Baby boomers, we are 'The Pig in the Python'.

I thought I'd share this wonderful piece of nonsense - an essay in how to say nothing in 5 paragraphs. The writer must have had his or her tongue in both cheeks at the same time. Well done !

Baby Boomer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Baby boomer is a term used to describe a person who was born during the demographic Post-World War II baby boom. The term "baby boomer" is sometimes used in a cultural context, and sometimes used to describe someone who was born during the post-WWII baby boom. Therefore, it is impossible to achieve broad consensus of a precise definition, even within a given territory. Different groups, organizations, individuals, and scholars may have widely varying opinions on what constitutes a baby boomer, both technically and culturally. Ascribing universal attributes to a broad generation is difficult, and some observers believe that it is inherently impossible. Nonetheless, many people have attempted to determine the broad cultural similarities and historical impact of the generation, and thus the term has gained widespread popular usage.

In general, baby boomers are associated with a rejection or redefinition of traditional values; however, many commentators have disputed the extent of that rejection, noting the widespread continuity of values with older and younger generations. In Europe and North America boomers are widely associated with privilege, as many grew up in a time of affluence. As a group, they were the healthiest, and wealthiest generation to that time, and amongst the first to grow up genuinely expecting the world to improve with time.

One of the unique features of Boomers was that they tended to think of themselves as a special generation, very different from those that had come before. In the 1960s, as the relatively large numbers of young people became teenagers and young adults, they, and those around them, created a very specific rhetoric around their cohort, and the change they were bringing about. This rhetoric had an important impact in the self perceptions of the boomers, as well as their tendency to define the world in terms of generations, which was a relatively new phenomenon.

The baby boom has been described variously as a "shockwave" and as "the pig in the python." By the sheer force of its numbers, the boomers were a demographic bulge which remodeled society as it passed through it.

The term Generation Jones has gained popularity to distinguish those born 1954-1965 from the earlier Baby Boomers.

Britain's 'baby boomers' today

During the dark days of the Second World War between 1939 and 1945, millions of couples in Britain postponed the decision to have a child. Consequently, hundreds of thousands of women became pregnant either in 1946 or early 1947 and gave birth in '47. I was one of the babies of that year as was the entrepreneur Alan Sugar, and the musicians David Bowie, Elton John, Ronny Wood, Brian May, Dave Davies, the actor Jonathan Pryce, the writer Salman Rushdie and the wife of Prince Charles, Camilla Parker Bowles.

As children we stretched the resources of the state. In 1952 new primary schools were opened to accommodate the surge in numbers and then new secondary schools. The South London Comprehensive I went to, had 2,500 pupils. Then came the new universities of the 1960's - Kent, Warwick, Essex, York and the one I attended - Sussex.

And now collectively, as we reach state pension age, we are once again stretching the resources of the State. The women of 62 are there already, the men like me, will be there in 3 years. We are an expensive problem and will continue to be, until our numbers begin to diminish over the next 20 years or so.