Posts Tagged ‘What did the baby boomers ever do for us?’

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Biteback love at LBC

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

Biteback MD and author Iain Dale was out of London last night hosting An Audience With Ann Widdecombe, so Mehdi Hasan, senior editor of the New Statesman (who just happens to be within spitting distance of becoming a fully-fledged Biteback author) took the reins of Iain’s Book Club on LBC. And on the show last night was Francis Beckett – the seasoned Biteback author of What did the Baby Boomers ever do for us? and The Prime Ministers Who Never Were. There was so much Biteback love in the room that Big Cheese’s assistant was quite overcome with emotion. He’s only just recovering now really, thanks to the help of some Rolos.

The joy of the LBC Book Club is that guests have a full 30 minutes to discuss their book. So last night, Mehdi had plenty of time to quiz Francis on The Prime Ministers Who Never Were and the two of them covered everything from the merits of a Marxist deterministic historicism to the utility of the millennium dome (which Francis insists on referring to as ‘that shed’).

The first part of Francis’s slot was reserved for an in-depth consideration of the purpose of this kind of historical writing: how does allowing authors to let their counterfactual imagination to run wild – sometimes even leading them into spectacularly fanciful, albeit amusing, territory – benefit the reader, especially when the book is written as if portraying the truth? Is this parlour game merely a bit of fun?

And after a break for the news and weather, Mehdi challenged Francis on some of the individuals who, in The Prime Ministers Who Never Were at least, made it through the door of No. 10 as Prime Minsiters – did Tebbit really have the ambition for the top job? Was Foot, who led the Labour Party to a humiliating defeat in the 1983 general election really close to the title? Could J. R. Clynes really have prevented the Second World War by having the foresight to curtail somewhat the extent of the Treaty of Versailles’s attack on Germany? And would a John Smith premiership really have resulted in a ten-year-long rule by Ken Livingstone in a socialist utopia?

With so many questions to consider, you’d best get your hands on a copy of The Prime Ministers Who Never Were, available here priced £14.99

Mehdi’s interview with Francis can be heard as a podcast here.

Iain’s latest books are also available now: Talking Politics: political conversations with Iain Dale priced £14.99 and Margaret Thatcher: In her own words priced £12.99

*** Biteback will be at the London Book Fair from 11 – 13 April at Earls Court, London. Come and say hi to us at stand J205!***

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Francis Beckett: David Chaytor and the real swindlers

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

Last month ex-Labour MP David Chaytor was sentenced to eighteen months in prison for false expenses claims. Author and journalist, Francis Beckett has something to say about it…

Whatever they say of him now, I still like David Chaytor, former HMP and now residing at Her Majesty’s pleasure. I did not recognise the old, ill, white-haired, haunted man whose gaunt, terrified face stared out of last week’s papers. I have happy memories of a tall, erect, dapper, kind and occasionally rather amusing man, and of an intelligent and able politician, who knew, understood and cared about the environment and education; a politician of some integrity, held back by his independence of mind – if he’d been more willing to toe the Blair line, he’d have been in government.

I’m sure his lawyer was right to describe him as a broken man. I saw the start of the decay. It began fast – probably at that dreadful moment in New York when he took a telephone call that effectively told him he’d been found out. I met him a few weeks later. The ease and the poise had gone completely. Every syllable shrieked tension and a growing sense of doom. His judgement, always rather steady, had deserted him – I think he really thought it was all a Tory plot to harm Labour in the run-up to the election. He knew he was finished, though.

I emailed to tell him I was sorry he was ceasing to be an MP, and he could be proud of some of the things he’d done. I meant it.

David cheated the public purse of £18,000. It was very wrong, and he’ll pay dearly for it. But his sentence is over the top, a kneejerk response to public indignation and media sanctimoniousness. It’s the same as for a financier, reported yesterday, who cheated shareholders of hundreds of thousands of pounds. You think it’s more serious if it’s a backbench MP? But an important city financier has far more power than a backbench MP.

