If you started from scratch, would you build this?

A reflection on media, fear and the political power of those who no longer work

Opening

Over the past year, I have been spending the vast majority of my time, energy and focus in building several business: andii (an academia SaaS platform) Copper Beech Advisory (high impact strategic consultancy focusing on decarbonised energy infrastructure, AI strategy and executive recruitment) and Copper Beech Studios (a VC incubator platform and advisory board)… all attempts, in their own way, to push something forward. A fairer research system, a smarter energy economy, a better way to launch ideas. We work late. We take risks. We contribute. Not just to GDP, but to what the country could be.

But lately, I have serendipitously found myself relocating to a mid-sized City in the Czech Republic – and the experience has been enlightening. Life here is not perfect. But it is coherent. The same groceries, utilities, and rent cost a fraction of what they do in England. Public transport works. Family and nature still shape the rhythm of life. It feels, somehow, less broken.

And it makes you wonder… how did we let it get this bad?

Back in the UK, a whole generation - my generation - is doing everything we were told to do. Study hard, move to the city, work long hours, create value. But when it comes to buying a home, raising a family, or having a say in the direction of the country - we’re priced out, tuned out, and increasingly opting out.

Compare that to the ease with which our parents, many of them baby boomers, bought homes in their twenties or thirties, often on a single salary. Their wealth today isn’t the result of extraordinary effort or talent. It’s mostly timing. A generational lottery win disguised as prudence. Houses that cost three times their salary in 1990 now cost 12 times of ours. And yet those who were lucky enough to get in early are now the ones shaping policy - to protect what they have. They are, quite literally, the unproductive elite - no longer working, but still writing the rules.

And what do they vote for?
- Not housing reform.
- Not climate adaptation.
- Not modernisation.
But preservation. At any cost.

Meanwhile, those building the future; technologists, educators, founders, creators - are treated like afterthoughts in a national script obsessed with yesterday.

But here’s the twist. The next wave of wealth born of AI, network leverage, and global arbitrage won’t come from pensions or passive property. It will come from creation.
And my generation is building the infrastructure to receive it.

For now though, it still feels like we’re building in the shadows of policies made for people who already have. Still, we build. Because the future doesn’t come from fear, it comes from those willing to imagine something different.

A Nation Preserved, Not Progressed

Britain, it pains me to state, has become a country that rewards preservation over progress.

Look closely at its incentives; fiscal, cultural, political. They aren’t aligned with innovation or contribution, they’re structured to protect those who already hold capital - property, pensions, influence. The more you own, the more the system bends to accommodate you. The less you disrupt, the more you're rewarded. We’ve built a country where economic power is no longer earned, it’s defended. Where policymaking defers not to the future, but to the fears of the past. Where national priorities are shaped not by the productive, but by the protected.

It’s a quiet betrayal, hidden in plain sight. The evidence is structural:

The Triple Lock ensures pensions rise faster than wages, even as working-age support is cut.

Capital Gains Tax exemptions on primary homes allow vast untaxed wealth growth - but PAYE wages are taxed at source.

Right to Buy and Help to Buy inflated property prices under the banner of aspiration, while quietly transferring public wealth to private landlords.

Planning law gives extraordinary power to local resistance - blocking new homes, infrastructure, even solar farms.

Inheritance tax thresholds and allowances quietly ensure wealth is kept within families, not circulated across society.

And then there was Brexit....(dare I open that can of worms?)…not a leap into the future, but a retreat into memory. Sold as sovereignty, fuelled by fear, rooted in a nostalgia that blurred fact and fantasy. It was less a vote for what could be, and more a plea to resurrect what never fully was. A rejection of interdependence dressed up as independence. And who voted for it, overwhelmingly? Not the workers building tomorrow, but the homeowners guarding yesterday. Not the young who will live with its consequences, but the older, asset-rich voters who felt their version of Britain slipping away. For them, it wasn’t just a referendum. It was a restoration.

Britain today feels less like a nation-state and more like a museum run by its gift shop, more interested in selling postcards of what we once were than designing what comes next. And behind the velvet rope, a new generation is asked to tiptoe…not question.

The Media Mirror

If government is the machinery of preservation, then legacy media is the mirror that flatters it.

The Daily Mail, The Times, and The Telegraph don’t just report the news - they reflect back a version of reality calibrated for their most loyal readers. And those readers? They are overwhelmingly older, wealthier, and conservative.

Each outlet plays a distinct role in the preservation machine:

The Daily Mail is the emotional core stoking fear, outrage, and moral panic. It speaks directly to “Middle England,” reinforcing anxieties about crime, immigration, and cultural change. Its pages feature headlines like, all designed not to inform - but to agitate:

“Britain’s Lawless Streets”
“Now Migrants Get Free Homes While You Wait”
“Fury as Eco Mob Blocks Ambulance”

The Times is the velvet glove of the establishment. Cooler in tone but aligned in interest. It reassures its readers (often affluent professionals and retirees) that the status quo is essentially wise, that slow reform is preferable to real change, and that radical ideas are a threat to “stability.”

