We’re the responsible half million — and they treat us like idiots

I’M writing this on my 53rd birthday. No, it’s okay, don’t worry, this is still a political column. I’m not on the cadge.

I got loads of cards and presents, from all the people I would hope to hear from. If you want to drop me a line saying I don't look a day over 35, feel free. If, on the other hand, some of my other occasional correspondents feel moved to tell me that I've already outlived my usefulness, let me save you the trouble. I already know you can't please all the people all the time.

One of the things about birthdays, especially at the advanced and increasingly decrepit age I've reached, is that you fall to thinking as the day goes on. The occasional melancholy thought will creep in after all, in another 53 years I'll be 106, and what's likely to happen then? But mostly I've been thinking about how many of us there are, us mid-40s to mid-50s lot, and what it is we have in common.

There are a lot of us in my age category. Last time we were formally counted, there were 412,047 of us altogether, 208,634 men and 203,413 women between the ages of 45 and 54. (When the current census has been counted, I expect it will show that we have increased to about half a million.) And we're the worriers. That's what we do at our age, and what we have in common. We worry about everything. I think we should be called the worrying class.

We worry about the fact that the more we exercise the stiffer we seem to get, the more we diet the less it seems to work. We worry about the big things, like whether Padraig Harrington will win a Major this year, and the little things, like whether Bertie will be comfortable in the new jet.

But most of our worries are what you might call selfish. Only I don't think so. The half-million members of the worrying class have to be concerned about all the things that keep us and our families afloat.

Because here's a fact. In addition to the half-million of us, our population includes (again, at last count) 859,424 children up to the age of 14; 339,536 young people between the ages of 15 and 19; and 293,354 between the ages of 20 and 24.

That's almost one and a half million people, the vast majority of whom depend, first and foremost, on us. No wonder we have to worry on average, each of us has three others depending on us. In a great many cases, we're the key to their future. We have to worry about childcare and nappies, about juvenile infections, about bullying in the schoolyard, about the quality of primary education, about the cost of visiting a GP, about what happens when teenagers go out at night, about young people starting to drive, about smoking and drinking and drugs, about jobs and redundancies and pensions, about taxes and social security. We barely have time to worry about love and death and the pursuit of happiness. In fact, when you join the worrying class, the pursuit of happiness nearly always revolves around the happiness of the next generation.

That's why inflation matters to us. It's why the cost of education and healthcare matters. It's why we worry about the cost of mortgages and food. It's why we grapple with all sorts of contradictions in our lives.

For instance, those of us who own our own homes don't want to see house prices falling through the floor. But those of us with three children ready to leave home desperately want houses to be affordable for them.

A man said to me last week (and I'm repeating it as another example of the contradictions we live with): "You know what drives me mad about the Government? Last year they were egging us on to put every penny of disposable income we had into SSIAs. This year they are demanding that we use every penny of disposable income to pay third-level fees for our kids.

"How do they expect us to cope with contradictory demands like that?"

At least that's one contradiction that seems to have passed, at least for the moment.

But you know one other thing that we members of the worrying class have in common? We vote.

You might remember a lot of publicity a couple of weeks ago about a survey published by the Central Statistics Office which showed that young people aren't voting much any more. The data, based on the Household Survey, showed that just over 40% of young people aged 18-19, and only 53% of those aged 20-24, indicated that they voted in the last election.

Over a third of non-voters indicated that they had either no interest in the outcome of the election, or were disillusioned, felt their vote would make no difference, or lacked understanding of the issues involved.

These figures have been noted, not surprisingly, as a disturbing trend.

But what did the survey say about us, the worrying class? It said that almost 90% of us voted the last time, and most of us vote all the time.

Wouldn't you think, then, that we'd be listened to? But that's one of the most worrying things of all. We're not. We're lectured to, patronised, bombarded with clichés and claptrap morning noon and night. We're promised reports about the things that are most worrisome, or forced to listen to almost daily interviews with ministers about the divil and all that they're about to do. They behave half the time as if they have only just arrived in Government, when we know they have been there for years. We get everything from them, except action. And they never, ever, seem to listen.

There is a growing, almost an aching demand among the worrying class for some intelligent politics. We're adult, experienced and, by-and-large, not dumb. We know there aren't instant solutions for every problem. But we need to know there is a sense of priorities. We need to know that there is some sophisticated analysis going on behind the scenes.

Many of us would be willing to contribute to a fund if it would keep some of the more garrulous windbag ministers locked in their departments for a week or two, listening to some decent professional advice rather than constantly telling us the first thing that comes into their heads.

Wouldn't it be great if we could all relax about the major issues of public spending, the management of resources, the building of a strong economy and cohesive society? Wouldn't it be a relief all round to think that our government was actually engaged in some careful planning, some rigorous management of situations, some long-term thinking about our future?

We shouldn't have to be worrying about what a hopeless, dim-witted shower of short-term thinkers they are, and longing for the day when we can get rid of them.

After all, at our age, haven't we enough to be worried about without worrying about them too?