It’s not Chaytor’s crime which has created our desperate financial plight. His crime, and that of other MPs, is being used cynically to distract attention from the real swindlers – the men in banking and finance whose greed has made us all poor.

I suspect one of the many things he’ll torture himself about for the rest of his life is what a small sum of money he destroyed himself for. Bankers, financiers, Tony Blair, none of them would cross the road for £18,000. The people who ruined the country, and the man who arranged for some of its young men to die in an illegal and unwinnable war, will enjoy all their lives the fruits of their greed.

David Chaytor, I think, may never enjoy anything anymore. I know I am not the only old chum who declined to talk about him that night, and I am sure we did so partly to protect the causes for which we campaigned alongside him. Maybe he deserved his fate. But there are many people who deserve it far more, and who won’t suffer it. If he fancies a pint when he comes out, the first round’s on me.

Francis Beckett’s books, How to Create a Successful School and What Did the Baby Boomers Every Do For Us? are available here and here, priced £14.99 and £12.99, respectively.

His forthcoming book, The Prime Ministers Who Never Were, will be published in hardback on 10 March, priced £14.99.

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Student Demonstrations and the Baby Boomers

Monday, December 13th, 2010

Over the weekend Biteback’s very own Francis Beckett – author of What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us? – had a little something to say about the student protests. Take it away Francis…

Today I’m sending copies of my Baby Boomers book to two old friends, both of whom I heard on Radio 4 this morning saying things about today’s student demonstrations which I’d never have heard from them when we were all young.

Former New Statesman editor Peter Wilby defended tuition fees, and Ivor Gaber, Professor of Journalism at City University, who once occupied Warwick University and discovered the appalling truth about what corporate influence can do to a university, now feels obliged to defend it.

What they both seemed not to grasp was how much worse and less egalitarian a society we have created for our children than the one we grew up in.

I’m not sure whether Peter would have gone to Sussex University all those years ago if he’d had to tie a mountain of debt round his neck. I’m sure I wouldn’t have gone to Keele. Like most people who have never had much money, I’m terrified of debt. It’s only the rich who take debt in their stride.

And I’m not sure Ivor would have occupied at Warwick University if he’d been paying tuition fees – let alone the fabulous sums you now have to pay to get an MA in Journalism at City University. He, and I, and Peter would probably have had our heads in our books, protecting our investment.

Which makes it all the more remarkable that today’s students, who do have to amass a mountain of debt, are prepared to take the time and the risk involved in running occupations, and painting slogans, and painting Prince Charles’s car. (I’m not impressed by the manufactured outrage over this. When I was the NUS press officer in the seventies, I heard the same manufactured outrage when the queen visited Sitling University and some students failed to behave wirh what newspapers considered to be the prioper respect.)

No, I stick to what I wrote in the book:

“The baby boomers used up the economic good times, when there was work for everyone. We used up the educational good times, when free education extended to universities, and we, unlike our children, did not have to amass a mountain of debt in order to go to university. We used up the time when education was seen as a good in itself, rather than the acquisition of the skills required to swell someone else’s profits; as I write, the government’s higher education department has just been abolished, and its responsibilities placed under the department dealing with business and industry, a pretty good indication of what ministers now think education is for.”

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Pulling the ladder up after them

Thursday, November 11th, 2010

Wednesday 10 November 2011 was a cold, grey day in London but, seeing as that isn’t anything new, we’ll assume that day will be remembered in history for the sounds travelling through the brisk air: the marching of feet, the roaring of police helicopters and the tapping of keypads and keyboards frantically tweeting. London was witness to a protest march of thousands against the government’s plans to raise tuition fees for university education.

Not to say I told you so, but our very own Nostradamus, Francis Beckett, did kind of predict such policies by studying the patterns in governmental spending over the last few decades. Not only that, but he probably saw them first. So, neerrrrr.

