Revolutionary, root and branch change doesn't require a majority. They never have. It requires a sufficient minority who come to believe in themselves and to reject the accepted view of what people can and can't do.

In my opinion that's part of the task facing us.

That i can agree with.

A general settlement on pensions should have been worked out years ago. It should have been done in the seventies, probably a switch to bismark-style social insurance. With social-democratic schools, universities and hospitals.Oh and nurseries, that would have lessened population decline. At this stage I dont believe anyone under 50 will ever see a state pension. (sorry to state the blindingly obvious) By they will have reached 65 the pension will have receded to 70, by the time they reach t70 it'll be gone altogether! If that's the situation then they should be honest about it now, because it will take twenty years for people to make other arrangements.

And… I dont believe that our generation will act any better, because i dont believe ANY generation can act with sufficent foresight. People can only understand the world their brains develop in, and their knowledge remains relevant only for a few decades after that. (e.g. climate change is an issue one generation 'gets' as serious and urgent, and another doesn't – the limmits of growth is not concievible to a Fordian generation)

That would not be a problem where it not for the demographics being an inverted pyramid. And for the fact that elections owe 1000 times more to demographics than any other factor – having debates and producing manifestos is a side show, elections are won by having the right demographics. Look at the voting margins of Republican presidents, Nixon 67%, Reagan 59%, GB the second 51%. Is it that nixon was more popular?, did the republican party lose voters?, or did people stop being convinced by their policies? – no, not a bit it, it was the same group of people who voted for each of them, it's just that in-the-mean-time 20% of that demographic group had died. The rest cling on as the what-happened-to-our-america-? crowd: 'their america' being the america of 40 years ago.

The nature of the two party system combines with the increasing inablity of the human mind to adapt to change with aging to chaperone people into demographic-imperial-block-votes that remain resistent to reason, argument, and ablity.

It was Plank, I think, who said Science progresses funeral by funeral. I am horrifed by your reports of professors sayingh nothing new has happened. Such ignorant bigotry is a crime.

I also share some of your dispair over the post war/60's generation. They inherited everything from their parents who had fought a war and built the welfare state, enjoyed the fruits of the longest boom in history, plundered the world's resourses, and are now saying how they can't afford anything for the next generations.

So I am no great fan of the 60's generation or their selfish refusal to change anything. BUT will their children do better? Will they look firther ahead and be less selfish? Will they admit to the challenges facing them and meet them with courage?

I don't believe the West is finished. Not while I am here it's not.

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However, I just dont see how they can square the circle, as it is the younger generation have a pretty high unemployment rate, getting a job when over 50 is nigh well impossible (and this is from someone who did a Science degree at 40+ !), there are limited jobs (I do believe in the zero sum game as well), all in all it is more complex than simply blaming oldsters for hogging all the jobs. Outside academia life is unforgiving and far from a cushy number.

I suspect that politics works the same way – the majority of the public never learn anything after the age of thirty and those over the age of fifty are actively hostile to any improvement in the world, or the conditions of the human race. As such, society only progresses when a generation of backward voters dies out, letting their children's new knowledge take over. With people living longer, and the 'boomers' becoming the largest subset of the population i have zero hope anything intellegent or necessary will be done in the west before 2040 (when the boomers voting empire will atlast be gone).

Please will some one stand up in parliament and propose a bill to make voting manditory between the ages of 18-60, that's the only thing (short of removing the vote from the over 60's) that will give the rest of us a chance against the huge pension-entitlement-brigade. Who, need we be reminded, never payed a fraction of the necessary taxes for the pensions they now demand, and even the puny amount they did pay they then stole back by using the pension schemes as sinks for goverment bonds and thus a fund for more boomer indulgences. Worse the over retirees are plus 50% of the cost of the health service! Western countries are finished – who wants to invest in a country facing this kind of demographic crisis?