Iain McWhirter

Young Scotland to Power!

Politcal columnist tuned YouScotland.com guest blogger Iain McWhirter wonders when young people are going to start the fightback.

What We Really Need is a Scottish Younger Citizens Unity Party....Grey power is on the march in the Scottish election, with the Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party fielding a range of candidates across Scotland like former Glasgow provost Pat Lally.   Good on them,  you might say - pensioners have had a raw deal in the past, the state pension is a disgrace, and too many are living in poverty.But hang about. A lot of them aren't actually living in poverty.  Quite the reverse:  80% of the wealth in this country is now held by people over t he  age of 50. 

The present generation of older people is the richest in history, largely because they have enjoyed a quarter of a century of house price increases, index linked occupational pensions and measures like free personal care, free travel, free prescriptions and a whole range of tax breaks.  The truth is that the over fifties have never had it so good.

Contrast the situation facing younger people today. The under thirties have the burden of five figure student debt, unlike their parents who had free higher education.  They face the near impossibility of buying a house because wealthy older people, with no children, are sitting tight in their investments to take advantage of untaxed capital gains.   What's worse, older people have bought up all the flats as buy-to-let investments to boost their pension portfolios, meaning that prices and rents keep rising.

The average age of a first time buyer in Scotland is now 37.  It's hardly surprisng that six out of ten young men in Britain still stay in the family home. The result is a generation of "kidults" - young adults who are still tied to their parents long after they should be living independent lives and starting families of their own. Forty percent of women are single at the age of 35. No wonder Scotland has a population problem.

We are supposed to be a youth-obsessed ageist society, so  how has this happened?  Well to some extent it's a numbers game.  The baby boom generation, of people born after the Second World War, has moved through life dominating every era it touches - from the "my generation" Sixties to the "greed is good" Eighties and on to the "have-it-all"  Noughties.  There are just so many of them, that people under the age of thirty have fallen below the political radar.Moreover, people over the age of fifty are twice as likely to vote in elections. 

That's why some politicians are so eager to scrap council tax, which hits wealthy older people living in big houses and places the burden on the incomes of young families starting out on the housing ladder.  The  SNP and the Liberal Democrats say that it is unfair that pensioners living in large houses should have to pay large property taxes.  But there is one solution:  they could sell their houses to families who need the space, and downsize.

One reason property is so expensive is that older people have a monopoly of it and they won't let go. Take Bearsden in Glasgow.  This used to be a prime family suburb, somewhere to raise children in safety and space.  Now it is almost exclusively the preserve of older people living in large houses they don't need. There is no incentive for them to vacate because their houses are such good earners, increasing in value by far more each year than the average wage.  Property is the one form of asset wealth that is exempt from wealth taxes. Now the parties are wanting to make it even easier for them by exempting houses from local taxation altogether.

This is an abomination. A great injustice is being perpetrated here.  What we really need is a a Scottish Young Persons Unity Party, to combat inequality in the treatment of younger adults.   In the past, we had class inequality, then gender inequality, but the great divide today is a generational one. So why don't we hear the voice of youth protest any more?  Well, unfortunately this generation of under thirties somehow failed to learn the habits of dissent and protest that their parents developed to such effect.  Somehow, it didn't cross the generational divide. Yet, if the older of people today had faced the kind of economic discrimination that is being suffered by their children, they'd never have stood for it.  They would have  been out on the streets before you could say "Maggie Maggie Maggie, Out Out Out" .  There would've  been marches through the suburbs, house occupations, pickets of estate agents. Demands for a mass programme of house building, higher taxes on unearned income, and end to student debt.

So, young people of Scotland here is your opportunity. There is an election going on.  Get involved, make a noise, register to vote, alert your friends, lobby your MSPs.  I can assure you that the media would love it because young people are, well, young and attractive, fashionable and colourful.  Here is a chance to make your mark on society.  Kick out the jams, people - just like Mum and Dad did.