The Inbetweeners Discuss Generational Warfare

Joe Thomas and James Buckley, better known as Simon and Jay from the Inbetweeners, aren't known for their political takes, but a clip on one of their recent podcast episodes, which they have, went viral recently for making a couple of pretty wide generalizations about the older generation. >> There was an old woman on the on my train on the way in today, >> and she had a massive problem with me uh sat sat in front. She was sitting with her legs quite stretched out and I wanted I needed the seat that was in front of her. >> Yeah. >> And I sort of gave her the sort of >> Yeah. >> the look, you know, >> is it all right if I sit in that seat? >> I'm just going to have to sit down here. >> Got nothing from her. >> Arrogant. >> Yeah, they are. Yeah. >> And um then when I did sit down, she still wouldn't move her legs. I had to straddle her. I basically straddled an old woman on the way into work today. >> I had to sit there with my legs open so that her legs could go. >> Yeah, that's >> And I was a bit eventually she did move it. >> Yeah. >> And I um again, I'm not aggressive. I'm not going to I'm not going to vocalize, but I did give a little eyes like >> like a sort of >> That's nice of you. >> Thank you. Sar, but I'm being sarcastic. >> No, I know. I know. I mean, it's it's um >> But old people are >> get booked for that. It's a booking. >> Old people are are entitled. 15, 20 years ago, I would never have complained about an old person wanting to stretch their legs out on a train because old old people had won wars and [ __ ] like that. >> Yeah. Now >> that's where that's where the respect your elders thing comes through. And I was always brought up to respect my elders. My my grandparents were uh in the war. >> Yeah. >> Um I also knew my great-grandparents as well and they were heavily involved in the war >> when I was growing up. So I'd always I I always grew up respecting the elderly. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Giving them letting them take their time. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> They can do whatever they want to do as far as I'm concerned. >> But today's old people, >> all you did was get born after the war. >> Um, see the end of rationing and [ __ ] a load of people in the 60s. >> Yeah. >> And take a load of drugs and [ __ ] >> Bought a house for about a pound. >> Yeah. Exactly. And now you now you're sitting on the train going, "Oh, no. I you owe me. I owe you [ __ ] all, love." >> Yeah. They have this attitude of like, >> "No, I'm old, so you should respect me." But I want to be like, "But what have you done, though?" >> Yeah. >> You're not the same as the old old people. The old people when I was growing up, they'd been through some [ __ ] And you go, "Fucking hell." >> Yeah. We should send them back to war now. We'll get a battalion. >> Send all the anyone 73 plus right now. >> Off they go, >> you should send to Ukraine. >> They go to Ukraine and they stretch out their legs. They can. And then when and then if they if they liberate Ukraine and if Russia tries to come in, they're like, >> if they liberate Ukraine Yeah. >> for freedom and democracy and then they want to stretch their legs on the train, then I'll go, "Thank you very much." >> But what I will say is if James wants to find some older people with a social conscience, he should look at Navar Media's metrics, which shows we have plenty of older people in our audience who enjoy our journalism. And obviously, I think broad strokes always really bad. huge wild generalizations about entire groups of people are never really helpful saying well all old people are like entitled or they're all expecting of respect that they've not earned right and I broadly agree with the idea that everyone deserves some level of respect in this country you should always be treating other people with some level of respect but as soon as people start treating you with disrespect or have an expectation of your own behavior towards them that's when I start having a problem and I do think that there is at least somewhat of an issue with some sectors of the older generation who don't treat young people with a level of respect that, you know, most people would expect that everyone in society should deserve on the grounds of they've not done anything to be able to deserve it. Much like James in that clip said about the elderly. I don't know if anyone here has worked in retail, anyone in the audience has worked in retail, but it's my experience that the worst kind of customers unfortunately nowadays usually tends to be the older generation. And again, I'm saying tends to be not all cases, of course not. Again, these are only like a minority here is what I'm talking about, but I'm talking about a personal experience of what it's like being in their situation and dealing with a lot of the lack of respect and a lot of talking down towards young people that you get from all generations today. Like the discussion around needs, for example, young people who are on welfare, who are not in education, employment or training, the level of mental health issues amongst young people. And you usually get hit with cannards such as the youth don't want to work. The youth are too lazy, the youth are faking their illnesses, the youth just don't have the get up and go and the gumption and the desire to succeed that the old generation had and we had it hard and young people have it easy because there's iPhones. But there's a point that Joe Thomas made there where he was like, well actually these people bought houses relatively cheaply compared to young people and we don't have access to any of that right now. Now, on the subject as well of going to war to protect freedom and democracy, the poll shows that the older generations don't quite share the two comedians viewpoint. When Rishi Sunnak announced a plan for a mandatory national service for young people