NADINE DORRIES: Why, like most Boomers, I’ll be working until I drop to support the less fortunate generations

How old were you when you bought your first home? This is the question my little girl asked me a few days ago.

The answer embarrassed me: I was only 21 years old.

‘Here we go,’ I thought, expecting a lesson in how my Boomer generation (born between 1946 and 1964) had become wealthy because jobs were plentiful and property cheap when we arrived.

I’ve heard it before, of course. I spent years telling my kids to stop complaining, to realize how lucky they are with all the financial advantages.

My kids didn’t wear second-hand clothes or wake up with ice inside their bedroom windows. But the truth is that young adults in Britain have real challenges, none greater than those around jobs and housing.

My daughter, now in her early 30s, is one of a generation of young adults who know they won’t be able to buy property until they’re 40 – if that – and perhaps only then, with the generous help of the Bank of Mum and Dad.

The relentless rise in house prices and rents, combined with a stagnating economy, means that millions of young people are struggling to even keep a roof over their heads, let alone consider starting a family.

Figures released by the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies show that the number of 25 to 34-year-olds still living with their parents has risen by a third since 2006.

It’s not a lifestyle choice: they can’t afford to leave.

No wonder the birth rate in England and Wales has fallen to a record low of 1.4 children per woman (well below the ‘replacement’ level of 2.1 that would keep the population stable). Who will pay the taxes to run tomorrow’s public services?

Life for today’s young people is much more difficult than in the past, when flying the nest was a rite of passage.

Millions of us expected to get a job and buy property as soon as we earned a regular salary. For good reason.

Jobs were plentiful. Houses were being built. Despite the strife of the post-war decades, we felt that the world was truly changing for the better.

If you had ambitions, you had a chance to achieve them as long as you put in the effort, and you could do it. Economics was open to everyone, with or without a degree.

There were maintenance scholarships for those who won a place at university.

So, like many of my fellow ‘Boomers’, I know I will work until the day I quit. We are afraid for the future of our children and grandchildren (Image drawn by models)

When I studied nursing in the 1970s, I did not have to borrow large amounts of money like today’s nursing students who are left thousands of pounds in debt. While I was receiving education and studying, I was paid a salary.

This was before Tony Blair decided to transfer 50 per cent of school leavers into higher education and then make them foot the bill by charging tuition fees and putting student loans on them.

Half a century later, my children have emerged into a bleaker, frankly unrecognizable world. European economies are stagnant. British manufacturing is a shadow of itself. Technology is destroying jobs faster than it is replacing them, and that’s before AI really takes off.

The employment market is flooded with graduates who are often saddled with huge debts, but career-building opportunities are rapidly diminishing and competition is fierce.

With technology so fast, who wants to hire 21-year-olds to learn the ropes?

It’s as if the world has turned its back on Britain’s young adults but we still brand them as ‘lazy and entitled’. Who wants to be young today? Not me.

So, like many of my fellow ‘Boomers’, I know I will work until the day I quit. We are afraid for the future of our children and grandchildren. We want to do our best to support them.

Back to my daughter’s question: I bought my first home in 1978 as a newly qualified nurse on a salary of £13,000.

It only took me a year to save the deposit, and my reward was a three-bedroom semi with a garden, not a one-bedroom studio flat an hour from work.

I find it shameful to explain all this to the younger generations. People like my daughter feel resentful, and rightfully so.

For those lucky ones like me who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, the world was our oyster. This was a golden age and we didn’t even know it.

Princesses must stick together

According to The Mail on Sunday, Princess Eugenie has cut off all communication with her father, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

This contrasts with the stance of older sister Princess Beatrice, 37, who is said to have walked a careful diplomatic line, keeping both her father and the nervous Royal Family happy. This is a task worthy of the United Nations.

It’s only natural that Beatrice chose this path. After all, she’s the big girl. The serious sibling is someone who is expected to shoulder the responsibility and look out for others.

Nadine says Princess Beatrice of York and Princess Eugenie of York ‘must stick together’ (Photo in 2023)

And one imagines that this isn’t the first time Beatrice has taken on the role of keeping the peace in this family. I completely understand why you used common sense before confrontation.

Both princesses are known to be lovely young women. But Eugenie, 35, has the luxury of being a second child, which means she has more freedom to do what she wants.

I also understand his position. What young woman wouldn’t feel disgusted by her father’s relationship with the late pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein?

But most importantly, the sisters do not allow their father’s sins to infect their close relationships and continue to support each other.

My Hamnet dilemma…

The movie of the moment is Hamnet, starring Irish actors Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. It tells the story of William Shakespeare’s son and his tragic death at age 11.

The film is expected to raise the bar at the Oscars.

However, I must admit that the prospect of seeing this fills me with dread, the reports are so heartbreaking.

After all, it carries a ‘sorrow warning’. Am I strong enough to hold this together and not leave the theater a dilapidated, battered wreck? I’m sure the answer to this is ‘no’.

Tickets have been reserved. To go or not to go? That’s the question…