The FT has been giving the 50+ a lot of attention. The last post was about Richard Tomkin’s article. The following day Christopher Caldwell had a leader article about the Demos report (see posting on 1st Sept). Unfortunately, access to article is restricted to subscribers to the FT news service. The following post is my letter to the FT in response to his article – unlikely to be published!
The main thrust of his article can be summarised with this quote.
‘Their (boomers) impressive record of change rests not on their brilliance but on their power. They have never innovated so much as imposed - through the simple mechanism of democracy’. Put another way – the boomers are no different to previous generations. It is their numbers and the economic times in which they lived that enabled them to be different. Well I don’t think anybody has been claiming that the DNA of people changed in the 1940s to create a totally different type of person!
Anyway it is an amusing destruction of the Demos report. I particularly like the cynical ending of the article.
‘For the analysts at Demos, the future of our politics hinges on what the boomers "decide" to do: will they become (a) "a selfish generation", (b) "civic defenders" or (c) "invisible elders"? In the light of past experience, it seems perfectly obvious what they will become. They will be (a) masquerading as (b) until they're relegated to (c).’
No comments:
Post a Comment