The Wardman Wire

An “interesting” letter from George Lewkowicz in the Guardian on September 24th, suggested that the proposal by the CBI to raise the maximum tuition fees for University courses somehow represent the shafting of a generation. Actually the CBI report shows that the UK is more generous than most countries, but we’ll come to that.

How is it that your generation feels it can continue to shaft my generation (CBI advises raising university fees to £5,000 a year to tackle funding crisis, September 21)? I am 23, and have many friends who are unemployed due to an economic crisis caused by your generation. We can’t afford houses as your generation preferred anything rather than burst the bubble. We will have no oil, and will face a climate crisis that your generation has continually refused to fix. And now your generation is proposing raising university tuition fees due to a funding crisis which you caused.

Some lessons of history to learn here, George, and you need to engage with several “your generations”, starting with the generation in the 1950s who created a pay as you go national pension scheme based on the concept of “our children will pay”. For example, *my* generation – born in the 1960s – has had to pay for that and for the liquidation of value of our own pension savings over the last decade, unless we are working in the public sector.

Remember – or perhaps you could read up on it – Gordon Brown’s 1997 mugging of private pension schemes within days of coming to power? That has cost a typical UK worker 100,000 ukp.

Consider also the reduction of the value of private pension pots of 29% between October 2007 and April 2009 within a couple of years, while Mr Brown and his government have failed several times to do the necessary reforms in public sector pensions because they are caught like a rabbit in the headlights of the Trades Unions who pay for their party. We have to pay for that too: a good proportion of people are going to have to lengthen their working lives by 5-10 years to pay for this, while public sector employees will continue to be protected by Mr Brown’s political “lack of courage” until after he has to take responsibility for his actions.

You aren’t the only ones who are suffering.