In his book What Did The Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us? Mystic Francis (doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, I know) discusses the way in which the baby boomer generation are reversing the welfare state from which they have benefited most.

“Most capital expenditure for education and health no longer comes from the present-day taxpayer, but from the next generation, because the baby boomers have been too stingy to pay for the welfare state. This trick is done by means of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), which are scams for getting the cost of public buildings like schools and hospitals off the present government’s books, and placing them on the books of governments ten or twenty years hence.”

His arguments stretch beyond education to all aspects of politics, arguing that the children of the 1960s have betrayed the generations that came before and after, and maybe reading Francis will help in predicting further angry protests. He is, after all, the new Professor Trelawney (some character in Harry Potter who can see the future… we ran out of psychics).

Get your copy of Francis Beckett’s What Did The Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us? here for £12.99

NOTE: We at Biteback hope that the protest will be remembered for these brilliant placards…
1. I thought I was going to Alton Towers
2. This s**t wouldn’t happen at Hogwarts
3. I wish my boyfriend was as dirty as your policy
4. Kiss my arts
5. Is this the queue for Justin Bieber tickets?

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What has Dominic Sandbrook ever done for us? Oh wait… cheers Dom!

Monday, November 1st, 2010

Dominic Sandbrook an authority figure on all things historical has reviewed Francis Beckett’s What Did the Baby Boomer’s Ever Do For Us? in this month’s BBC History Magazine.

Dominic, author of State of Emergency: The Way We Were: Britain 1970-1974 said of Francis’s book:

“Grey-haired hippies will read this book and shudder; the rest of us, though, will read it for the splendid stories and shafts of insight.”

Click here to read more of Dominic’s insights into the book and his favourite anecdote concerning Marianne Faithfull’s, *ahem*, p*ssy.

Get your copy of What Did the Baby Boomer’s Ever Do For Us here, for £12.99.

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Biteback books in political podcast special

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

Guardian Books Podcast: Political books special with Polly Toynbee and Will Hutton.

In the midst of party conference season last Saturday’s edition of the Guardian Books Podcast reviewed the current role of political literature. The discussion covers the success of Which Way’s Up? by Nick Boles and What did the Baby Boomers ever do for us? by Francis Beckett – who is a guest pannelist in the studio – and identifies Biteback as a key new player in the field of political publishing!

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Conference Diary: Francis Beckett

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

Biteback author, Francis Beckett is in Manchester this week for the Labour Conference, here’s his take on the Miliband saga:

Stalin used to talk about socialism in one country, but Labour today seems to have opted for socialism in one family. Ed Milliband’s views are marginally to the left of his brother’s, but that’s not why they chose him. He may, as Neil Kinnock seems to be saying, have a more common touch than his brother, but that’s not it either. He is leader because he was not an MP when we went to war in Iraq.

The rejection of his brother is, quite simply, a way of putting two fingers up to Tony Blair. It’s a way of saying: we may have followed Blair for a decade and a half, but we hated his guts. Ed never had to make the career-destroying decision about whether to vote for war in Iraq or not. David voted for it; that’s why he’s not leader today. Harriet Harman voted for it; that’s why she’s so tainted by the Blair years that she sensibly decided not to run.

Robin Cook voted against it, which is why the most promising political career in the Blair generation petered out. John Denham voted against it, which is why he had to spend all those years in the wilderness – otherwise he’d have been in line for a pop at the leadership by now.

No one who voted for it would be acceptable. Anyone who voted against it had his career halted in its tracks by Blair. Ed can get the best of both worlds. He wasn’t there, and can claim he would have voted against it if he had been. So he’s got a chance – a slim one – of putting the grubby superficiality of the Blair years behind the Party. He’ll have to be an exceptional person to do it. I hope he is. We’ll find out.

Visit Francis Beckett’s own website here. Or if you’re keen to read more by Francis Beckett you can by a copy of his latest book, What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us? for £12.99 here.

