DW: Yes, I fully understand that, and the only reason really for writing the book is that I thought that baby boomers would be susceptible to these arguments. If I thought they were just determined completely by some narrow view of their economic self-interest then it wouldn't be worth writing.

And you're right that we worry about the environment. But I also suspect that the amount of energy — literally physical energy, the world's resources in the form of energy — that you and I have consumed getting to our 50th birthdays is considerably greater than our parents, and may well be greater than our kids. I suspect we have left so far quite a heavy footprint on the earth.

FF: Could I argue against the emphasis that David puts on these public choice assumptions? While he stacks up the information, it might be irrelevant. Look at inflation, where David says it just so happens that it came at a very convenient time for the boomers, because they were opening their mortgages. Now it's very convenient for them not to have rising prices. An equally valid interpretation would be that when we were entering that period of hyperinflation the politicians did not know what to do. People were terrified by the inflation, baby boomers as well, and of the social unrest it had brought in other countries, and could have caused here if it had continued at that rate. It may be that we still don't fully understand how we actually deal with inflation. I think there's another huge wave coming up, so we'll be able to test our theories on how we do deal with it. But I don't think that here was a case where people were thinking that they could calm down the politicians because it was in their interest. I don't think that works. 

A similar case applies to the most recent increase in our birth rate through immigration and its consequences. I cannot believe that a Labour government deliberately opened the doors to let in the millions that have been let in just so that they could teach the other side a lesson on loving their neighbour. I think that those who signed the European Union Act did so on the assumption that, even when we joined, the membership of countries was very similar to our own, and therefore you wouldn't expect a huge movement of population within Europe. There would be some. You then get to the next stage, which was never planned, that we should actually extend Europe until you can't see its borders, to countries with living standards that are nothing compared with ours. Of course then there's mass migration of people. And just as the currency is beginning to break up now in the Euro zone and there are questions of how to patch it up with Greece before we have any more talk about expansion, as we have to think how we take control of the movement of people so that some countries are not overwhelmed within the EU. 

Why do these catastrophes happen?  It's partly because politicians cannot see the future. And also, as David knows as well as anybody, because it does actually take quite a long time for a political class first of all to recognise a new problem — hence writing the book — let alone get down to debating what might be done. If you take inflation, we still don't know how to control it, though we've been through one terrible period. And we still don't know how to control migration into this country properly, although now we've got some better ideas than we had. I don't think it's part of any plot. It's about the frailty of the politicians.

DW: Frank is saying that all that this boils down to, essentially, is luck, chance and incompetence — that there are random events, and that politicians are not very good at getting a grip on things. And there are very plausible histories of Britain to be written, and there are some in the High Tory school whose entire account of Britain is in those terms. But I just think that the search for some kind of meaning that helps give a shape to events is very important. 

And again, on the migration issue, I completely agree with your analysis, that this large surge of immigrants worked to the advantage of older, affluent middle-class families in London who wanted au-pairs and plumbers, and worked to the disadvantage of younger people entering the labour force. Now, I would argue, if it had been the other way round — imagine that all those middle-class, middle-aged families were incredibly directly hit by these immigration flows, but a smaller group of younger people gained, then I feel that the political response might have been more rapid and more vigorous. 

FF: On that I would agree, but again it's the "what if?", isn't it? You showed very well in the book that one consequence of the boom has seen the Edwardian service class recreated, but English is not their first language. And a particular group in society has benefited enormously, particularly because they don't have these servants living in with them. It has undermined the position of poorer people's wages, and those of women.