The baby boomer generation had it all – and threw it away. But that doesn't mean our children have to be denied universal education and free healthcare

Delighted to see Jeremy Paxman in the Daily Mail this week reigniting righteous anger against us baby boomers, especially as he quotes my book liberally. But the argument is becoming the opposite of what I intended.

He's right to say that our generation had it all, and left our children with a far harsher world to grow up in. We picked up the tremendous inheritance of the Attlee settlement – and trashed it. But in these harsh times, too many commentators are ready to say that this is because what we had wasn't sustainable. But a society that can provide former RBS chief Sir Fred Goodwin with unearned luxury from the age of 50 is able, if it wishes, to provide modest security for all its elderly citizens.

The same applies to the good things my generation inherited – universal education, free health care, unemployment pay. We should be condemning the baby boomers, not for having these things, but for their failure to protect them for their children.

But then the men and women who went to university in the late 60s were at school in the 50s, when uniforms were prescriptive, teaching was "traditional", rote learning was rife, discipline was harsh, and the class system was embedded in the school system. It's hardly surprising that when we emerged and found the 60s awaiting us, we did not know what to do with the freedoms we found therein, for we had had the sort of schooling Michael Gove wants to bring back.