The gap between the very rich and the rest continues to grow. Today's report by the OECD does little more than confirm what we knew. All countries indulged the wealthy, and the UK was one of the worst miscreants.
But the problem went far wider and deeper than the bankers and their friends. This group might have stolen most of the cream, and done it most ostentatiously, but they were only following a broader societal pattern of consumerist entitlement. Entitlement is the word that defines my generation. In my late 40s, I just squeeze into the baby boomer category, although as I set out in my working life I was equally defined by the Thatcher years. As the UK and Europe prepare for many more years of belt-tightening, it is perhaps salutary to recognise what some voters believe is theirs by right.
Last December, as freezing fog shut down Heathrow and other airports, the BBC led its main evening news with the headline "misery", as thousands of passengers had their Christmas holidays to Australia, South Africa and other warm climes delayed or cancelled. Nobody would want to be in their situation, particularly those who had saved for months or years for their long-haul adventure. But misery this wasn't. Misery is homelessness, war, famine, a sudden bereavement or long-term unemployment.
Underlying the supposed suffering of the "squeezed middle" is the realisation of having to get used to a lower quality of life: eating out less; shopping less for inessential items; trading down on holidays. Again, this is not to wish such an outcome on anyone but to put some perspective on the impending double-dip recession. As if to emphasise my point, the police felt the need at the weekend to close off Oxford Street because the combination of construction works and large crowds was deemed dangerous. Large crowds? Christmas shopping? More misery, maybe?
I was struck by a description of the "squeezed middle" by a blogger in the Huffington Post. Describing it as a "revolting turn of phrase", Sean Faye wrote: "It makes me imagine a duvet of corpulent, middle-aged flesh erupting from a particularly binding pair of M&S control pants". He was equally dismissive of the term "lost generation" to discuss him and his peers.
Which brings me to Nick Clegg, the apparent scourge of the nation's youth. Over the weekend the deputy prime minister and Liberal Democrat leader suggested that benefits such as the winter fuel allowance and free bus pass should be means-tested. He admitted that he had tried to push these items on to the chancellor's autumn statement but was rebuffed. It is easy to understand why.
George Osborne and David Cameron have made a straightforward political assessment. Why antagonise most voters, who already feel so hard done by? The "grey vote" (apologies for succumbing to generational generalisations) holds our politicians in a vice-like grip. These folk, who came into their formative years in the 1960s, enjoyed high state provision, were paid for going to university, and expected a job on graduation. Now in or around their 60s, they have worked hard or who have convinced themselves that they have and believe they are entitled to the few universal baubles remaining.
Means testing is not an efficient way of handing out money. But if the purpose of a benefit is to give it to those who need it then I'm not sure of the alternative. As Clegg put it: "We should be asking millionaire pensioners to perhaps make a little sacrifice on their free TV licence or their free bus passes." Some high-profile figures are doing so already. The Surviving Winter Appeal, supported by the likes of Michael Parkinson, Jonathan Dimbleby, Ann Widdecombe and Joan Bakewell, calls on the better-off to hand over their winter fuel allowance worth up to £300 a year to every pensioner household to those in greater need. This scheme is to be applauded, but essential welfare decisions should not be determined by charity.
Around 12 million people in the UK are eligible for free bus travel, and it is estimated that more than nine million hold a bus pass. Giving free TV licences to over 75 year-olds costs the taxpayer more than £550m a year. It is vital to help the many in pensioner poverty who struggle to pay their bills, yet I am not entirely sure how benefits like these are relevant to the tens of thousands in the private and public sector who took early retirement in order to play golf or enjoy their winters abroad.
As the previous Labour government used to proclaim, in times of plenty a government can afford to be generous to the comfortable as well as the hard up. Fuelling the consumption habits of an ageing population was not, however, especially responsible. Robert Peston's BBC series, The Party's Over: How the West Went Bust, this weekend featured a number of experts belatedly lamenting a policy of encouraging a middle class and aspiring middle class to fund an unaffordable lifestyle on the back of mortgages and other borrowing.
Hard choices are now being made. A battle will be fought over priorities ahead of the next comprehensive spending review. Osborne's autumn statement reinforced suspicions that the Conservatives do not understand the extent of the anger targeted on the bankers who brought the country to ruin and then cashed in their bonuses. The efforts to rein them in now after been indulged by Tories and Labour alike are welcome. But they smack of window dressing.
It is the young who are paying for this rising inequality in a vicious circle of higher educational costs and perilously low employment prospects. This is where attention should be focused, and where scarce resources should be targeted. Many people in the shires will struggle to afford that new conservatory and might have to hold on to their car for a bit longer than they would have wished. But like their cancelled or delayed holiday, that does not constitute misery. What does is the prospect of many young people struggling to find work.
The government will continue to launch the odd initiative to help alleviate youth unemployment, making sure that cameras are there for the ministerial photo-opportunity. But something tells me that Cameron and Osborne will struggle to do more than that: come 2015, this is not where the crucial votes are to be found.Twitter@johnkampfner
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Nick Clegg's right. It's time to start means-testing pensioners | John Kampfner | Comment is free | The Guardian
Nick Clegg's right. It's time to start means-testing pensioners
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