Don’t blame old

Graham Carter’s column (SA 6 January) rightly highlights the disadvantages of belonging to the young generation of today.

He states that the Prince’s Trust has recently published a report that one in 11 have “nothing to live for”.

He says that concerning the attitude of members of the public who commented on the story about young peoples’ despair, “nearly everybody who had something to say about it based their comments on their own narrow view of the world and completely ignored what it was really about, which was the despair of a whole generation”.

Not my experience; many of the older generation that I have spoken to are completely sympathetic with the plight of the young.

And Graham is also correct in stating that the young should be given every encouragement, help and understanding as they embark on their future journey through life.

But when he goes on to say that “some older people also work for too long when they don’t need the money and could make room for youngsters to get on the employment ladder”, it seems to me that he is apportioning blame to a certain section of society: namely the older working and retired population.

He conveniently forgets that there have been times in most of the disparagingly-named “baby boomers’” lives when they had to endure 15 per cent mortgage rates; perhaps putting more than one child through university (and that wasn’t free, by the way); and maybe more than one period of unemployment brought about by “downsizing”.

Indeed, some unfortunates were also screwed on their company pensions and maybe didn’t receive what they were expecting.

Then again, I dare say the young would like such “disadvantages”: even getting on the property ladder would be a start.

The point is, it’s easy to focus on one section of society for the unfortunate lack of choices that the young are suffering.

It seems to me that if the regrettable current trend against immigrants were to go out of fashion, then people would be looking for other scapegoats.

And to be fair, Graham’s arrows are also pointed at other causes: namely education that neglects life-skills, leaving school leavers ill-prepared for the outside world.

We all know that politicians have much to answer for, but so do businesses like Nationwide Building Society which, as highlighted by Terry Hayward’s letter on the same page, illustrates that particular company’s intention of outsourcing 100 jobs to India to take advantage of lower wage rates.

Shame on them.

As for Mr Carter pointing out in his thought-provoking article that perhaps the older worker should move out of the way for the younger worker – be careful what you wish for Graham, because you write a regular column headlined “the voice of age and experience”. Should you be looking over your shoulder?

Benjamin Disraeli (not, I would suggest, a flippant or particularly humorous person) said: “Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.” He got that right.

John Beale, Wigmore Avenue, Swindon

 

Call in extra bus

While not normally moved to write to my local paper, I felt I must respond to the letter of January 7 from Coun Kevin Small complaining about the recent amendments to bus routes 13 and 14.

I live in Nythe and a few years ago Thamesdown Transport replaced our existing bus service 1 and 1A with a new service 2.

While the original service was routed via Princess Street and the Town Hall to Fleming Way, the new service ignored that part of the route entirely, leaving the residents of Covingham, Nythe and Walcot East with no direct public transport route to the Wyvern Theatre or the new library.

I was able to discuss the reasons for this unpopular change with Paul Jenkins of Thamesdown Transport who advised that it was a time-saving requirement in order to maintain the timetable with only three buses running the route.

Each bus has therefore 45 minutes from leaving stop Q in Fleming Way to returning again, and supporting a 15-minute frequency. This change was and still is very unpopular with many users I have personally spoken to and, as was regularly demonstrated only last month, Thamesdown Transport Control Office has frequent difficulties in maintaining this bus schedule.

In fact the week before Christmas my wife and I travelled back to Nythe on a bus which was the middle one in a convoy of three traversing the route together. The many people I saw waiting for the next bus to town would have had a wait very much longer than 15 minutes!

I would heartily echo the valid point made by Kevin; why can’t an extra bus be called in when usage is high rather than just arbitrarily abandoning a popular section of the route, particularly as Regent Circus is now being redeveloped and will presumably need reliable public transport links?

With the new route 13/14 adjustment, ever larger swathes of Swindon residents can now only get there on foot and from Fleming Way it’s uphill to the Town Hall. Not an easy prospect for the elderly or infirm or a mum with young children.

Derek Lingham, Keyneston Road, Swindon

 

Landlords’ subsidy

I am sick of the readers who use your website to display their ignorance about council house rents.

Council houses are not subsidised by the taxpayers. By law, all the costs are charged to a separate Housing Revenue Account and must be fully covered by the rents charged. Bearing in mind there are still many houses in Swindon Borough Council's property porfolio that were built for less than £1,500, it’s easy to see why an average weekly rent of £80 might be sufficient to cover all the costs.

However, rent allowances or rent rebates are payable to anyone on a low income living in either private rented accommodation, housing association properties or council housing. Many of those claiming help with their rent in Swindon are actually in work; it’s just that their wages are not sufficient to pay their rent or to keep pace with rent increases.

These allowances and rebates are fully funded by the taxpayers and because private rents are higher than council rents the allowances to private tenants are disproportionately more costly. So we taxpayers are not subsidising council houses, but are we subsidising employers who pay pittance wages, or landlords who charge rents their tenants can’t afford.

Don Reeve, Okus Road, Swindon