Inside Money: Intergenerational war gets serious

9:30 AM Thursday Jul 19, 2012

Will the Babyboomer rights movement turn violent? Photo / Thinkstock

Hundreds of still-burning mobility scooters and crushed Zimmer frames litter the streets of Wellington tonight after a Babyboomer Rights (BBR) rally turned violent.

Riot police moved in to disperse the crowd earlier today when thousands of BBR protestors threatened to storm Te Papa museum, apparently mistaking it for the Beehive.

Police Minister, Sir Colin Mathura-Jeffree (allegedly 28), justified the brutal crackdown on cultural grounds.

"Sir Peter Jackson was opening his Hobbit retrospective this afternoon," Sir Colin said. "We couldn't have all those nasty brown polyester slacks and lime jumpsuits frightening off the tourists. OMG! Just imagine the clash."

The Wellington BBR rally followed a string of similar protests across the country, sparked initially by the refusal of high-profile pensioner activist Winston Peters (105) to pay the $1 fare and surrender his now illegal Gold Card to a Tauranga bus driver.

Prime Minister Hickey (26), formerly Spokesperson for Everything, had labeled the Peters' Gold Card incident as "just another example of the intergenerational theft we've come to expect from Babyboomers".

In a call Skyped from his Cook Islands winter retreat, Peters, also a former Spokesperson for Everything, defended his action on cultural grounds.

" These people have worked hard all my life and they're just not going to stand for it any more," Peters said before slumping into a Lazyboy, clutching a cardboard box to his chest. "And look at me, look at me. I'm reduced to cask wine, cask wine..."

Technical glitches, said to be a bug in the Skype network, cut short the message, however, a BBR spokesperson confirmed Peters was currently hooked up to a cask-wine drip for medicinal purposes.

The BBR spokesperson also revealed the pensioner lobby group had launched a class action against Generations X and Y in a bid to recoup the years wasted raising them.

"If we hadn't spent all those miserable hours singing them the alphabet song they wouldn't even know what generation they belonged to," the spokesperson said.

Recently-appointed Chief Justice, David Dotcom (24), said he would give the BBR case a fair hearing despite declaring on his Facebook page that anyone aged over 30 was "the enemy".

"Where did you get that information? I consider that a gross breach of my privacy," Dotcom said via Twitter.

By David Chaplin

LEZ (New Zealand) | 10:26AM Thursday, 19 Jul 2012

Baby boomers is boring and a have. Millions died during the war. If there were no war the problem would be worse. What the problems are, is the world governments not taking responsibility for world population. We have births, deaths and marriages census high speed computers but nobody to analyse the real problems. Bunch of donkeys

Richard D (Tauranga) | 10:26AM Thursday, 19 Jul 2012

Careful you don't end up in a 'I am more sarcastic and insulting than you' cigar and red wine duel at 12 noon drinkies with Bob Jones. You are encroaching on his territory, watch your wine cellar.

Gerard K () | 11:22AM Thursday, 19 Jul 2012

If by "the war" you are referring to world war 2 and not "the great war" WWI then the baby boomers weren't born yet. They were conceived during all the celebrating at the end of world war 2.

Then they proceeded to grow up redefining the term self centered and set about an economic and ecological rampage the likes the world has never seen. The likes my generation have to suffer through.

I grew up respecting my elders who were the parents of the baby boomers an now the baby boomers are the "elders" who want the respect they haven't done a thing to earn nor do they behave in such a way as to deserve.