The Sixties were roaring. But when exactly?

The conference speaker, no doubt wanting to get going on an informal, personal note, started his presentation by telling us that he’d been brought up ‘in the roaring 1960s of the last century.’

Problem was I took nothing in from that point onwards. It’s the kind of sentence that gets me musing.

First, I wondered idly whether any century other than the last could be said to have had any ‘1960s’. 

Probably not, I decided. On balance.

Next the reference to the last century set me thinking. The conference was about ageing, so had the speaker been brought up in the sixties of some earlier century, not just the contents of his paper but the mere fact that he was giving it would have been exceptionally interesting.

But then I naturally realised that though amusing, this again was idle speculation. No-one addressing a conference today could possibly owe his upbringing to the sixties of any century before the last.

Unless, the thought flashed into my mind, it was a conference of spiritualists. And one of the participants had performed the appropriate rituals and summoned a presence in the approved way.

‘Brought up in the sixties of the sixteenth century,’ the chairman would announce, ‘our next speaker is going to talk about Elizabeth I’s attitude towards ageing, basing himself on his numerous conversations with her on the topic.’

And as the incantations started a figure in a ruff would slowly begin to take form behind the speaker’s lectern.

I checked out the conference. As far as I could tell, there were no white sheets or clanking chains, no one who appeared transparent or even diaphanous. With disappointment, I had to resign myself to the evidence: there would be no 150-year old speakers at this meeting.

No-one wandering around the place with his head under his arm. Though maybe one or two with their heads up a different part of their anatomy.

Not likely to appear at a conference on ageing near you any time soon

Debt: if this is the cure, let's stick with the disease

It’s sometimes a bit of a thankless task to keep writing these posts – people pay so little attention to them.

I mean, some weeks ago, I gently pointed out to David Cameron that his picture of UK indebtedness as similar to a maxed-out credit card wasn't entirely credible. I thought I'd made it clear that personal debt had little in common with national debt. But there he was again, last weekend, trotting out the same old platitudes about ‘paying off the credit card.’ Woeful. Is he simply beyond training?

Then there's another much repeated sentiment doing the rounds, viz: we mustn’t leave a massive debt to our children and grandchildren. Stated like that, it sounds self-evident doesn’t it? It’s appallingly irresponsible to saddle future generations with that crippling burdern of debt.

The problem is that the idea only sounds plausible as long as you don’t think about the alternatives. Clearing down debt means cutting public expenditure to the point that our schools, our medical services and our job opportunities are seriously jeopardised. Will our under-educated kids with their blighted career prospects, denied access to decent healthcare services to treat  their depression, really thank us for inflicting all that on them? Might they not have preferred a bit of debt instead?

Will they wonder whether we were really thinking of them or just trying to avoid paying more tax ourselves?

This is particularly striking given that the debt isn’t even that high in historical terms. Obviously, the situation varies from country to country, but in Britain debt today as a percentage of GDP is about a quarter of what it was at the end of World War 2. The British war debt to the US wasn’t finally cleared until 2006.

I think back to my time as a teenager in the sixties, as a young adult in the seventies. Do you know, my mind was occupied by a great many things in those turbulent times but the crushing burden of debt on my shoulders never really figured among them.

The sixties: a pevious generation crushed by the burden of debt

Postscript. All this talk of debt puts me in mind of the story of Moishe tossing and turning in bed until the small hours of the morning. Finally Rachel shakes him and says, 'what is it Moishe? Why can't you sleep? You're keeping me awake.'

'I'm so worried,' he says, 'it's Shlomo next door, I owe him £500 and I don't know how to pay him.'

Rachel leaps out of bed and goes over to the window. Throwing it open she shouts out, 'Shlomo! Hey, Shlomo! My husband Moishe owes you £500 and he doesn't know how to pay you.'

She closes the window and gets back into bed.

'Now let him worry about it,' she says as she composes herself again for sleep.