before the 2024 election, a Yugaf poll show that over 65s supported such a move by 63 to 31%. This is despite most of them never having been subject to national service themselves. it having been abolished in 1960 mean you'd now have to be a man of at least 84 years old to have ever done it. And it's not just national service that they fully support despite it not affecting them in the slightest. When it comes to public spending, the polls show that that demographic has a broadly similar opinion. When pled by Yugav earlier this year, over 65 supported an increase in defense spending, for example, at 706% with only 17% thinking that it should decrease or stay the same. This plus 59 point margin compares to minus5 for the 18 to 24s and plus4 for the 25 to 49s. Yet in one of the follow-up questions, the same sample was asked whether or not they would support the triple lock being scrapped to help fund an increase in defense spending. And the 59 point positive margin becomes a minus 62 point margin as a whopping 77% of over 65s opposed such a measure with only 14% in support. And worth noting, however, every age cohort opposed such a move, showing that maybe belief in the social contract could potentially only go one way when it comes to certain sectors of the electorate. And also caveats like that's not going to be a clean way in which you divide those people up. It's not all the same people who said we support increasing defense spending. Say, well, I wouldn't want to lose the triple lock to be able to pay for that. But it broadly shows the direction of travel. And there are other polls that show similar things like this when it comes to free bus passes for young people. Old generations who do have bus passes tended to not support it for young people and young people supported it for both. Young people also when they come to caring for their elders, they actually broadly supported keeping the universality of the winter fuel allowance for example rather than it being means tested like the government wanted to. So there's not this level to which you want to see welfare cuts and reductions in provisions for the older generation coming from the younger generation that there is in the other direction. And again, just want to make sure there's expertly caveated here that this is only about polling samples and how these things poll. It's not talked about everybody, just the majority of those that do hold those opinions that again, I think unfairly disadvantages young people in this country. Dalia, what did you make of the clip? What do you make of like the polling that comes from older generations? Is it ever fair? Is it ever fair to make such wide generalizations off of like individual moments on a train, for example? >> Yeah, I mean, obviously, obviously not. I mean, firstly, I love the idea that millennials are like the old people of today. They don't know they're born. They're nothing like they used to be. Like, I just think that's quite funny. But also, I think it's not so much about I don't care if if older people want to, you know, be a little bit condescending or whatever. It's kind of part of the of getting older as you complain about young people, whatever. My problem is why do older generations keep voting to remove the conditions that they had that they succeeded in? Why do they keep voting to take those conditions away for younger people on a macro level? Um, and you know, I I often find that um these kind I'm always surprised by this kind of polling because a lot of the boomers in in my life are actually very disturbed with how things are going in the sense that they, you know, look at their kids and they say, "Well, my kids kind of did did everything ostensibly right. you know, they went to school, they got an education, they did a degree, they got work experience, they, you know, apply for jobs all the time, and they don't seem to be able to get on the ladder of adulthood. And a lot of boomers in my life are like very kind of frustrated about that. But then when I look at the polling, I'm like, okay, well, clearly on a kind of national scale, that is not representative. But obviously some of it is is kind of ego and the sense of oh well you know I don't want to ascribe the fact that I am materially secure and that I was able to have you know a decent job that paid wages that allowed me to cover my own you know to live a dignified life. I want to believe that that was all me and that was just my good decision making and my you know savvy saving that did that rather than there was actually a broader environment that meant that my hard work was I got something back from society for that. But I also think another issue is sometimes like a mistransation of what poverty is across the generations. I was um in a rural part of the country a few months ago and I got talking to this guy who I would say is probably like Gen X boomer cusp and he's a farmer and he's a farmer who like he has a hard life like his work is like manually intensive like it's very physically demanding he's not and he's not making loads of money from it he's not a farmer >> especially post Brexit when they lost all the >> subs he's not a farmer in the way that like a Jeremy Clarkson is a farmer like he is like you know he's not doesn't live an easy life, but you know, he has secure housing. He's always had secure housing. He was able to, you know, give his kids a good life. His kids went to university and all of this. And we were talking and he sort of said, you know, that classic thing where he was like, you know, people are people think that they're poor now, but they don't know what poverty is. Like if you saw what poverty looked like in the ' 70s, you wouldn't think that people are poor now. And um you know, you see he's like my my friend um he said that you know his friend was a bin man and he's like all their bins are full of takeaways like they're just eating takeaways all the time. You know if