dependent on the state and the overworked, underpaid (yet still overtaxed) younger generations whilst moaning that no one is willing to work anymore and it’s probably because the young are too selfish and also avocados.
And now after voting for lower taxes and shrinking the state for the majority of their working lives they’ve suddenly decided that big daddy state spending and taxation are actually a good use of resources so long as it supports the services they use, doesn’t have too long a period for return on investment and doesn’t touch their asset values or retirement rents.
What Western state has shrunk? There is no govt in Europe, the US, or anywhere else that uses democratic norms that is smaller today than it was before. Here we’ve created the single largest federal force in human history, and with very little of value to show for it.
Quite right. The U.S. government has grown enormously, as compared to GDP, and is involved in every last detail of our lives.
But in the end, every previous generation is blamed for all of our ills. A cycle that will continue forever, as long as something is printed for posterity.
Much to agree with, though you omit a vital class perspective. The children of the London/SE Propetocracy and home owning 60% are set to inherit unheard of riches. From 1994 their parents and nans secured untaxed Capital gains of over 100k a year as interest rates were pinned to zero and QE staffing & mass immigration stoked prices onward into the millions. A twenty year racket overseen by the now gleefully enriched political classes. Many of the metro class kids have had homes bought for them. It is those youngsters outside that magic circle who warrant sympathy, though jobs are out there in abundance for the determined.
And the majority of people who lost their jobs in those industries were boomers and their elders. Do you really believe the majority of any generation can be to blame for what the ruling classes (including governments) bring about? I had 6 older siblings, all boomers, none of them went to university, not all owned their own homes and none have private pensions – they just worked all their lives and brought their families up.
Your argument doesn’t really help. The problem for the young now is they also work hard but can’t afford to bring up a family like your siblings did. That’s the difference in your time and that of the young now. Why there is a baby bust in the UK. Those governments were voted in by the people of the day. The people who failed entire industries. The people who then shared in privatisations of publicly owned utilities with short term gains that have now left us with foreign owned offshore profit taking utilities unlike most of Europe who did not sell off their public assets. The people who bought council houses cheap. I don’t have any particular dislike of ‘boomers’ and all generations carry out their often unintended crimes but in many ways the ‘boomers’ did strategically cripple the UK for the future. That doesn’t mean they didn’t do good either of course.
You continually make the mistake of regarding each generation as a homogenous group. They are not. The housing market had not collapsed because there are no first time buyers. There are fewer of them, but a significant number of young people are still buying houses. A huge intergenerational transfer of wealth is happening, and will continue and grow over the next 20 years.
Wow, this has to be the biggest and most impressive strawman I’ve ever encountered. What a peculiar narrative.
Mary’s suggestion that a fortunate generation of somewhat blessed and a little bit righteous folks are the backbone of this country is a remarkable work of creativity.
Where is the evidence that society is going to collapse when Boomers are gone? The only place this is happening is in Mary’s brain.
Generation X (born 1965 – 1980) are a far more adaptable and open minded set of people that are willing to embrace the kind of problems the world faces today without grumbling, whining and rejecting concepts because of deep engrained biases.
The best thing that Boomers can do for today is move on quickly and make sure they have arrangements for Power of Attorney.
Firstly, it needs to be said that Generation X is a wholly Western generation. In the middle income and developing world the Western generational categorisations don’t really applym. In those countries today’s youngsters are in many respects more like “boomers” – upwardly mobile, much better off than their parents, experiencing new freedoms.
The evidence of a coming collapse is Generation X (of the West) overwhelmingly as a group refuse to work in the infrastructure and industry that literally makes the world they inhabit and survive by. No matter the pay or conditions and how rewarding the work can be, Generation X disproportionately avoids practical, disciplined work. HS2 as a mega example is staffed by well paid foreigners. Its enormous investments in local training schemes have have disproportionately been applied for, and filled by, more eager foreign born graduates and apprentices.
In many ways, Generation X’s attitude to productive industry is colonial: someone else can do the hard work. And someone else is, and usurping them in the process. There might not be a collapse but only because another parallel generation is prepared to do the work.
Maybe you’re thinking of Millenials or Generation Z, Generation X are the current 40-55 age group and I don’t see any evidence of the things you refer to.
