The Baby Boomer Generation (20 page)

Meanwhile, back in the high streets, no mercy was being shown towards the ever-reducing number of small traditional retailers that were trying to survive in the dying town centres all over the country. The exorbitant business rates and waste disposal charges continued to rise each year. Every month, thousands of small retail shops were giving up and closing their doors for the last time. Many of these were long-established family businesses that had been part of a town's lifeblood for generations, and they were being forced out of business because of modern retailing with superstores and shopping malls stocking everything under one roof. The downfall of the high street was not the fault of online shopping; competition from that facility was yet to come. Indeed, online shopping would add to the problems of retailing in years to come but shopping over the Internet didn't start in the UK until the mid-1990s and even then it was very limited. It didn't really get going here until the late 1990s when the likes of Amazon began to make it easy and secure for us to do credit card transactions online. In the meantime, it was the diversification and growth of the large retailing groups that was sucking the life out of the high street as we once knew it. The final straw for high street trading came when Sunday trading was legalised in England and Wales in 1994. Many of the large superstore retailers in England and Wales had been opening illegally on Sundays, off and on, since the mid-1980s because the fines were much lower than their Sunday profits, but now it was legal and they could go all out to make Sunday the second most popular shopping day of the week after Saturday. Scotland was unaffected by the change because they never had any general legislation regarding Sunday trading. Many of our large centres began to resemble war zones with row upon row of boarded-up shops only broken by the occasional bank, building society, betting shop, take-away food shop and a growing number of charity shops. The number of real retailers that were actually selling goods was becoming too few to attract enough shoppers to keep the traditional high street alive. We certainly bought into the comfort and convenience of shopping malls and superstores and there was no stopping the trend, but at the same time we needed to find a new use for our once-busy high streets and market squares to stop them turning into ghost towns and becoming no-go areas for all but the new-style of hooded youths (hoodies) and other sinister layabouts. Their menacing presence only added to the run-down appearance of these places and made us feel unsafe to go there anymore. Sadly, nobody was paying any attention to the problem and so our once-cherished town centres continued to deteriorate with each passing year.

The breakdown in law and order on the streets of Britain, particularly with rebellious young people and problem families causing trouble and destroying property, led to the introduction of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) in 1998. They were effectively an official slap on the wrist for persistent offenders but they became a must-have badge of honour for the people they were supposed to bring to heel. Controlling the activities of criminals was to get even more difficult in years to come, after the Human Rights Act received Royal Assent in 1998 (came into force in 2000), when every criminal and preacher of hatred would be able to use the act to seek protection from the law for one fanciful reason or another.

We had grown accustomed to accelerating house prices in the 1980s and seen big rises in property values. Many homeowners believed this was an on-going trend and that their money was safely invested in their property, which was proving to be a fantastic investment. On the strength of this, many had funded their spending by borrowing money against the value of their homes. Some took advantage of the situation, selling their homes for profit and taking out larger mortgages to buy more expensive properties before the prices of those properties increased beyond their reach. However, towards the end of the 1980s it all started to go wrong; mortgage interest rates had risen from 9% in 1988 to an exorbitant 14%, and they stayed at that level until late 1992. Just to rub salt in the festering wound, house prices were now falling at an alarming rate. In the space of just a few months, average house prices had fallen by 5% to £59,587 (March 1990). Thereafter, they continued to fall steadily month by month and they did not begin to recover until the mid-1990s, by which time they had reached a low of £50,930 at 1995 prices. In a little under six years the average price of a house in the UK fell by £11,852 at 1995 values and during that period many house owners found themselves in negative equity, having bought their property when prices were much higher.

