Baby Boomers

It was a different world when we were born and bigotry was part of the culture.  Homosexuality was illegal and women were supposed to give up working once they started a family.  These attitudes though unpalatable today did not pose the same threats that we face now.

The two generations which preceded us boomers went through the war years and were largely unappreciated by us at the time.  We were spoilt and did not care to consider why they thought the way they did.  The flower power music and sexual freedoms of our youth were often self indulgent and then gave way to greed for power and possessions.  Thus we voted for governments (both Labour, Coalition and Conservative) who failed to plan properly for future generations, similar to the way that the post war administration set up the NHS.

The modern world has been unprepared for the current pandemic.  Governments had been warned.  As a microbiologist, who spent forty years in government service, I attended national and international meetings where the general consensus was that a pandemic similar to the flu outbreak of 1918 was on its way.  These views were largely ignored and other warnings expressed about climate change simply pandered to.

Britain has lost its soul to global corporations.  Those that follow us are the smart phone and play station generation that are already being recruited to pilot drones to drop bombs on poor people thousands of miles from where they are based.  But on the bright side the Johnson Government is having to introduce measures far more socialist than anything proposed by Jeremy Corbyn.  When the current pandemic passes our world will never be the same again.

Keith Jahans