I think you are right about this general trend re people’s attitude to employment, but I suspect much of the blame should be reserved for the people who have pushed so many young people through university. That has created a huge middle class of people who think they are above manual work or trades but can’t really compete against the proper brain-boxes in the City law firms etc.
If one has spent 4 years in university then it seems only reasonable that their aspirations would be to seek employment in that field of study.
I’m afraid “…education, education, education..” proved to be more useful as advise to institutional investors than the driver of beneficial social change.
Yes, but is not happening. The three years are spent in a random university reading for a random degree. The real purpose is to leave home and get pissed and doped up.
Reasonable right up to the point where there is no real world application for that victim studies degree that the recipient amassed tens of thousands of dollars in debt to acquire.
More than happy for those ones to work in McDonalds.
You mean ‘media’?
Oversupply of grievance studies graduates has led to a large cadre of angry resentful “activists” whose contribution to the world is to call the trades and manual labourers “cookers”, “bigots” and “supremacists”.
A lot of ambitious Gen-Xers would have made middle management by the mid nineties and many are in power today, they have also embraced as much Postmodern nonsense as the millenials.
I’m sure the world will be a much better place under their guidance once the Boomers have fallen off their perch.
Sarcasm much?
I was born in 1965 and it is the first time I learned that I’m generation X! I guess I must be an wannabe Boomer…and I strongly disapprove of this message.
Whatever the Boomers may or may not be responsible for they made lots and lots of really good music.
Indeed. Listening to the ’70s’ stuff is my guilty pleasure.))) That said, there are two problems with the boomer music. One is the way the Boomers use it to justify the questionable things they do (oh, we are the Woodstock generation, the Flower People, we cannot go wrong). The other is using the power of music to idolize profane things.
I can’t stand the flower power stuff either but a lot of really great and varied music was produced by the boomers – it was an extraordinarily creative period.
Britain alone produced many really great guitar players and songwriters. You just have to look at the vain, soulless sh*tshow that was the Grammys recently to see how far we have fallen. And even then they had to wheel out Joni Mitchell to lend it some gravitas…
Sadly, Joni’s gravitas, along with that of Neil Young, disappeared when they tried to blackmail Spotify into cancelling Joe Rogan (not a fan, have never listened to him). How far the progressive musos have fallen. Especially when their rock-like determination disappeared and they crept back onto Spotify with rather less fanfare.
Very true. I was especially disgusted with Neil Young, of whom I was a lifelong Fan and I have owned most of his stellar discography. Overnight, one of my musical heroes fell off his pedestal with a crashing bang! I have stopped listening to his music and I’m looking to sell all of his CDs and LPs. Joni will probably be next…
Until the non-music of Punk and Rap/HipHop swept all before it.
I am groping for the best way to express this but it feels as if much of post-war (“Boomer”) culture was a reaction against what came before and can only really be understood as such. Without a living knowledge of what came before it ceases to have much meaning as it only exists in the tension between the two, like a chemical reaction between two substances.
As a Catholic I think the changes in the liturgy that started in the 1960s show that particularly strongly, but it can be seen in everything from architecture to poetry. The era immediately preceding the Boomer ascendancy was experienced as something to react against, or as a sort of historical curio to be displayed in museums, but nothing better came along to replace it once the reacting-against had run its course.
As would be the case with many boomers, my grandfathers fought in the First World War and my father in the Second. I have always been aware of, and humbled by, the fact that I am part of the lucky generation. I imagine that if I’d come out with the sense of aggrieved entitlement that seems to infect so many in the younger generations today, my parents would have reminded me robustly of that fact.
If we boomers as a cohort are being held responsible for all the ills of the country today, well, we built and maintained a high standard of living; we upheld freedom and won the Cold War; we made huge strides in medicine with vastly improved longevity and quality of life; we created the IT revolution and enabled affordable food, travel, clothing and entertainment. And we did, echoing a previous commenter, make some brilliant music. Younger generations, you’re welcome!
Right, and which generation raised the Millennials who are apparently so entitled?
Boomers gave birth to Gen X who gave birth to Millennials. I’m not sure what’s being asked here.
Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996 with Gen X being born between 1965-1980 and Boomers 1949-1964. Sure, there’s some overlap, but most Millennials will have Boomer parents.
My four siblings, all boomers, had all Gen X kids and one Millennial.
Yah no. I’m Gen X and my mother and father were born in the 30’s.
Fair question, I suppose, but one that makes the implicit assumption that everything is the Boomers’ fault, and that we are the only age group with any agency and power while the rest of the population are just poor passive victims. If we stick with the categories as valid and meaningful, the youngest Boomer is pushing 60. Gen X have been able to vote since Margaret Thatcher’s day, and they have long established jobs and families. If the societal inheritance of patriotism and culture is being trashed, surely the younger generations have the economic and political heft to preserve, rebuild or recreate it if they have the will.
Boomers clearly aren’t responsible for everything that’s wrong. But most of what they achieved can be put down to the fact there was a lot of them. Everything you list can be put down to a booming economy due to the increasing and youthful workforce, or to social revolutions pushed through by a weight of numbers that previous generations didn’t have.
Whilst you seem to be aware of your fortune, many are not. Younger generations are aggrieved because, whilst small things are more readily available (eating out, consumer items), big things (job security, housing, pensions) are more difficult to achieve. And I don’t know what could be considered more entitled than making the young lockdown to save the old. It’s a sacrifice in the opposite direction to that the war generations made. Sacrifice by the generations before, and sacrifice by those after (lockdown may be much a much smaller sacrifice than the war, but I suspect there’s a lot more like that to come yet).
Anyway, people are people. If generations have different characteristics then that is down to the different circumstances they found themselves in.
I disagree with most of the criticisms of Boomers. I think, on the whole, they’ve been a pretty responsible and hard-working generation. It’s the generation slightly younger than them that are to blame for most of the problems we have at the moment, in my opinion. (Also one or two people older than the Boomers, like Anthony Crosland).
‘making the young lockdown to save the old’.
First, it didn’t work, old folk died in droves, especially in ‘care homes’ (that’s a misnomer).
Second, it was instituted by incompetent poltroons like the Celebrity Jungle contestant, who wanted to be seen to be doing something (other, that is, than grappling with his mistress on CCTV).
Old people died in droves because they were more susceptible. Those in care were even more susceptible, though there were clearly issues with sending people back into care homes from hospitals.
Regardless of whether it was effective or badly implemented, it certainly wasn’t for the benefit of the young, though they will be the ones to largely pay for it.
Don’t be too harsh on Jungle Matt. One of my unforgettable memories of the lock down is Matt threatening to lock us all up 24/7 unless we obeyed the rules more strictly. Seeing how frequently the lock down rules changed, that would have been a confusing order.
“And I don’t know what could be considered more entitled than making the young lockdown to save the old. It’s a sacrifice in the opposite direction to that the war generations made. Sacrifice by the generations before, and sacrifice by those after (lockdown may be much a much smaller sacrifice than the war, but I suspect there’s a lot more like that to come yet).”
For that paragraph alone, a much deserved thumbs Up!
I do enjoy the boomers calling the young entitled, when the young are working longer hours than their predecessors and being more heavily taxed than their predecessors, simply to pay the massive healthcare costs and triple lock pensions of a generation much wealthier than themselves, all while being locked out of the housing market and paying record rents. It’s the boomers who sold the utilities and pocketed the cash, sold the council houses and didn’t build any to replace them, as well as refusing to increase their tax contributions despite being well aware they hadn’t contributed nearly enough to cover their end of life care.
It’s the young who are entitled though
The term ‘boomer’ is a misnomer, probably invented by some social sciences professor to simpify branding. It doesn’t get near describing the complexity and interrelational developments taking place across multiple generations: technological changes, demographic changes, to name but two. And what about the end of the cold war? Surely that has been the major impact on the west in recent decades. The vast majority of us exist (and make our way) in societies that have evolved and over which we have little control.
Very good. Boomers has become one of those over-used journalistic shorthand terms and is an unjustified generalisation.
Yet, we are called the baby boomers, because after the pause of World War II , there was a baby boom, many, many returning soldiers married and had 3 or 4 kids.
