igb’s posthaven

http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk

If you are a UK Citizen or otherwise entitled to vote in this month’s referendum, please do so.

http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk

My generation (born in the mid 1960s) are the single largest cohort in our society, and we vote at high rates.  We’re the peak of the post-war boom, and we still go to polling stations.

We’re why you can’t buy houses; my wife and I bought a house, with a 100% mortgage, 11 months after we graduated, and we were hardly unusual: how many of you will be doing that?  

http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk

We’re why your pensions are likely to be grim: we paid a few quid into schemes that were clearly insolvent the moment our parents stopped smoking, but many of us can retire on secure incomes in our early to mid sixties.   

And for the university educated amongst us, we got it free, too.  

http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk

Governments pander to us, because we win and lose elections; unlike the cohort older than us, we switch our votes from election to election and are susceptible to retail politics (“what’s in it for me?”).  We are why inheritance tax is a major political issue: IHT isn’t about old people, it’s about their avaricious middle-aged children, like me.  And we are why crazy rising house prices are a popular thing; the houses we don’t own, our parents own.

We are why education policy is a minor footnote, because most of our children are coming towards the end of, if they haven’t already finished, their educations.

http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk

The referendum’s outcome could change your lives.  Mine, not so much.    But my generation will be flocking to polling stations to vote, and our issues are radically different to yours.  You don’t trust your parents' opinion on Kanye West (808s and Heartbreak is my favourite, my children disagree) so why would you trust their views on anything else?  

http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk

We’ve now seen two general elections which have been decided by an if not grey at least greying vote, while policies that affect you have been put through without any attention to what you think.  Sadly you (or at least people your age) just don’t vote in sufficient quantities to be interesting to politicians.  Change that.  Please.

http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk

I don’t think anyone over 45 should be allowed to vote in the referendum, and I shall be voting strictly on the advice of my children.   But people like me, and indeed my parents (ie, your grandparents) could decide the outcome of this referendum.  Please don’t let us be the only voices that are heard.

http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk

ian