What comes around goes around. The big wheel keeps on turning.
In my lifetime dungarees have come and gone a couple of times, as have turned up jeans and countless other fashion faux pas / strokes of genius depending on your view.
Strangely double breasted suits are yet to reappear from their late 80s high point. Rest assured that they will one day.
Some may of thought that Messrs Botham, Gatting et al. had consigned beards to history some 30 odd years ago. Yet here they are again in full bloom.
And amongst the most fashionable beard sporters is the Right Honourable Member for Islington North. Better known as Jeremy Corbyn.
As surely as eggs are eggs I expect him to be Prime Minister after the next election.
The reason is relatively simple. It has little to do with personalities and policies and everything to do with the big wheel that keeps on turning.
As a youngster I was exposed to regular moaning and groaning about completely shambolic publicly owned services, strikes, unions, 3-day weeks, oil crises etc. etc.
All the stuff that lead to Mrs T being whole heartedly elected three times.
People simply wanted change. They did not give two hoots about the “cost” of so doing. A generally vilified political outsider found herself centre stage.
And so it is now.
All the stuff from the 70s is irrelevant to anyone under the age of 40.
They simply don’t know what it was like and/or were never told about it. Their frames of reference are completely different.
What happened in our pasts is completely irrelevant to them and their futures.
There are something like 16m voters aged 18-35. That’s about 30% of the total electorate. That group is growing as previous electors shuffle of their mortal coils.
They are much more likely to have been fed on a diet of “Look what Thatcher destroyed”, “Look at the wars Blair started”, etc.
These are the people that will be electing the next Government. They don’t care where the money comes from.
They care about student debt and rent control, about “fairness” and “equality”. These are the trends now.
And so, as with everything else in life, we’ve come full circle.
It may have taken the best part of 50 years but the “proper” left will have their day again and there’s nothing that can be done to stop it.
And understand this:
Anything and everything that happens will have almost zero effect on your carefully constructed, expertly managed financial plan.
Risk management is all about maximising the areas where we have some control over the outcome while minimising the areas where we have no control.
That means pursuing a sensible, coherent strategy, come what may and not engaging in knee jerk event driven reactions, regardless of what we might think of them.
future proofing your finances
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