It was all very well for the old among them to yearn for a bucolic past of Edward Elgar symphonies and the Cotswold Hills. It was understandable that the younger ones would want a 2015 Ford Focus RS (just one previous owner) parked outside and feel miffed that they had to make do with a ‘59 plate Fiesta. But what happened isn’t a solution.
Meanwhile – on the other side of the divide – there is no sort of anger like the anger you feel when you realise you’ve been duped. You thought that – give or take – the game was fair; that, by and large, you were winning a bit more than you were losing. Then, bit by bit, the game changed. They talked about ‘trickle down’, but it came to be more like ‘put down’. Now you realise it’s all – what do they call it? – a zero-sum game and you’re the one holding the big fat zero. Sorry, that wasn’t part of the deal.