Counting My Blessings

Written by Peter Chapman on Sun 20th Mar 2005

Peter Chapman - prospective parliamentary candidate for Beaconsfield

I've just had my sixtieth birthday which is a good time to take stock of one's life. I've been counting my blessings. I think mine is the luckiest generation which has ever lived in this country.

Born in 1945, just as the war was ending, we grew up in peace and prosperity which was denied to our parents and grandparents. Our parents sacrificed their twenties to the Second World War. Our grandparents sacrificed their twenties to the Great War and their thirties to the Depression. I can just remember one occasion, shopping with my mother when she handed over coupons from her ration book. I can remember petrol coupons being issued as a precautionary measure at the time of Suez. Our material living standards have increased continually during our lifetimes. It's true that we didn't have central heating, colour TV, computers or even many telephones when we were young but we have been able to enjoy them for many years now.

We walked to school, or cycled or used the bus, on our own, without feeling afraid and without, as far as I can remember, any great anxiety on the part of our parents. At school there was no thieving. We didn't need lockers - we kept everything in open desks and our games kit just hung on a peg. There were no drugs of course.

Some of us were lucky enough to go to university. It was completely free of charge and we had a maintenance grant too, means-tested according to parental income, so we finished our studies more or less debt-free.

There was no shortage of job offers when we graduated. Both private and public sector employers wanted huge numbers of graduates in the late sixties.

We married and bought houses with mortgages benefiting from unlimited tax relief in the seventies. Double digit inflation soon whittled away the real value of those mortgages. It was actually our parents and grandparents who were subsidizing our mortgages, or at least those with money in building society accounts producing a negative real return during those inflationary years. In the last few years those homes with little or no outstanding debt have continued to increase in value substantially. As we retire, many of us can release a capital sum by downsizing or moving to a cheaper part of the country or both.

From the seventies onwards there has been abundant advice and information on health matters. Our generation has benefited more than any previous one from knowledge about the dangers of smoking, fatty food and lack of exercise.

So not only are we the wealthiest but also the healthiest generation ever to reach retirement age.

And the final icing on the cake, or at least candle, is that I've just checked with the Pension Service and discovered that men 60 - 65 who are no longer doing paid work have their national insurance contributions credited automatically so I will get a full state pension to top up my other nest eggs even though I retired early. That's why I'm counting my blessings and saying that there will never be another generation as lucky with its timing as this one.