I still remember some of my classical studies, especially about Philip II of Macedon and his more famous son, Alexander the Great. Philip was no slouch and had conquered a fair portion of the ancient world by the time he was assassinated.
It was Philip who came up with the maxim, ‘divide et impera’ – ‘divide and conquer’ – which was later adopted by the likes of Julius Caesar, Napoleon, the British Empire and today, this morally bankrupt Tory government.
Successive Tory prime ministers, and there have been a few, have been happy to utilise division by scapegoating a section of society if it will benefit them politically. Groups singled out for criticism have included the unemployed, the disabled, immigrants and now the young.
Having lost the youth vote, they are now proposing a form of mandatory national service, with Home Secretary James Cleverly accusing the young of “living in their own bubble whether that be a digital or social bubble”.
I can but assume Cleverly hasn’t seen a famous interview with a young Rishi Sunak who admitted to existing in just such a social bubble in his youth, saying: “I have friends who are aristocrats, I have friends who are upper class, I have friends who are working class, oh, well, maybe not working class.”
Not content with imposing national service, the government have also pledged to scrap thousands of university courses they deem a rip-off and move young people into apprenticeships instead.
University and College Union general secretary, Jo Grady, responded by saying: “Higher education provides a ladder of opportunity to working-class communities, so it is no wonder the Conservative party continues to attack it.”
No doubt subjects such as classical studies will be in the Tory sights - managing to scrap it would stop annoying working class boys like me knowing the origin of terms such as ‘divide and conquer’ in the first place.
Leaving the Tories to one side - something I suspect the British electorate are soon to do - there now exists a generational schism like never before.
As someone who recently qualified for a free bus pass, I can speak as part of the lucky older generation. I not only had a free university education, but I was also given a ‘grant’ of money to cover my living expenses.
Those beginning a university course today face incurring a debt which will take decades to repay. When I injured my spine in my late teens, a fully staffed and resourced NHS was there to treat me. If a young man today was unlucky enough to incur a similar injury, they would require private health insurance to receive a similar level of care.
Leaving the Tories to one side - something I suspect the British electorate are soon to do - there now exists a generational schism like never before
Even though I began working on a low wage, I was still able to save enough to get a mortgage and buy a home. The young today may never be able to afford their own home, facing a lifetime in rented accommodation. We’ve even denied them such simple pleasures as swimming in our seas and rivers, now polluted with effluent.
But all this is nothing in comparison to the legacy my generation leave in the shape of global warming. We can’t claim ignorance of its reality as, in 1896, a paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius predicted that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could alter the surface temperature of the earth through the greenhouse effect. The physical manifestation of that reality came in 1985 when Jonathan Shanklin, then a junior researcher at the British Antarctic Survey, discovered a hole in the ozone layer which protects us from solar radiation.
Despite this, many of my generation continue to reject the findings of thousands of scientists and deny global warming, even as we watch the seas rise and forests burn. And rather than stepping up and taking responsibility for the environment, we’ve instead preferred to drive ever bigger cars and take far away holidays, allowing young people such as Greta Thunberg to do the heavy-lifting to save our planet.
So instead of attacking and villainising the young, we ‘elderly’ should be apologising to them for the state of the world we’ve bequeathed them. From their education and their health care to their standard of living, they will be the first generation to have less than their parents.
While the good book says, “suffer the little children”, it was my generation of baby boomers who inflicted that suffering on Generation X, the Millennial Generation and Generation Z, as the world they inherit will be much depleted from the one I was born into in 1961.
