RED TAPE, WHITE LIES



The generation of the 60's was going to change the world. We put flowers in guns, worked for charitable causes, sang and made love for peace and love. We did get into power and now we are finishing. What happened? Tessa Pinkus Spero, Gabriola, B.C. Canada Because the people who believed in the new world didn't go into politics; leaving the way clear for the grey people to take over. Peter Brooke, By Kinmuck, Scotland We had unprecedented access to good quality recreational drugs and trusted the revolution to those who chose not to indulge. They didn't share our idealism but we didn't know that. We were too busy getting stoned and screwing in the name of peace. Doh! Jon Burfitt, Nailsworth, UK Fear not, comrade, we shall rise again. Older but wiser and more knowledgable. C. Alexander Brown, Rockcliffe Park, Canada Margaret Thatcher and her ideological heir, Anthony Blair, got into power. "We" didn't. Richard Saffron, London Age. Every generation thinks it invented sex, humour, idealism etc. As we get older we see there are no simple, big solutions and so don't just make everything better. If it was that easy the generation before would have done it. Pete, Cambridge, UK The generation of the 60s grew up and realised that it was just idealistic rubbish which doesn't work in the real world. The 60s generation has done more to mess up the world than any other in the last 200 years. Mike Dodd, Wallasey, UK We changed it. Don't you like the result? Danny Martin, Arbroath, Angus We grew up. Gareth Graham, Bristol, UK The short version: Those with real influence got very twitchy during the '60s - conscious the gap between the haves and have-nots was getting much too narrowed for their liking. Then by the early '70s shop floor workers showed their impatience with their tamed shop-stewards  the wild cat strikes started - showing big business it could no longer rely on the unions to do their work for them. Ted Heath turned out not to be "Selsdon Man" and along came the Iron Lady - not for turning. Herald the arrival of authoritarian populism and the disappearance of such terms as "street robbery" in the newspapers in favour of the far more sinister-sounding "mugging". Information Management blossomed, massaging the sordid political realities of the times. A misinformed grateful population largely welcomed the start of the weakening of what civil liberties were in place. Mass unemployment helped to destroy entire communities and the poll tax ensured that hoards of people likely to oppose Thatcher would be voluntarily disappearing off the electoral register. Elite collusion triumphs over a now fragmented and divided (individualised) Mass. The End. S Kirby, Esbjerg Denmark We did change it. Now you can purchase 35 different kinds of mustard and pay for it 7 different ways. That generation denied it's children the right of conspicuous consumption and therefore caused a boom in one of the things they wanted suppressed. In fact everything that the flower generation suppressed is now rampant. Edward, Springfield, Mo., USA The 60's generation are different from those before it on in terms of numbers. It believed in love and peace when it was the of age to screw and go to war. Once it started families and got into middle age it decided that taxes were too much and cut those; irrespective of it's effect on their parents' pensions. Then when the money ran out further, it cut the educational opportunities of their children (see student loans etc). Now that they will soon retire, we hear that they want to restore pensions after a life of spendthrift. Who will pay for it, their children and grandchildren! We have a generation here who uniquely, due to numbers, have screwed everyone else. It's not too hard to imagine that their children may decide that they don't deserve anymore money, especially since they own their own homes which are now spectacularly over-valued. One really has to feel sorry for Spain and Portugal who will now feel a tidal wave of these parasites as they migrate south with their ill-gotten gains. G, Paisley uk The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. Paul Thompson, Perth Scotland ".. "the answer my friend is blowing in the wind ..?" Well actually it was the 60s generation who wanted to get rid of nuclear warheads so that it WOULDN'T blow in the wind. Don't you remember everyone went on marches "Banning the Bomb". Susan Etheridge, Maidstone, UK Many cute answers, but I have a serious one. My little sister responded to the pied piper, Timothy Leary, and she died from too many drug overdoses and dropped acid. Damn Leary, wherever he is, for the great damage he encouraged my sister's generation to indulge in. Of course, the reality is, she died at her own hands, of her own choice, but the pied piper does have the reputation for putting people into a trance where they cannot work out the difference between reality and fantasy. Maestrovoci, California USA The talk in the 60s of revolution was just that; talk. As the US government was running out of working class conscripts, the angry youth in America seemed to be the middle classes worried about being called up themselves rather than being so morally offended by the slaughter in Vietnam. A lost opportunity that never was. Steven Beercock, Enna, Italy



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