The huge population bulge was described by one commentator as a goat going through the belly of a boa constrictor – so many to house, feed and educate had never happened since.
And don’t forget (for American boomers like me, born in 1952) it was boomer men, 56,000 of whom lay dead in Viet Nam, who were drafted in droves. Blame Johnson and his (WWWII cohort) who brought about the magic of that fiasco.
And I recently learned that Johnson the USA president “suggested” to our 1960s Prime Minister Harold Wilson that Britain should join USA in the Vietnam War but Harold Wilson politely declined. Unlike now when we say How High when USA says jump Labour PM Wilson told them No. Imagine if all the young men in 1960s Britain could have been CONSCRIPTED (new buzz word) to die in Vietnam,London would not have been so Swinging.
As Wilson knew,from Mossadegh on what happens to rulers who oppose USA wishes ever after he knew they were out to get.him,he got mocked by some media as paranoid but he wasnt. He just knew the score.
As the term originated from the boom in babies who were born following the end of World War Two, which for instance resulted in class sizes of 45 – 50 for those children entering school from 1950, it was certainly no misnomer.
“According to an answer given by the Minister of Education to my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle – under – Lyme (Mr. Swingler) recently, there are now in our schools 43,202 classes with over 40 on the roll. Of those, 1,380 have more than 50 on the roll. In 1950 the number of classes with more than 40 on the roll was 37,106, so that in the last three years the number of classes with more than 40 on the roll has increased by over 6,000. We reach the sad conclusion that nearly 2 million of our children are being taught in classes of over 40 at present.”
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1954/apr/27/schools-size-of-classes
That is a meaningless and invalid comparison because the figures are absolute numbers. The population in 1950 was a great deal smaller than it is now. The only valid comparison therefore is one that is standardised for both age and sex.
If ‘Boomer’ defines someone who doesn’t mind being categorised by people whose opinion he/she resists valuing, then I guess I is one.
Another good metaphor for what’s happening as the Boomer generation fades is RAAC concrete. RAAC was a cheap mass-produced material and was one of the drivers of the architectural cultural revolution of the postwar-era. This was a revolution that rejected tradition – precisely because it was too stuffy, and because classical design reminded people too much of the baddies in WW2. But now, the edifices constructed with this material are literally crumbling, and so in yet one more way, what the boomers are passing on to their children is worse than what they inherited.
This would be true if RAAC concrete was championed by the Boomer generation. In fact it was deplored by them. (Viz. Big Yellow Taxi et al.) The material was developed in the 1920s and championed by the generation before the Boomers, principally architects born before WW2. Try another good metaphor – or at least reading a social history book.
https://www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/news/2023/march/reinforced-autoclaved-aerated–concrete-raac/
Also, if you want social history about reinforced concrete (but not the aerated kind) you can try Jean-Luc Godard’s Operation Béton. A paen to the postwar wonder material, which typically lasts 100 years before crumbling apart.
https://www.noemamag.com/concrete-built-the-modern-world-now-its-destroying-it/
This RAAC issue was just an excuse.to.legitimide the removal of big areas of social housing and replace it with privately built ‘affordable”(not) housing with a few social units in order to look good.
A good article but, for myself, I’ll stick with the simple sentiment of wishing the King all the very best for a speedy recovery.
I find thinking about the future in any capacity exhausting, anxiety-inducing and depressing right now. I’m on the retreat from any kind of big thinking or hope that politics can provide adequate answers to our predicament. My new life philosophy is basically “Biedermeier 2.0”, ie à withdrawal from the political to focus on the small, the domestic, the things over which you have control. Because everything else is just too much.
Instead of this Germanic mental breakdown, I prefer the Apostle Paul’s ‘formidable seasons’ (2.Timothy.iii.1-5).
Being seasons, they occur at intervals. In them the world’s old evil becomes more acute. This old evil will still, even to the end, whatever that will be, have its earthquakes and cyclones.
The waxing and waning of these seasons neither destroy the old world nor create a new. Even though in these seasons in degrees awfully abnormal, ‘iniquity shall abound’ and the ‘love of many shall wax cold’.
Note the character of the men that Paul describes that dominate in these times. And his advice to his colleague, Timothy, to whom he writes – from these men, turn away.
