The war on pensioners

Who controls the media in Britain? Depending on your political outlook, you might answer: the Conservatives, the liberal-left chattering classes, Rupert Murdoch or the BBC. But if the coverage of the elderly is anything to go by, then we can perhaps agree on one thing: the headlines are decided by a cohort of 25- to 45-year-olds who believe that other people’s parents and grandparents — a.k.a. Britain’s pensioners — have stolen their future, dashed their dreams and nabbed all the plush property.

How else to account for a headline such as ‘No pay rise? Blame the baby-boomers’ gilded pension pots’ and a plethora of articles maintaining that pensioners have ‘never had it so good’, at the expense of the young, who will be ‘boomeranging’ back to their childhood beds, too poor to buy a home until they are in their own straitened dotage. The source for one recent wave of generational alarmism was a report published by the Resolution Foundation, a generally laudable outfit which focuses on low incomes.

The Resolution Foundation has a new boss: David Willetts, a former Tory minister and a pioneer of generational jihad. Five years ago he wrote the set text on the subject, The Pinch, subtitled ‘How the baby-boomers took their children’s future — and why they should give it back’. Thankfully, he made little headway selling this argument to the Prime Minister and Chancellor, but his thesis suits his new thinktank, which has not been averse to a little granny-bashing.

But this was as nothing compared to the headlines generated by a recent report from that fount of economic truth, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and a lecture by its director, Paul Johnson. Here is a taste: ‘Pensioners earning more than the average worker’ (Independent); ‘Why pensioners are probably earning more than you are’ (City AM); ‘Pensioners have more cash than those in work’ (Times).