The Baby Boomer Generation (22 page)

Older and Wiser

T
he New Year Millennium celebrations, headlined by events at the newly constructed Millennium Dome in Greenwich, South East London, were bigger and better than we had ever before seen. Speaking about the celebrations at the time, Prime Minister Tony Blair said that he observed a ‘real sense of confidence and optimism’. ‘You just wanted to bottle it and keep it,’ he said. London’s Thames-side festival of fireworks, light and music certainly inspired our optimism. We were entering the twenty-first century, turning a new page, and we were all hopeful of better times ahead.

As clocks struck noon on New Year’s Day 2000, church bells began to peal all over the country as more than 2,000 churches rang in the third millennium. Little did we know that those church bells were in fact heralding in an era that would forever be remembered as the time of the world’s worst ever terrorist mass-murders. The early years of the twenty-first century would also bear witness to the worst ever financial crisis the world had ever know, one that would lead to the British government having to fund a £550 billion banking rescue package in loans and guarantees to help stabilise the British banking system.

The first decade of the twenty-first century was given the name ‘noughties’. Once again, we found ourselves in a period that was packed with a series of life-changing events; there were many good things happening as well as some downright awful ones. Unemployment was hovering around the 1.5 million mark for the first half of the decade but then it began to rise and by the end of 2009 the number had risen to just under 2.5 million, the highest figure for fifteen years. The numbers fell back slightly in 2010 but then began to rise again and by the end of 2011 there were 2.67 million people unemployed in the UK, 8.4% of the workforce – a seventeen-year high. We also suffered with health problems, in both humans and animals; there was the ongoing issue with mad cow disease (BSE) and by August 2000 the British pig industry was in crisis with an outbreak of swine fever. In February 2001, we were hit with a foot-and-mouth crisis, which resulted in 10 million sheep and cattle being killed, and in 2009 we humans suffered an outbreak of swine flu (H1N1 influenza).

We had grown used to public unrest in Britain and we had plenty of that during the early years of the twenty-first century. We had all sorts of protesters on our streets, some peaceful but many violent; from the high fuel price protesters to the anti-capitalist protesters, government budget cut protesters to students demonstrating against student fees – we had them all. Sometimes it was hard to establish the core subject of a protest because the banners often carried a choice of messages and slogans. We also had to put up with general rioting, looting and arson, as was the case with the August 2011 riots that took place in several London boroughs and other towns and cities across England. The scenes of rioting were horrific, with burning buildings, frenzied looting and hundreds of thugs running amok. At least five deaths were reported as being linked to this outbreak of rioting and there were 206 people listed as injured, mostly police officers (186). Five police dogs also suffered injuries and there was an estimated £200 million worth of property damage. There were a number of other outbreaks of disorder and also some race riots from 2000 to 2012, mostly in the London area, West Midlands and the North of England. The level of violent disorder we saw on our streets during that period was awful but the acts of terrorism we witnessed during the early 2000s were shocking beyond words.

The world as we knew it changed forever on 11 September 2001 when nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four passenger planes over the United States and used them as weapons in their suicide mission of mass-killings and destruction. We watched replay after replay of these horrific events on television for days and weeks afterwards, and it was still hard to accept the reality of what had happened. We asked ourselves over and over again, how could anyone, let alone a whole group of people, be so wicked? It was like watching computer-generated images; we had never before witnessed such graphic scenes of wilful killing and destruction. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the passenger planes into the landmark Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, and another into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth passenger plane was targeting Washington but it crashed into a field near Shanksville in Pennsylvania after passengers tried to overcome the hijackers. In all, 2,977 innocent victims were killed, including all of the 246 plane passengers. The nineteen hijackers also died. These shocking events have come to be known as the September 11 attacks, and often referred to as 9/11. By now, here in the UK we were well used to high levels of security because of the frequent IRA terrorist attacks, but the CCTV security cameras that littered all of our main streets and in particular those that had been used to form a 6.5-mile ring of steel around the City of London since 1993, were all put there to protect us against car bombers. We were used to dealing with terrorists who would leave explosive devices in public places and then make their escape, people who wanted to get away without being identified. We were now dealing with a whole new security problem: fanatical suicide killers who didn’t care if they were identified. Following the September 11 attacks, security measures were strengthened around the world and none more so than here in the UK. It now seemed as though everywhere we went, whether out on the street or inside buildings, CCTV cameras monitored us. If we drove into the City of London our vehicle registration plates were automatically photographed, traced and tracked, and the police were even stopping people from taking photographs that might capture the image of a public building, even if only in the background. Our bags were routinely being searched when we entered public buildings and even business premises. We became very aware that ordinary, innocent people were now much more vulnerable to terrorist attacks than ever before. We became very suspicious of people, especially anyone carrying a holdall or something suitable to transport an explosive device. There was a great feeling of insecurity, especially in the towns and cities. Sadly, our worst fears were realised on 7 July 2005 (7/7) when there was a series of co-ordinated terrorist bombings on London’s public transport system during the morning rush hour. The terrorists had planned for all four bombs they were carrying to explode at exactly the same time. Three exploded within the same minute on three London Underground trains, and the fourth exploded one hour later on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square, London. Fifty-two innocent people were killed and more than 700 were injured in the attacks; the bombers also died. What made the attacks even more shocking was that the killers were home-grown Islamic terrorists who were all living in England at the time of the attacks, all harbouring extreme views and beliefs and willing to carry out indiscriminate mass-killings. Their victims were innocent civilians travelling on public transport; most were just on their way to work.