The Telegraph is the ideological spear, advocating with confidence for low taxes, deregulation, landlord rights, and cultural conservatism. It doesn’t ask questions. It sets battle lines:

“Starmer’s War on Property Owners”
“The Left’s Plot to Steal Your Pension”
“Young People Don’t Want to Work — They Want Power”

Together, they create a feedback loop for the over-55s - converting concern into fear, and fear into policy pressure. And it’s not just newspapers. Broadcast media has followed suit.

The BBC, once the anchor of balanced public discourse, has become cautious…fearful of offending either side, and increasingly distrusted by both. Meanwhile, GB News and other reactionary platforms offer a constant stream of cultural grievance usually framed as the “real voice of Britain” under attack. But the most profound shift is what’s replacing legacy media in younger circles.

Podcasts, YouTube channels, Substacks, often independent, often messy (and often contradictory), are now the go-to sources for political thought and current affairs among under-40s. Here, nuance can flourish, but so can misinformation. The result? Generational information ecosystems with almost no overlap.

One group watches the 6 o’clock news, another listens to Diary of a CEO or The Rest is Politics. One reads about “youth crime” and “immigration surges”; the other watches TikToks on renter rights, mental health, or AI optimism. They’re not just reading different headlines. They’re living in different realities.

And it’s the older one who is richer in assets, higher in turnout - that still sets the national score to which the nation dances too.

The Economic Footprint vs The Political Shadow

Here’s the paradox at the heart of modern Britain: the groups doing the least to drive the economy are the ones most empowered to shape it.

The average Telegraph or Daily Mail reader is in their late 50s or older. Many are retired, semi-retired, or working reduced hours. They no longer build companies, teach in classrooms, drive buses, or write code. But they do vote — in droves. They call their MPs, join residents' associations, block housing developments, dominate planning consultations. And the system of course listens -because they’re always there.

Meanwhile, the younger half of the population (the true and future economic core) is doing the heavy lifting. We build the companies, staff the NHS, launch the startups, teach the students write the code etc. etc. We pay the PAYE, the VAT, the council tax, and the capital we don't have yet. But our voices don’t echo with the same force.

1. Labour vs Leverage

Only 4.5% of the UK workforce is over 65, yet this age group makes up almost 25% of voters. By contrast, those aged 25–49, who comprise 52% of the total UK workforce, hold only 22% of the nation’s wealth.

The over-70s now pay more in income tax than under-30s, but this says more about stagnant youth incomes than it does about senior productivity. Most pensioners today benefit from generous DB schemes and multi-decade property growth. They’re not producing value – they are extracting past value.

What drives today’s GDP? What builds the next generation of wealth?
Not assets, nor dividends but labour, time, risk and imagination.

2. Wealth Inequality Is Generational

• Median wealth of 60–64-year-olds: ~£550,000

• Median wealth of 30–34-year-olds: ~£60,000

• 83% of Daily Mail readers own homes - 69% own them outright

• Meanwhile, only 28% of under-35s own a home, many in negative equity or poor-quality housing

And the tax code? Designed to protect the past:

• No capital gains tax on primary residences

• Inheritance tax thresholds rising quietly each year

• Low property taxes by international standards

• Preferential treatment for pensions, dividend income, and trust funds

We’ve built a system where someone sitting on £1.5m of housing equity and modest pension income pays less tax than a software engineer renting in Leeds.

3. Civic Saturation vs Exhaustion

In the 2019 general election:

• 80% of over-65s voted

• 54% of under-35s did

• Just 47% of 18–24s turned out

The civic gap isn’t closing, it’s widening. Britain doesn’t just have an economic divide but it also has a increasingly widening and worrying participation divide. Meanwhile, the over-55s (many of whom are no longer economically active) still dominate the democratic stage and are embedded within the system. In party associations, community councils, planning boards. They are civically saturated… they have the time, the leverage, and the newspapers to back them. They don’t just vote, they shape the entire menu of what can be voted on.

And for younger voters? We get to choose between two parties competing to sound least threatening to Surrey retirees. But it’s not just apathy, it’s exhaustion…Younger citizens face:

• Insecure housing

• Skyrocketing rents

• Precarious work

• Student debt

• Mental health crises

• Political disillusionment

We’re not disengaged because they don’t care. We are disengaged because the system never cared back. What time is left to read a manifesto, a novel or create art when you're trying to juggle freelance work, childcare, and a broken rental boiler?

4. The Emerging Productive Class

But here’s what’s quietly changing: A new generation is learning to build - outside the old gatekeepers.

Projects we’re building like andii, Copper Beech Advisory, Copper Beech Studios aren’t just startups — they’re infrastructure. They are the signals of where the next wave of GDP, of global relevance, of technological leverage will come from. We are no longer waiting to be handed the keys - we’re building the house next door.

AI, automation and global collaboration are not just abstract trends, they are the tools that will generate a massive wealth transfer in the coming decades. From boomer portfolios to post-industrial vision. But until then, we live in a country where the unproductive shape the agenda, and the builders are expected to wait their turn.

Fear-Based Narratives and Capital Protection

If economic inequality is the structure, then fear is the glue.