Along with every other unfortunate homeowner in the UK, we baby boomers were not only suffering the headache of living in negative equity properties that were still falling in value, but we also had to find increasing amounts of money each month to pay the sky-high mortgage interest rates. The overall level of consumer debt was rising but our wage packets were only so big and many homeowners found they could not afford the mortgage repayments; many of those who could were often living off the back of credit cards. This, together with the 1989–90 sharp rises in inflation, led to a dramatic rise in mortgage arrears, which resulted in a big increase in property repossessions in the early 1990s. Some homeowners who could no longer afford to meet their monthly mortgage payments and were also unable to realise the loan amount through the sale of their property were actually going into their building society lender branches and handing over their house keys to the counter staff. Homeowners in expensive areas of the country such as London and the South East found they were laden with huge mortgage debts on properties that were worth tens (and in some cases hundreds) of thousands of pounds less than they paid for them. Ordinary working-class families were suffering the burden of having significant negative equity in their family homes. It was not uncommon for such families to have a £120,000 mortgage on a house that was worth less than £100,000. In spring 1990, the country was in recession and inflation had reached 9.4%, the highest level for eight years. Everyone was feeling the pinch and some a great deal more than others. A lot of families became homeless and turned to local authorities and charities to provide them with temporary accommodation. Those were desperate times for anyone trying to pay off any kind of debt in the days of exceptionally high interest rates. Although the government did encourage the moneylenders to be sympathetic to loan defaulters during those difficult times, sympathy was not a typical banker's trait and the bailiffs were never short of work. People living in rented accommodation did not avoid the pain either; they too suffered the effects of the increasing costs of living. Many had been left saddled with debts they incurred when unemployment was at its peak in the mid-1980s. Although unemployment levels had been falling during the previous three years, the numbers were now rising again, and they were rising rapidly. By December 1991, unemployment was above 2.5 million for the first time since early 1988. Evictions due to mortgage and rent arrears were on the increase as we moved through the 1990s, and there was more bad news to come; in his 1993 budget, Chancellor Norman Lamont announced plans to introduce a Value Added Tax (VAT) on domestic electric and gas bills at a rate of 8% for 1994 and 17.5% for 1995 and thereafter. Fortunately, by spring 1993 the country was coming out the three-year recession and inflation was back under control, down to a twenty-nine-year low of 1.3% and then floating between 1.5% and 3% for the rest of the 1990s. As for property prices, they continued to fall until 1995 when the market began to settle, and from 1996 house prices were once more on the rise and we started to experience steady growth again. Nevertheless, the damage had been done, and many families had been badly stung by their experiences in house buying.

The 1990s was the decade in which we became much more aware of the term ‘political correctness' (PC), an expression that had been used in its modern form since the 1970s but only among a select few political activists. The term was often used in sarcasm to describe people or organisations that might say or do something just to appear to be doing the right and acceptable thing, even if what they said didn't really represent their true views. Someone who said something just to appease the sensibilities of others might be accused of trying to be ‘politically correct'. Conversely, feminists used the term in the 1970s and 1980s when dealing with topics like male chauvinism and sexism. The phrase entered everyday language in the mid-1980s when a number of wacky headline-grabbing stories emerged, many of which were fabricated. It was in 1986 that one of the first of these made up PC stories hit the headlines. A newspaper article claimed that an independent parent-run nursery school in Hackney in London had tried to change the words of the nursery rhyme ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep' to ‘Baa Baa White Sheep' because the original wording was racist. In the end they were said to have banned the nursery rhyme altogether. The story was later discredited and found to be untrue. It was accepted that although someone at the nursery had suggested the original wording might be considered racist, there was never a ban. However, the story was given credence to run because the then leader of the Hackney Council issued a statement supporting the actions of the nursery school in banning the offending rhyme. The story became national news because what was regarded as a ‘loony Left-wing' council had impetuously jumped on the bandwagon and given the story unwarranted credibility. The political correctness epidemic had begun and the term was increasingly used during the late 1980s, gaining momentum in the 1990s. The political correctness doctrine was mainly linked to ‘loony Left-wing' councils and other self-appointed airy-fairy, libertarian, political groups, who thought they were superior beings whose duty it was to impose their beliefs on the rest of society and be our hand-wringing moral guardians. Many regarded them as a bunch of yoghurt-knitting do-gooders who, among other things, through their campaigning managed to get the rights of criminals placed above those of their victims. One example of perceived politically correct action being taken against popular opinion was when the Labour-controlled Birmingham City Council renamed Christmas 1998 festivities as ‘Winterval'. Although originally intended as a marketing strategy of inclusion, the media inevitably saw it differently. Since the 1990s, the word Christmas has been widely erased from use at Christmastime by many of our local councils in the name of political correctness, and it has been replaced by words and phrases such as wintertime, winter or festival lights and the festive period. We have witnessed an increasing trend for local councils to change traditional Christmas street decorations to new-style displays that symbolise wintertime rather than Christmastime, with lights in the shape of snowflakes and such like. Other examples of how political correctness has gone mad over the years include the jobcentre in Thetford, Norfolk that refused to accept a job advert for a ‘reliable and hardworking' applicant because it could be seen as offensive to unreliable and lazy people. There was also the case of Flintshire County Council renaming the classic English pudding, known by all as spotted dick, to ‘Spotted Richard' to avoid causing offence. In their wisdom, the BBC did away with comic cartoon rogue Dennis the Menace's bombs, catapult, pea shooter and water pistol as part of a politically correct makeover of Dennis prior to commissioning a new television series.