Two weeks later, at around midday on 21 July, there were a further four attempted bomb attacks in London, at Shepherd’s Bush, Warren Street and Oval stations on London’s Underground, and on a bus in Shoreditch. A fifth homemade bomb was later found in bushes in West London and it was suspected that there had been a fifth bomber who had dumped it there and fled. Fortunately, nobody was killed or injured because only the detonators of the bombs exploded and not the bombs that had been intended to kill a large number of innocent people.

If all of this killing, maiming and destruction wasn’t enough for us to endure, our country was involved in on-going conflicts overseas and we regularly witnessed scenes of soldiers arriving home in flag-draped coffins. There was the war in Afghanistan (2001 onwards), the Iraq War (2003–2009) and what is now called the Libyan Intervention (2011). So far, the early years of the twenty-first century have been filled with terrorism, war and general unrest. However, there was at least some good and long-awaited news on terrorism in July 2005, when we heard that the IRA had ordered an end to its armed campaign and two months later General John de Chastelain, head of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning that was set up as part of the Northern Ireland peace process, announced that the Provisional IRA had put their arsenal of weapons ‘beyond use’. That didn’t signal a complete end to Northern Ireland-related troubles because there were different factions of the IRA and also loyalist paramilitary groups that disagreed with the terms of the peace agreements, but it did bring to an end to most of the violence.

With all of these sorry events going on in our lives, you would think that we had little time to worry about anything else, but since 2007 our lives have in fact been dominated by the Global Financial Crisis and, more importantly, the UK financial crisis, which has greatly affected all of our lives, still is, and will do for years to come. This financial crisis took us into a prolonged period of austerity and it almost bankrupted our country. It stirred up tremendous resentment among the British public who saw the government’s bank rescue package as simply a bailout for rich bankers. It seemed as though innocent, hardworking, tax-paying people were bailing out rich bankers while at the same time paying the cost of the bailout in cutbacks and job losses. Some of the blameless casualties of the financial crisis would never be able to find work again. It was a terrible state of affairs and it would take years to solve. Just to crown all of the serious issues of the early years of the twenty-first century, here in Britain we actually had a couple of earthquakes, big enough to be felt across most of the country. The first of these was in Dudley in 2002, and the other one was in Lincolnshire in 2008. Each and every year we think that we get a lot of rain in the UK but in 2009 we got an awful lot in one day; well at least one place did – Seathwaite in the Lake District in Cumbria had a total rainfall of 314.4 mm in twenty-four hours, which is a UK record for the amount of rainfall in a single location in any twenty-four-hour period. Mind you, Seathwaite is considered to be the wettest inhabited place in England.