my mom could look at what poverty looks like now she would say oh you you know that's like basically a luxury compared to what poverty was like in the ' 70s. And I said to him I was like I think that what has happened is that what poverty looks like has changed. So back in the day if you were poor you still and you know under the welfare state you still had like the basic things that you need to survive like you still had stable housing you had access to a decent health care service. You could send your kids to decent schools. Um you often lived like locally to your community so you could kind of share the burden of care work. So you had the basics and the essentials of a good dignified life. You just didn't have the luxuries you know. So maybe like that's what it meant to be poor. And what happened in the ' 70s with neoliberalism is basically there was like this fouian bargain that was kind of made for us which said we're going to take away all of those guarantees. So you're not nothing is guaranteed. Housing isn't guaranteed. Health care isn't guaranteed. You know, good health care isn't guaranteed. All of the kind of basic infrastructure of a decent life will not be guaranteed. but what we will give you instead is access to cheap consumer goods. So that was kind of the the the the cell the promise of of neoliberalism. So what you have now is a generation of people in poverty who might be able to like afford you know a new outfit once in a while because they can buy it really cheaply off the internet because of you know neoliberal globalization but they can't make their rent. And so on the outside you look, you know, you might look at it as, you know, someone in their 70s and say, well, how could you be poor if you have a new pair of trainers and it's like, well, if I if all I can do if if after I pay all my bills, I have 50 quid left at the end of my paycheck each month, I can't ever save enough of that to buy a home or to get private health insurance now that, you know, the NHS is on its knees. But what I can do is I can take out a microloan and, you know, buy a new pair of trainers on that in three installments. So I think there's also kind of a a problem of translation between the generations of like what poverty means now. Poverty back in the day meant you could have the basics but you didn't have the luxuries. Now it's like the luxuries are kind of cheap enough that you might be able to afford them but the basics have become the preserve of the very very wealthy. >> 100% 100% I agree with that. And I mean it's interesting like just again personal experience here >> and I think he kind of saw that as like I think he was like oh that makes sense you know >> I think what when I hear the kind of discussion about how they can be impovery it is always the kind of food people eat that's something so often not just takeaways but also oh well they're they're eating avocados they're eating these imported Moroccan blueberries and like avocados are 50p and little they're not expensive I hate avocados for what it's worth but like these things are cheap these imported like what would be seen those luxury food stuffs in ' 60s, '7s, whatever it is, they're incredibly cheap nowadays. They are just the same price as, you know, meat and potato pie like you would be able to make at home. It's it's not a luxury good anymore, but there's that again, there's that cultural signifier that doesn't exist there. And on back to the original point about you having some one generation having fought in the war and then a generation that comes after that hasn't gone through that same struggle because you know the silent generation they not only like were there for the war they also post war built the welfare state built the NHS built the same institutions but then got voted away >> by the people who voted for that ever want to [ __ ] happen again. They were like that was gnarly that like the war was awful. I want to make sure that my kids never have to do that >> for there's a reason like it was it it was horrific you know it was horrific at home and also for people who served and so that's why they built all these institutions that were explicitly about making sure that we don't have wars again you know that's why a lot of that generation was involved in Vietn the antivietnam war protests because they were like we're not doing this [ __ ] no more >> you know 100% 100% again it's really worth pointing out by the way that This is just in terms of like broader trends. No one's trying to say everybody. No one's trying to again we have made the point specifically that we don't want to talk in in wise generalizations because of course we envir loads of older people in our audience who are socialists. They've been socialist their whole lives, right? And they've been frustrated watching the Thatcher consensus destroy everything that was built in the postwar period and they want to go back to that way. They want to find a way of preserving that. But of course the it was a generation that voted for thatcher that voted a lot of that away in plurality not in in as a wide kind of entire group of people uh that that that would apply to >> also like crucially when I talk about that kind of fouian pact where it was like we're going to take away you know the welfare state and instead we're going to give you like cheap consumer goods. Young people are constantly voting to be like, "Please, we want it the other way around." Like, "We don't want this [ __ ] no more." >> Exactly. Please, we want to give you a good pension. We want to give you a winter food allowance. We want to make sure that you have your dignity in your own. We just want it as well. >> We just want, you know, to be able to not have to spend 50% of our wages in rent mostly to a landlord who's of the generation who's getting the triple state pension, right? Like that's mostly, I think, what young people look at when it comes to that kind of stuff.