We know resilience, whether mental, physical or financial is not just a key attribute to success, but to survival. Politics is about people, and I’ve long said we need to teach these things in our schools.
Covid showed how important this is. Isolation and bereavement plus fear of the virus has led to a spike in mental illness. I am no expert on coping strategies but I don’t recall schools teaching this. You may say “Google it, or YouTube it”. I’ve written before about the importance of meditation. We know more schools see the benefit in Assembly and not just hymn singing.
Physical our schools are taking seriously for a long time. But we also know our children are increasingly obese and childhood impacts our adult relationship to food. BAME, ie us, have suffered during Covid due to our health and weight. Because never in human history have peoples moved so quickly without generational acclimatization, so far from the climate and food and activities of their forefathers.
On the flip side many Manchester United fans (see Twitter) have been militantly angry at Marcus Ashford for speaking about hungry school children and not focusing on football – as if he is their slave. Football fans can be the most obnoxious people.
Of course there are those saying that none of this is the State’s responsibility - it is all the fault of parents. That is a political debate.
Finally I come to financial resilience. Much in 2020 was about social mobility, diversity and racism. Lack of financial education must be a huge hinderance. If our schools do not teach it, and if we need it then we can only conclude our parents do not have it – if they did, we wouldn’t need it. And without it we are not financially resilient or socially mobile.
For 2021, as well as feeding hungry school children, protecting us from Covid in schools, our Government should be teaching students not just about hygiene but investing for their futures. All Governments agree it is worthwhile giving tax breaks to savers. It is why we have SIPPs (when I put money in to my SIPP, my tax bill is cut) and ISAs (stock gains in ISA are tax free).
The problem presently is the pension fund industry receives your money and they pay themselves fat fees to buy stocks you could. In fact they usually don’t buy what they should eg Microsoft, but what they shouldn’t eg BP. This is because they are stupid graduates rote taught how to do it what their superiors did (wrong). And second, they set poor benchmarks eg FTSE 100 (it’s same return as 1999 levels).
I hope we will see a new generation of school children learn to save and invest their pension in global shares, rather than have it done for them by poor fund managers. Otherwise they will remain socially poorer than they would otherwise have been.