In the name of equality, the PC brigade set out to make everything gender neutral: a manhole became a maintenance hole; man-made became synthetic; hospital ward sisters became ward managers and a dustman became a waste disposal operative. There were countless numbers of PC name changes; dustman, fireman, fisherman, milkman, policeman, postman, headmaster and headmistress, they were all given new, non-gender-specific titles. Anything that could be construed as being racist was removed; a blackboard became a chalkboard and black coffee was re-described as coffee without milk. While we baby boomers were finding the tidal wave of change hard to contend with, young children were growing up within an already established politically correct system and they were accepting these things as normal, just as they were accepting sport in schools without the competitive element of winners and losers as being normal, and not being allowed to play conkers in case they hurt themselves was also normal for them. We were protecting our children to the
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th degree; for example, in nursery schools, ‘hide and seek' was renamed ‘find who's lost'. We were even beginning to treat children like adults, describing them as young people rather than kids or children. For as many stories of ‘political correctness gone mad' that are just urban myths, there are as many again that are factual.

John Major's Conservative government didn't do enough to quell all of the madcap political correctness, and Tony Blair's Labour government of the late 1990s was thought to have added to the problem by excessively kowtowing to minority sensitivities. They seemed to be conforming to politically correct views and even encouraging some of the daft ideas associated with the practice of political correctness. We became too precious, obsessed with using the right words, not to upset anyone, at whatever cost. We were losing the right to speak our minds; political correctness was eroding the freedom of speech that our country had always boasted of, something we baby boomers had grown up with and were used to exercising to its fullest extent. We were expected to change the way we expressed our thoughts and to stop using many of the words and phrases we had used in everyday speech all of our lives. Political correctness seemed to provide a licence for someone to be labelled extreme or prejudice if they said or did something that someone somewhere might consider to be ‘politically incorrect'.

Political correctness went hand in glove with the exaggerated use of health and safety rules. Their combined forces seemed intent on interfering with and spoiling our usual way of life. Bureaucrats were becoming obsessed with health and safety regulations, at home and in schools, out on the streets and at work. Especially at work, where it seemed at times that government officials were actually trying to stop businesses from functioning altogether because of the over-the-top way they administered their duties and applied the rules to every area of people's wellbeing. In the 1990s, the whole thing was becoming ridiculous; everything was being made into a health and safety issue. People were frightened to move in case they contravened health and safety regulations. Businesses were being forced to spend vast sums of money to facilitate health and safety requirements in every aspect of the workplace, including buildings, equipment, clothing, record keeping and working practices. Unreasonable health and safety rules were costing jobs. Anything that could possibly cause someone harm was treated as a health and safety issue, even if it wasn't officially the case. Schools were banning long-established playground games for fear that a child might get hurt. The game of British Bulldog was widely banned, as was the playing of conkers without protective masks and gloves. Children were no longer allowed to get hurt. They were increasingly being mollycoddled, growing up without any of the usual cuts and grazes and black eyes that have always been associated with one's childhood. Health and safety was definitely a prime example of bureaucracy gone mad: a sort of job-creation scheme for bureaucrats, which was designed to drive us all crazy and stop us from functioning. This was a typical example of what was coming to be known as the ‘nanny state' of Britain. The sad thing is that it was never reigned in and by the end of the 1990s, it was looking unstoppable.