Thanks to covid more people have stopped trusting the government and its propaganda media than ever before. Johnson’s latest announcement about covid passports should and will be taken with a huge pinch of salt. We know we can’t bank on it. We know it’ll change when it suits the SAGEs. The Biden government for example has now ‘allowed’ industry to demand jab passports, so why wouldn’t Johnson also try to wash his hands in innocence, letting industry, hospitality, shops and superstores do his dirty work.

The one result we can already predict is that our society will become even more divided. This ugly split was already visible when it was about face muzzles. The division between jabbed and non-jabbed will be worse. Splitting society is a well-known, ancient instrument used by those in power to keep the plebs from banding together and, God forbid, topple them. 

But that is for the coming weeks and months. There’s one other instrument of division which has been imposed on us. It’s the rise in NI contributions. Looking at our MSM this was just a storm in a teacup. It has vanished from their front pages, replaced by the ‘feel-good’ story of a British teenager winning the US Open – that’s tennis, you ignorant lot! – because what could possibly be better to entertain us and make us forget the harsh reality. 

One piece of that reality landed on people’s doormats at the end of last week, announcing a rise in household energy costs. I don’t know if only my providers are trying to get me to install their ‘smart meter’ by promising a reduction in what they take off me, or if other providers across the country are also trying to do this. ‘Tis a proper carrot-stick coercion.

Now add Johnson’s threat, to keep WFH, mandatory masks and vaccine passports in reserve should hospital admissions rise (link). Incidentally, that’s not a lockdown, oh no it ain’t – but these measures will be deployed: since when in the 73 years of NHS have hospital admissions not risen in late autumn and winter?

Will the WFHers then demand a rise in salaries and stipends to make up for the higher energy bills? Pensioners will have to shell out because the state pension isn’t rising in step with those wage rise. The ‘triple lock’ has been broken because “we” cannot afford it. I’m sure we’ll hear cries of ‘unfair’ from the never-satisfied because pensioners receive that winter fuel allowance of £200. 

And thus we come to the ‘never-satisfied’ who have been waging the ‘generational war’, who are trying to create a fundamental split in our society, ever since the 2011 Dilnot Report in 2011 – thank you, ‘call-me-Dave’, not! The rise in NI contributions is their latest weapon. There was a long ‘analysis’ in yesterday’s Sunday Times (link, paywalled) – a plug for the author’s book on ‘Generations’. The author, Professor Bobby Duffy, is director of the Policy Institute at Kings’s College London. Here’s the quote which sets the tone:

“It is a reality that recent generations of young people have had an incredibly tough time economically. There is absolutely no doubt that using national insurance as the means to raise the social care levy hits working-age people hardest. And yet younger people are not going to war with Granny. Why is this?” (link, paywalled)

Indeed – why? Do they perhaps see that their granny and gramps aren’t really swanning around on expensive cruises while they themselves work hard for ‘slave wages’? Perhaps they’ve seen the way gramps and gran have been treated in those care homes during the lockdown months? Perhaps some of them have even, sadly, inherited what remained of the alleged money bags granny and gramps were allegedly sitting on, described in the MSM to fuel intergenerational discontent?

The professor in The Times article is stoking those intergenerational fires by presenting some selected numbers:

“As analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows, only about 2 per cent of the new overall tax rise will come from pensioners, with about two thirds coming from families aged under 50. This is by design: pensioners get most of their income from private or state pensions, to which the new levy will not be applied.” (link, paywalled)

Funny how all who cry ‘it’s unfair’ never mention that the personal allowance of £12,570 applies to everybody, not just pensioners. But let’s disregard that – look at this calculation:

“As the Resolution Foundation points out, this means a typical 25-year-old will pay an extra £12,600 over their working life, while someone relying on pension income will pay nothing.” (link, paywalled)

Omigawd – £12,600 spread over a working life – you do the maths to see how huge that is! Don’t forget to keep in mind that this ‘typical 25-year-old’ might cheerfully blow that amount on a ‘proper wedding’, in one go. There’s also this:

“We do need to be careful not to caricature adult social care as only benefiting the old: only about 50 per cent of social-care spending in England goes on those above retirement age. But the point remains that just about none of the additional tax will be paid by them.” (link, paywalled)

So it’s not really about ‘young people’ having to pay for granny and gramps, is it? Oh, and all who are unemployed for one reason or another don’t pay NI either. No, the actual reason for the incessant howls of ‘in’t fair!’ is this: someone will not have to pay the taxes they do.

It is obvious to me that this ‘generational war’ is a favourite straw man, curated and pampered in lefty academic circles, Grauniad readers all, and is only about their beloved aim of redistributing wealth and income. It’s about fuelling greed and envy of the never satisfied who’ve been busily ‘fighting’ against ‘fat cat bosses’ – but not when it’s about the huge salaries the NHS bosses receive, not when it’s about the obscene ‘incomes’ footballers and ‘celebs’ receive, not when it’s about BBC ‘bosses’ getting eye-watering stipends, and above all not when it’s about the gold-plated pensions paid out for Whitehall Mandarins and indeed our beloved representatives. 

Perhaps the ‘younger people’ who aren’t ‘waging war against granny’, to the astonishment of ‘progressive’ Common Purpose academics, know a thing or two about actual fairness. Perhaps this isn’t a ‘generation war’ so much but a war of those who have – for example the Westminster denizens – against those who pay for them: us peasants, old and young. 

So remember: anything coming from that lot ain’t wot it sez on the tin. That applies to Johnson’s latest covid announcement as much as it applies to the ‘generational war’, stoked by those who aim to tell us how and what we must think. The ancient Romans knew this method already and used it. It’s called: divide and rule, dear boys and girls, ‘divide et impera’. See that you remember this for future use!

 

KBO!

 

 

Photo by jasonlumpkin

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