The conclusion is it was a gentle generational shift commencing during the 80's. Restoring the natural order of keeping the riff raff at arms length wasn't easy. It's been a challenge. The battle raged across many industries as legal ducks were put in a row. Fixing the patriotic flags to the mast and managing them into the ground, from wars via Olympics to national grieving. The marketing was magnificent. Devastating the manufacturing industry and replacing it with service jobs from finance, fashion to marketing and tourism. Selling everything from the fabric of the nation, the bricks and mortar of our national wealth to information superhighway dreams. We had the unlimited oil revenues. We were a major player.
We talked about children having their own PC at school and how advanced those children would be. By the year 2000 every kid would have an iPad and jotters would, well, get their jotters. Teachers, well they'd never had it so good.
Silicon Glen was about to be nationalised to provide universal free laptops to the nations politicians, hospitals, schools, even households.
We were sold a dummy and we took it. Misdirected by the politicians and the trusted TV screens. Instead of free fibre we all pay service fees (aka taxes) for WiFi, for phones and still pay an additional income taxes to fix the pot holes left by these service providers. The market allows you to shop around the marketing people make sure we don't try too hard. They're highly skilled having honed those skills selling double glazing or timeshare in the 80' & 90's.
They are the epitome of the ladder up generation of grifters.
Even now I find it stupendous that political commentators don't understand how living standards can crumble while economic growth could double.
We don't all rise with the tsunami of economic growth. Some of us drown quicker.
In the case of communication (phones / WiFi) it is easy to see the GDP growth of the service sectors and how it impacts on the poorest.
Wages at the lower end are not keeping pace with property costs. With a rising number of our nation's people sliding further into poverty what the poorest spend their money on needs our focus.
If it is rent then how far away from Hoover ville are we.
I wrote over 10 years ago about property increasingly becoming an investment class that parents were using to both get the leg up for the children while inadvertently pulling the ladder up too. It really accelerated during the 90's and the pedal went to the metal this millennium. All of it fuelled by the Thatcher/Blair bung to a chosen few. Some put the figure at 10% and I'd say yeah possibly more but 5 million well chosen people easily earn you a landslide. 1 million was probably enough for Starmer.
We talk (occasionally build) affordable housing but how can it ever be without radical intervention. That ship has sailed. Is the only saviour housing associations. Surely there has to be a solution for those working in housing associations too. This is where my brain goes off on one. How can my treatment be delivered by qualified radiographers on £24000, when 4 times their wages buys nothing but a camper van. Why can a qualified member of the NHS not receive a government backed 0.00% loan to buy a house. Just like the banks who tied their staff with low cost mortgages. Come on government, it's not inflationary to improve your staff's lot. Save the NHS, give them houses.q
The macro is they can't afford to buy unless they get a huge subsidy, rise or live a longer way from work and then we are back into greenhouse gases.
When the Olympics legacy was being discussed I remember listening to the voices of Josephine and Tommy C. They both talked about the Olympic legacy in terms of a modern mini city.
When you walk around Stratford and that area of East London you can see aspects of what succeeded and where the ambition was thwarted or just lacking. From the new parliament, a working hub for local and national government to the provision of hospitals, housing and education.
The whole area could have become a technological Mecca. Even now it represents an opportunity to reset our climate chaos focus.
Digression is my thought process. As I lose focus I calm down. Ah, that was cathartic.
My next post will be on an investment trust I want to create for those who will likely find it difficult to get on the property ladder. Sliding ladder on way down investment trust-SLOWDIT.
