The War On The Old E-Book

John Sutherland

• Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

The war on the old has been declared. In the post-Brexit world, intergenerational conflict has become a visible phenomenon. There is an overwhelming sense of blame from younger generations: it was 'the wrinklies', the grey-haired plutocracy, who voted Leave; who are overburdening hospitals, shutting the youth out of the housing market and hoarding accumulated wealth. By 2020, we are told, one in five Britons will be pensioners, and living a longer retirement than ever before. 'A good thing', politicians add, through gritted teeth. The truth is that for them, 'the old' are a social, economic and political inconvenience. John Sutherland (age 78, and feeling keenly what he writes about) examines this intergenerational combat as a new kind of war in which institutional neglect and universal indifference to the old has reached aggressive, and routinely lethal, levels. This is a book which sets out to provoke but in the process tells some deep and inconvenient truths, revealing something British society would rather not think about.

Leseprobe

PROVOCATIONS

THE WAR ON THE OLD

JOHN SUTHERLAND

SERIES EDITOR:YASMIN ALIBHAI - BROWN

Youth is wasted on the Young.

– GEORGEBERNARDSHAW (DIED AGED 94)

We’re all living longer –

which is a good thing, of course.

– EVERY LYING POLITICIAN COURTING THE GREY VOTE

Perhaps the War to come will not be between the rich and the poor, but between the Young and the Old.

– NIALL FERGUSON

(AGE 52 – AND WHICH SIDE WILL HE FIGHT ON?)

Who wants to be called ‘mature’, like an old cheese? We all know that ‘mature’ means on the verge of incontinence, idiocy and peevish valetudinarianism.

– JEREMY PAXMAN (AGE 66, RETORTING TO THE MAGAZINE

MATURE TIMES, WHICH DARED PRINT A PIECE ABOUT HIM)

Contents

Title PageEpigraphPrefacePart I: Declining to DiePart II: I Must Be Cruel, Only to Be KindPart III: Final SolutionsA Personal AfterwordCopyright

Preface

THIS, AS THE title of the series (‘Provocations’) proclaims, is a polemic. At times, perhaps, a rant. In it I iterate and reiterate a main point: that there is a covert, but state-condoned, campaign against the nation’s old. By analogy with ‘ethnic cleansing’ it could be called ‘demographic cleansing’. I have called it ‘war’. Call it what you will, it’s happening; there are casualties – hundreds of thousands of them – and it’s wrong. Very wrong.

Where the treatment of the British elderly is concerned, we would really rather not know. Even when the facts are staring us in the eye. I open of 16 August 2016, for example (it is today’s issue as I’m writing). The first five pages of the paper are taken up by hosannas for apple-cheeked young Britons winning ‘gold’ for their country in far-off Rio. Hip hip.