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The boom in coverage of the baby-boomers

Friday, September 24th, 2010

In the latest issue of Total Politics magazine, “self-hating boomer” David Willetts MP argues that the baby-boomer generation (those born between 1945 and 1965) have been, and continue to be, selfish in failing to pass the riches their generation bore to their successors.

Another article this week, this time in the Evening Standard, relayed figures showing the high pressure that ageing baby boomers are expected to place on the Dept. Of Work and Pensions as well as on health and social services in London.

Never one to miss a trick, Francis Beckett, author of What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us?, makes a solid case in his book – and in person at the RSA launch event for it – for why the benefits that the baby boomers enjoyed have been denied to the youth of today.

Though there is some ambiguity over the parameters of the boom (Beckett limits it to those born between 1945 and 1955), this isn’t an argument that’s showing signs of slowing down. As the boomers retire and their children take the reins on the deficit and try to get to grips with its consequences, the issue will remain a contentious one.

So brush up on the generation blame game now and get your copy of What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us? for £12.99 here.

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The battle of the Blair biographers

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Everyone has something to say about Tony Blair, including Biteback author Francis Beckett, who got involved in a little spat with fellow Blair biographer John Rentoul this weekend.

Appearing on BBC One’s Sunday Morning Live, Beckett took part in a little bit of unkind banter towards the former Prime Minister, with Rentoul telephoning the show to offer his opinion. The ensuing conversation led to Beckett blogging about Rentoul’s attack on the BBC’s use of language, stating “It was an utterly shameful episode, and it sends a shiver up my spine to hear a pro-Blair journalist appearing to renew the campaign of terror [against the BBC], almost a decade on.” Rentoul responded with comment on the BBC’s use of language, suggesting the corporation should “reserve the term war criminal for people such as Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein who committed war crimes or attempted genocide rather than Blair, who stood against them.”

With a bit of confusion over who said what resolved, the spat concluded harmlessly enough, but with today’s release of Blair’s memoirs refuelling the fire one only has to observe the Twitterati to know that this won’t be the last heated exchange of words.

Francis Beckett is the author of What did the baby boomers ever do for us? and his blog is available to read here.

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Francis Beckett contemplates the reaction to Baby boomers

Friday, August 6th, 2010

My book What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us? seems to have divided commentators strictly along age lines.

People of my age – the baby boomers, the children of the sixties – feel I’ve betrayed my own comrades for a mess of pottage. The Guardian’s Catherine Bennett asks pointedly: “Will his personal contribution be enough to stop a future young carer lashing him to a commode or similar?” Have I given myself an unfair advantage in my old age by crawling in advance to those who will look after me? That wasn’t the intention. And I promise to behave gallantly should I see anyone lashing Ms Bennett to a commode.

Bryn Jones and Mike O’Donnell retort that sixties radicals “joined and energised the radical labour movement campaigns to defend and advance the welfare state during the 70s and 80s.” But they didn’t. They brought their sixties student politics into the unions in those two decades, and it was their intolerance, sectarianism and self-righteousness that brought the unions to their knees by the mid 1980s.

On the other side, the much more youthful Laurie Penny at the New Statesman shook with indignation as she read the book. It “lays out an incisive case for how my parents’ generation squandered the good times and betrayed the courage of the Attlee settlement” she writes. And the Evening Standard’s Rosamund Irwun - nearer in age to Ms Penny than to Ms Bennett – says: “Another boomer has belatedly woken up to the problems they have left us — Francis Beckett in his brilliant new book, What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do for Us?”

None of them, however, give me credit for explaining just why the sixties generation failed. It was to do with schools in the late 1950s and early 1960s – a point upon which I shall expand soon in the Times Educational Supplement.

Look out for further comment by Francis on his website.

What did the babyboomers ever do for us? is available from Biteback, priced £12.99.

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