Dave Rapson @D_Rapson - Twitter Profile

D_Rapson retweeted

The Onion

@TheOnion

almost 2 years ago

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens https://t.co/MB0pFvvUZh

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D_Rapson retweeted

James Boodt @JDBoodt

almost 2 years ago

I’m obviously biased but my colleagues at ITV Creative have nailed it with these 👌

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Dave Rapson @D_Rapson

about 2 years ago

National Service? No problem 🫡

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D_Rapson retweeted

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

@SAshworthHayes

about 2 years ago

After all the sacrifices of lockdown, the Conservative party believes the way to repay Britain’s young people is to ramp up taxes, enlist them into mandatory service in care homes, and use their hard-earned income to fund a "quadruple lock" for pensioners. The one common thread through British policy of the last 14 years has been destroying the future of the young to pay for the consumption of the old. Investment projects have been scrapped, immigration has run at unprecedented levels to staff care homes and hospitals on the cheap, housebuilding has been slowed to a crawl, ensuring in the process that the property assets of retirees continue to appreciate in value. The idea that Britain owes anything to its young people is dead in the water. The Conservatives are more or less explicitly rebranding as the Pensioners Party, but Labour won’t be that far behind; the party was making the most of its commitment to the triple lock just yesterday. Neither party is going to change course. Britain is an increasingly old country. People living longer is obviously a good thing. The problem is that, combined with decades of low birth rates, these improved life expectancies have flipped the population pyramid on its head. The proportion of the population aged over 65 has crept up from 15 per cent in 2000 to 19 per cent in 2022, and is set to reach nearly 30 per cent by 2070. Between turnout, eligibility, and generational size, the over 55s now form a majority of the voting public. Britain is less a democracy than a Boomerocracy. The results are clear wherever you look. People now in their 30s are the first generation to earn less than those born ten years before them since the 1930s. Record numbers of young people live with their parents, trapped by a dysfunctional housing market and unstable employment. Millennials spend a far higher proportion of their income on housing costs than the Boomers did at their age, with spiralling rental costs largely to blame. The typical family headed by a thirty year old today would take 19 years to save a deposit for a home. In the 1980s, it would have taken three years. Young people are finding things previous generations took for granted to be effectively out of reach. Even if a party did want to do something about this, it would struggle to win votes for the size of change that’s needed. The record tax burden in 2027/28 could easily be passed in the 2030s, and the 2040s too. The spending pressures are there to do it; the cost of the state pension and old age benefits is set to rise to nearly 10 per cent of GDP by 2070, while health and social care budgets will take up nearly 18 per cent of output. Growing our way out would be very difficult. Older countries tend to invest less in public assets, build less, and grow less (why put off consumption or tolerate disruption for a project you’ll never see?). And if we try to resolve that with higher immigration, it puts more pressure on house prices. It feels increasingly like the easiest way out is emigration.

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