In each passing decade, we baby boomers have witnessed much change, mostly to our benefit but some less so. We look back fondly on things that have completely disappeared from our lives and we question some of the changing rules and regulations that have influenced the way we live our lives. In the early years of the twenty-first century we have seen and lost even more things from our past – some we miss greatly and others not at all – but they all stir up memories of bygone days; each event is part of a chapter in our lives. In 2000, the old Wembley Stadium closed down and the bulldozers moved in to demolish the famous twin towers that had stood proudly for seventy-seven years as millions of football supporters passed beneath. To add to our woes, in the last ever game to be played at the old Wembley Stadium, the England football team lost 1–0 to Germany and the England manager, Kevin Keegan, resigned after the game. Three weeks later, on 30 October 2000, the Football Association appointed the England team’s first ever foreign manager, the Swedish coach Sven-Goran Eriksson. In 2002, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, died at the age of 101. Her daughter, Princess Margaret, the Queen’s younger sister, also died that year at the age of 71. We had watched news coverage of them both throughout our entire lives and we knew a lot about them; they seemed so much a part of our lives right from childhood and now they were gone. In 2003, after gracing our skies for twenty-seven years with its stunning streamline looks, Concorde, the supersonic aircraft, made its final commercial flight. In that same year, we saw Britain’s first toll motorway open when the M6 Toll came into service in the West Midlands. And, who would have thought that old hell raiser Mick Jagger of Rolling Stones fame would ever be offered, accept and receive a knighthood for his services to music, and to be knighted by the Prince of Wales, Prince Charles, who is himself a vintage 1948 post-war baby boomer?

In 2004, the Football League of England and Wales was rebranded, causing great confusion to all but the most educated football fans. The old Division One became the Football League Championship, the old Division Two became League One, and the old Division Three became League Two. It seemed as though every team had suddenly moved up a league, but it was in name only. The following year, in November 2005, the football world said goodbye to George Best who died at the age of 59. Everyone knew who George Best was: an iconic sporting and playboy figure of the 1960s and 1970s; probably the first football superstar; always in the headlines. A couple of years down the line, in 2007, we saw the final edition of BBC’s
Grandstand
sports programme. It had been on our television screens and in our lives for forty-nine years when it ended. In that same year, the Labour Party politician Jacqui Smith made history when she became the first ever female home secretary. She made headlines again in 2009 when she stood down as home secretary following an investigation into the MPs’ expenses scandal when she was found to have broken the rules on second-home expenses. She subsequently lost her seat as Member of Parliament for Redditch. The misuse of expenses by MPs became a huge political scandal fuelled by information leaked to the Telegraph Group of newspapers; many MPs were found to be at fault, some apologised and/or resigned while others faced criminal charges and a few even went to prison. In 2009, we also saw the 35-year-old ITV Teletext service discontinued, and in 2011 we found we could no longer use our cheque guarantee cards; some shops and garages even stopped accepting cheques as a form of payment – a massive milestone. And, in July that year we waved goodbye to the
News of the World
newspaper following a phone-hacking scandal. The final edition, after having been in circulation for 168 years, was on Sunday 10 July 2011. On 26 February 2012, the first edition of
The Sun on Sunday
newspaper went on sale, replacing the defunct
News of the World
(both owned by the NI Group). We had long since grown used to seeing long-established shop names disappearing from the high streets and shopping malls and now we had even more names to add to our list: Littlewoods stores disappeared in 2005 after sixty-eight years on our high streets, many of them converted into Primark stores; and then there were the Woolworths stores that for so long were the mainstay of our high streets; we all shopped in our local Woolworths store and we came to rely on them for all sorts of bits and pieces. They were all closed down over Christmas 2008/09 when the firm went out of business. We all probably knew someone who worked in a Woolworths store at some time or another – 27,450 jobs were lost when they ceased trading. MFI also went out of business in 2008; many of us still have their furniture in our homes – all of that self-assembled occasional furniture and the white and magnolia bedroom suites. In 2005, for the first time, pubs in England and Wales were permitted to open for twenty-four hours, and in 2007 a ban was imposed on smoking in public places (2006 in Scotland). In 2005 we all got issued with new ‘chip and pin’ smart credit, debit and ATM cards, so we no longer had to sign credit card slips. In 2005, we saw the first gay weddings when civil partnerships became legal. And, that same year, more ground-breaking history was made when fox hunting and other types of hunting with dogs was made unlawful in England and Wales (2002 in Scotland). However, the most important and welcome change in recent years, as far as anyone who is fast approaching retirement age is concerned, relates to age and it directly affects all post-war baby boomers; there is now no longer a mandatory retirement age in the UK and employers cannot force workers to leave when they reach 65 unless it can be objectively justified. And, for the first time, age is now part of the UK equal rights rules. Employers must now give equal treatment in access to employment as well as private and public services regardless of someone’s age. We could have done with that rule when we were 45 and we were already considered to be over the hill.