As for the poor King, none of us knows the hour or the day. We must be prepared, not for the Germanic warrior’s defeatist immolation, but to be called to render our account.
Which leads one to wonder whether Paul was a bona-fide philosopher, or just winging it.
News of the King’s illness has been greeted with “consternation”? Really? Where?
It was for me – I was thinking ‘ahh Christ not another funeral/coronation!’ Back Dimbleby, back!
Technically, the senile husk known as Joe Biden isn’t a Boomer as he was born in 1942. And Trump is only just a Boomer as he was born in 1946.
That’s correct. The height of ‘boomer births’ in the USA was 1957.
There are two cohorts – Boomers, born from 1945 through early 1955, and Jonesers, born from mid-1955 through 1963. Jonesers are very different from Boomers. Think Hippie vs Yuppie.
Obama is a Joneser, Biden is a Silent Generation, while Clinton, Bush II and Trump are all early Boomers.
Please don’t lump us Jonesers in with the Boomers. We, at least in the US, didn’t have it as easy as the Boomers did. We were more concerned with getting decent jobs than protesting different issues. Vietnam Nam and Nixon were over before we were out of our teens. We were the “bright young things” of the 80s and 90s, not the hippies of the 60s and 70s.
Thanks, from a 1959 Joneser. We are very different from the older Boomers, in some respects more like the older Gen Xers.
Quite so. I never could identify with the Boomers and their ceaseless cultural battles. We were too busy fending for ourselves and dealing with the next economic crisis.
Nice to meet another Joneser!
True, but why interrupt the useful narrative of blaming everything on a particular cohort in order to deflect responsibility from everybody else?
Blaming may feel good but it doesn’t butter any parsnips.
I did not realise it was that scientific. Perhaps you could quote the hour and the day. Howabout Jan 1st 1946. You are joking right?
A properly thought-provoking piece, thank you.
Good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. The Greatest Generation gave us good times, which have bred successively weaker and weaker generations. The current “hard times” pale by comparison to decades gone by. Housing wasn’t cheap, and higher eductions were unattainable by many. In retrospect, the Boomers look entitled, yet they fostered an exploding economy that renders EVERYONE a better standard of living. The weakest today cry and complain about inequities of outcome and hardships that they are unwilling to address with hard work and genuine contribution to society. Rather, they virtue signal and talk of structural oppression. They are, in reality, the Boomers biggest failure. The Weakest Generation.
I don’t know about anyone else, but as a post-war child, I detest being referred to as a ‘Boomer’. The term seems to have been invented to offend us. If you doubt this, please notice it’s never used in a positive way. I usually like Mary Harrington’s articles, but her constant repetition of ‘boomer’, complete with the usual condemnations, made me stop reading. We of the post World War Two generation are not all philosophically the same. Nor did we all have it easy becoming educated, or have a right to ‘cheap’ houses. I was 37, with 3 children, before I could afford a mortgage, and the degrees I eventually earned were acquired through night classes and part-time attendance at university. Mary’s dismissive ‘Gotterdammerung’ allusion is an insult that should not be tolerated. No more please.
Thanks. My thoughts precisely.
But ‘Boomerdämmerung’ is a very jolly invention. Makes me feel that my imminent departure from the stage will have a little more class.
Nobody will be able to attend your opera; we’ll all be snug inside our 15-minute cities.
I like you attended evening classes before becoming professionally qualified. In my case 8 years in a row. Is there much of that sort of thing going on these days?
Most has been stripped back to the bone or is prohibitively expensive (usually both)
Furthermore, I can remember when our family of seven had one bathroom! (I’m not joking.)
To be fair we had that and I’m at the high end of the millennial cohort. The plants in the back garden were well watered in our house
As I wrote above, I think the generation referred to as “Boomers” has, on the whole, been a pretty responsible and hard-working one. I think the criticisms of them often have more to do with the people making the criticisms rather than this generation itself.
Rolf Harris had a song called Six White Boomers. So offensive on so many levels!
They f*ck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
“They tuck you up,your Mum and Dad,and read you Peter Rabbit too….,” Adrian Mitchell.
Were there working class people in the Boomer generation?