Many a true word is spoken in jest

Greetings, and, as a one-time eminent Regius Professor of Etymology at Cambridge University may or may not have said, if you have been, I'm delighted to hear it.

I find it hard to believe that a week has passed without me stumbling across any aspect of the news, political or otherwise, that hasn't ired me enough to but a digital pen to digital paper. Remove yourself wholly from the thought that nothing has ired me: after all, I live in Her Britannic Majesty's Kingdom in 2008, and there is plenty that raises my blood pressure, but I've been busy and simply haven't had time to dust this blog down and commit any of my certainly committable thoughts to the interweb.

However, currently enjoying a cup of Earl Grey and very dunkable biscuit, I am listening to BBC Radio 4's repeat of 'Doonesburyland', a perfectly acceptable 30-minute documentary about the infamous cartoon strip of the same name which once-upon-a-time inhabited the filthy pages of that far from erstwhile publication, The Grauniad. It was not the general content of the programme which pricked up my ears, but a throw-away line referring to the people who were reading the cartoon in its early years,

"back when baby-boomers were still anti-establishment and hadn't grown fat and rich".

Oh, how true. How the poachers have turned gamekeepers under Bliar and McBroon's Britain. After all, there's nothing in this world so 'socialist' as a rich socialist, is there? How easy it is feel 'compassion' for the poor from your north- or west-London £500,000 town house and £70,000 of taxpayers' money falling into your bank account every year.

The past decade has increasingly created that which is becoming known as the IPOD Generation: Insecure, Pressured, Over-taxed and Debt-ridden. Encouraged by the government to go to university and indebt themselves for a degree which doesn't necessarily improve chances of employment (and nor should it: a degree has never been a career move: a degree should be studied to pursue an interest in a subject. If you want a career-led education, then go to college or an apprenticeship (another thing which New Labour has removed for a reason which no-one yet understands)), these people now emerge, post-degree, into a world with few graduate opportunities, discovering that the average wage outside of London and the public sector is substantially less than the £20k label bandied around (and in Yorkshire is less than £15k), with so much debt that they can't pay it off, and nor will they in any likelihood be able to buy a house for at least 15 years.

In the meantime, the baby-boom generation has sat and, whilst content to get fatter and fatter on the New-Labour milk fed to the middle classes, seeing £60k salaries topped-up by family tax credits, doing anything they can to keep hold of their new-found wealth. But that's not enough: why hold onto their money when they can rob the next generation too? We have seen an unprecedented shift over the past decade from houses as a social necessity to houses as an investment opportunity. Labour new that the old rental system was inefficient, but by opening it up with the new Landlord and Tenancy act as well as artificially underpricing inflation and keeping interest rates hugely below their natural level encouraged more of our fat middle-aged people to gorge themselves on the money supply. With housing inflation rising at more than 10%, why bother saving money for your pension when you can deny the next generation a house and provide for your own retirement through greed?

There are now in excess of 1.2 million buy-to-let properties in the UK. 1.2million homes that are now not available for purchase. I'm far from being a socialist, but housing is one area that could seriously change me. Can you imagine the effect on house prices if this huge swathe of housing was to come onto the market? Yes! It would fall, helping those who have no option to buy to buy, enabling people to stop renting and providing nothing for themselves but a pension for their forefathers. Surely the time has come for a heavy tax to be placed on second- and third-home owners, and indeed more, for those who 'invest' for a living.

Housing is a necessity, not an investment. For those of you with a portfolio of houses, I hope you're proud of the way you're screwing over the country for your own personal gain. Save money for your pension: don't live out your lengthy retirement waiting for me to pay your pension through my taxes because when everything was going good, you couldn't be bothered to save and provide for your own old age.

The only good that will come from all this is that the greedy middle-aged, middle-class fat cats will all die first. It's a shame that I may have to wait until I'm 60 for that to happen. Thirty years more renting: o joy!

The old days:

"back when baby-boomers were still anti-establishment and hadn't grown fat and rich."