The death of saving

I was intrigued to learn from Tom Daley – that young man who became famous for jumping off a platform into some water – that homophobia is a ‘legacy of colonialism’. The Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, begs to differ. He believes that it is homosexuality which is a legacy of colonialism and had been brought to his benighted country by effete whitey – and so he may well think Tom is indulging in the disagreeable act of ‘whitesplaining’.

However, it is possible, if not likely, that both Tom and Yoweri are correct – after all, it is difficult to be homophobic if you have around you a complete absence of homosexuals, as I have discovered since moving back to the north-east of England. Tom made his comments on the occasion of the newly woke Commonwealth Games, where organisers have encouraged sports men and women to speak out against political injustices and that ‘the more fictitious or imagined your adolescent drivel and woo woo about victimhood, the more we will applaud it’. Actually, the organisers didn’t quite say the last bit even if, listening to Tom, that is precisely what it seems that they said. Organised sport (as opposed to just running away very fast from a cheetah) is also a legacy of colonialism, so perhaps we should boycott all of it. Especially if they keep kneeling down or whining.

Tom’s interesting observations were reported on the BBC News, but the main story was about what is going to happen when we can’t pay our fuel bills this winter. Almost all the discussion has been about the crisis facing the poorest households, and I don’t doubt it will hit them hard. Almost no airtime, however, has been devoted to the effect price rises will have on small businesses – nor have there been demands for help for this sector from the opposition and the BBC. And yet it seems to me this is where the crisis will be most keenly felt. I wonder how many will go under, and to what degree this will contribute to our plunging into a recession. Yet it is hardly ever discussed. Up where I live, in the homophobia-free wastelands of County Durham, several shop and business owners have suggested they will have to give up the ghost – especially those in the food and services sector.

The focus remains on the poor, however. On Radio 4’s Any Answers I heard a very elderly Brummie talking about his own situation. He had called in to make the simple point that tax cuts were not of much use to him because his state pension was his only income and therefore he paid no tax. So he was living on about £10,000 per year. The presenter tried to prise out of this old cove a sob story. What will you do when the cold weather hits, she asked. The gentleman replied that he would ask his relatives to buy him a warm jumper and that he had some savings put aside for a rainy day. He might also keep the heating on only in his bedroom. Isn’t that terribly sad, the presenter asked, confining yourself to one room? Not really, came the reply.

To suggest that more of us should adopt this chap’s stoical approach is considered callous and ‘victim shaming’. Except, of course, that this man is one of those ‘victims’. Three things struck me, listening to him. The first was an understanding on his part that life has its ups and downs and that one should take the rough with the smooth. He did not believe that he had a beholden right to succour from the state when financial difficulties visited themselves upon him. Second, he was confident that his – presumably extended – family would help him out, even if it was just to buy a jumper. And third, he had saved some money precisely in case something like this happened. In all three cases this man was reflecting the mindset of a certain generation. Making do without complaint, relying on the family and saving money. Subsequent generations would find such a mindset utterly alien: for them, things can only get better and if they don’t the government should bail them out. Families are an encumbrance rather than a resource. And save money? Why on earth would anyone do that?

Apparently buy-now-pay-later schemes are mushrooming, given our rapidly increasing cost of living, and can now be utilised to purchase a takeaway pizza. For many, I suspect, this ‘pay later’ notion means ‘pay never’ or ‘pay whenever I can’ which also means ‘never’, in which case the debts will continue to accrue and their position will just get worse and worse. Personal debt in this country stands at £1.75 trillion, up by more than £68 billion from last year – an extra £1,294 per person over 12 months. The average credit card monthly debt is £2,197 – and the really bad stuff hasn’t happened yet. More pertinently, perhaps, 41 per cent of Britons have insufficient savings to tide themselves over for just one month, while the Yorkshire Building Society reported that almost one fifth of the population has less than £100 in savings. Bear in mind that this follows more than one year of lockdown in which – theoretically, at least – considerable amounts of money could have been saved, assuming one had an income during that time. But somehow, over the years, the obvious virtue of saving money is no longer obvious to a majority of the population.

Perhaps this is because they think that nothing bad can ever happen and if it does then the government can help them out. It is a strange and deluded mindset. That elderly Brummie was brought up in a time when you didn’t borrow in order to buy stuff, you saved and waited until you had enough. That patience and lack of acquisitiveness no longer exists among younger people – it has been expunged and replaced with a pitiable hopelessness.