Open Features: No Jam For Me
Don’t write off the Baby Boomer generation. Mary Basham says they have more to offer the world than those born into the Jam Generation.
It is not often I feel the need to rant and rave publicly, but I do now. Last week, I was driving down a pleasantly quiet road listening to BBC Radio 4. On all sides hedgerows were bursting into tentative signs of true spring; a faint edge of green, a froth of white blossom on the black thorn and the hazel a riot of dancing catkins. Sheltering beneath the bushes were the occasional daffodil and clumps of primroses. The world felt good and my spirits rose along with the sap for the sheer joy of it all. Then the crunch came and it wasn’t the sap or my spirits rising but my ire.
The programme I was listening to was The Jam Generation ( 09.30 Tuesday 4 March) and how those influenced in their formative years by the said ‘pop’ group were going to straighten out the mess we Baby Boomers had made and put the world to rights. Not only that, but in order to do so it was move over you lot “you’re on your wait out” implying that anyone over the age of 55 was knocking on dotage door leading to God’s Waiting Room on Earth. Well I have news for The Jam Generation; I think you’re going to have a fight on your hands.
Let’s just run through the facts. Who amongst the bright young things so eager to take up the reins of power, is going to tell the Queen she is past it? Are the likes of Sir Alan Sugar showing signs of eagerness to collect their Zimmer frames and walk from the boardroom, leaving it all to their apprentices? I think not. Anyone who suggested it is more likely to hear the words “You’re fired” than “Do come in and sit down in my chair”.
And let’s face it, to date the brave new world politicians, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, have not led their own parties to prime position or even close to it, so Jam Generation, just don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched.
It is of course, perfectly understandable that youth thinks it has all the answers; arrogance is a Rite of Passage. The one thing youth can never have that age has in bucketfuls, is experience, together with the wisdom that comes with it. I seriously wonder whether our academic status in the world would be rated so low in the league table if there had not been a move in the mid to late 1990s to pension off teachers past there half century. Yes it did allow fresh talent and new ideas to flourish. It also allowed children to feel there was not a lot of difference between teacher and pupil, often resulting in respect flying out the classroom window and chaos ruling within.
Whoever heard of Matron being anything other than of senior years? Matron, do I hear you say, what has she got to do with it? Are there any now? Having worked in the NHS for a while in the 1960s I can tell you that Matron kept her nurses, auxiliary staff, even the doctors on their toes. As for ward cleaners, attention to details meant just that. Spotless. No mote of dust undisturbed!
I think out of the entire programme, it was the idea that these young things had the answer to world affairs and social problems that have dogged civilisation since Man first got up on two legs and pawed the air that grated on me the most. There is no easy fix; and who ever thinks there is needs to think again rather than trot glib words off the tongue with all the ease of credit cards being flashed across the counter in Notting Hill shops.
Still inwardly seething from the suggestion that for Baby Boomers our useful days are over and we should quietly shuffle off this mortal coil, I looked up the words of a song made famous by The Jam to see why it might have had such an influenced on the ‘wanne-be’ generation. I quote:
“And the public gets what the public wants, But I want nothing this society’s got, I’m going Underground.”
Em, I think I might call those sentiments a cop out. Then again, if you take a another line from the song…….”The braying sheep on my TV screen” and apply that to the ridiculous rise of the so-called celebrity, most of whom have no more claim to fame than my neighbour’s dog (I do at least know it’s name) I might have some sympathy with the words.
When my mother made strawberry jam in those far off baby boom days of the late 40s, she would test a batch by ladling a little on to a cold plate and wrinkling the surface to see whether it had set properly. I suspect that if the The Jam Generation was put to the test at the moment its members might have some way to go before they are ready for public consumption.
Mary Basham
March 2008
