I’m a Yaspi – and I’m sick of hearing Waspis whine

And look, I get it. Twentysomethings like myself are a difficult bunch to lure to the polls – especially to vote Conservative. If I were the Chancellor, and all I cared about was my party clinging to power, I’d probably earmark a few more million quid to send personalised apology cards to the Waspis with their £3,000.

There is simply no point in the Tories going out of their way to help the young because aside from being a lost cause, the damage has already been done. This week alone, Michael Gove’s attempts to impose restrictions on leasehold ground rents were reportedly scrapped, not least because pensioners are big investors in freeholds. 

While this is all going on, Gove’s Renters Reform Bill, which could ease the burden on young people struggling with Britain’s wild west rental market, has been repeatedly kicked into the long grass. Why? Because that would negatively impact a generation of pensioners who are also landlords. And we can’t have that, can we? (The suggestion that landlords should pay to up their properties’ energy efficiency to shield tenants from sky-high bills was also deemed too high a bar for the former to reach if you’re keeping score.)

At every turn, the budget seems to shift to accommodate the Conservatives’ older voter base, while my generation is squeezed to fill in the gaps. I haven’t even got to the triple-trunked elephant in the room – the Waspis seem loathe to mention that the state pension triple-lock pension netted them an inflation-busting £900 pay rise last year.

I for one don’t expect to see the triple lock in my lifetime, because I actually read the news, and I am aware that as life expectancy continues to rise, a state benefit this generous will not be a viable thing to force working people to pay for in 40 years. 

I am resigned to the state pension age rising further, too. But there isn’t a lot I can do about that either, other than try to earn more and save more money.

To hear that the Waspis now want millions of pounds more out of the public purse over something they had 15 years to plan around makes me laugh. After all, I was only 17 when I made the call to go to university and saddle myself with some £50,000 of student debt. 

I didn’t know this at the time, but for the rest of my working life, the Government has the right to shift the goalposts of how and when I pay it back. It has done so already and I fully expect it to do so again. It’s a hard thing to plan my life around, but as with everything the Tories have done over the last 14 years I have to shrug it off and move on.

Much has already been made of whether the Waspis had much of a case to begin with. Were they genuinely left in the dark or were their heads in the sand? It’s not for me to say, but what I do know is that today’s young people would be laughed out the door for anything similar. 

Waspis are blissfully unaware that the true state pension inequality is between their generation and mine, and don’t deserve a penny.