Preservation doesn’t happen passively, it needs fuel - and nothing fuels reactionary politics like fear. Fear of crime, fear of immigration, fear of TikTok - fear of everything and anything new. And no one manufactures fear quite like Britain’s legacy media.

1. The Crime Machine

Statistically, violent crime in Britain has declined over the past two decades.
But you wouldn’t know it from the headlines.

“Feral Youths in City Centre Chaos!”
“Is ANYONE Safe on Our Streets?”
“Eco Mob Blocks Ambulance — Again!”

These aren’t headlines, they are sedatives disguised as stimulants designed to reassure an older, anxious readership that vigilance equals safety, and change equals danger. Like a daily vitamin drip of fear: taken in the morning with breakfast, chased with property market graphs and advice on where not to move. Never mind that violent crime has dropped, that net migration supports the NHS, youth unemployment is falling etc. etc... What matters is the story feels true - because fear, unlike facts, doesn’t need to be updated.

2. Immigration: From Headline to Headlock

Immigration is now treated not as a policy lever, but as a threat level. It’s classed as a moral emergency and framed as a national identity crisis. From the Rwanda deportation scheme to moral panics over migrant hotels, the tone is not: “What’s the fairest policy?”, it’s: “How do we stop them?”

Older voters, many of whom are financially secure, live in low-density areas, and are demographically insulated from the day-to-day impacts of immigration. They are told, daily, that the country they knew is disappearing.

Nigel Farage on GB News. Nick Ferrari on LBC. Richard Littlejohn in the Mail.
Each one acting less like a journalist and more like a heritage tour guide: nostalgic, aggrieved, and armed with a microphone.

But the deeper fear isn’t about population numbers, it’s about loss of control, loss of cultural primacy and loss of certainty. The media doesn’t inform them of this loss, it confirms it – repeatedly.

3. The Youth Menace

There is no group more frequently misrepresented, and more politically useful, than young people. We are framed as lazy, ungrateful, over-sensitive, under-committed, and somehow also dangerously radical.

One week it’s:

“Young People Won’t Work: Woke Culture Kills Ambition.”

The next:

“Just Stop Oil Zealots Are Holding Britain Hostage.”

It’s whiplash journalism, but unfortunately it works because the real message isn’t about consistency, it’s about reminding older readers: they are not like you. They want to take something from you.

4. Housing: Fortress, Temple, Inheritance

What is the ultimate object of fear, one may ask themselves, and one could argue - the British home. It’s not just a place to live - it’s the pension, the status symbol, the inheritance plan. And anything that might devalue it such as new housing, immigration and renters' rights becomes a threat. Even climate upgrades like heat networks or energy retrofits are viewed with suspicion.

“Will this affect my property value?”
“What if my street changes?”

Behind the curtain of policy resistance is a basic emotional truth… housing is sacred.
And sacred things invite defensiveness.

5. From Wealth Advisor to News Anchor

It’s not just newspapers, however. Whole industries exist to soothe the anxious investor. Wealth management firms, pension advisors, buy-to-let influencers - they all echo the same narrative:

“Governments are coming for your assets.”
“Don’t let renters steal your capital.”
“Inflation is fake news — hold property.”

Even the BBC, once a bastion of balance, now treads carefully, too cautious not to upset either tribe. And where it hesitates, GB News leaps:

“Homeowners Betrayed by Woke Elite”
“The Real Victims? Middle England.”

This isn’t journalism, it’s therapy - for people who already won the game.

6. Fear is Expensive

The cost of all this?

• Delayed climate action because homeowners resist green upgrades

• Housing shortages because every new build is framed as a risk

• Immigration gridlock because newspapers weaponise migration

• Stalled generational progress because the young are framed as unstable radicals

Fear is not just a feeling, it’s a political weapon - and it’s being used to freeze Britain in place. Fear in Britain isn’t just emotional - it’s strategic. It protects assets, punishes change, and repackages preservation as patriotism.

But not everywhere. In other countries, particularly Scandinavia, there are no such echo chambers. People still trust institutions, voters of all ages share the same news and fear hasn’t yet become national policy.

The Scandinavian Contrast

If fear governs Britain, trust governs the Nordics.

Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland consistently rank among the highest in the world for civic trust, institutional legitimacy, and public satisfaction. Their media doesn’t need to shout. Their policies don’t need to pander. Their citizens, old and young, don’t live in separate realities. The contrast is not just ideological. It’s structural.

1. Shared Information Ecosystems

In the UK, 65-year-olds read the Telegraph, 25-year-olds scroll TikTok.
Their worldviews barely overlap.

In Sweden, a 25-year-old and a 70-year-old are both likely to watch the same public broadcaster (SVT), or read from a national paper with editorial integrity. Debate still happens, disagreements exist. But the frame is shared. Because the media isn’t chasing engagement - it’s building trust. Even tabloids in Scandinavia operate within agreed norms, there’s less space for the kind of moral panic headlines that dominate UK discourse. And because readers still trust their outlets, fear doesn’t spread unchecked.

2. Equal Civic Participation

In the UK, elections are won by whomever pleases the over-55s.

In Sweden, 82% of 18–29-year-olds voted in the last national election, almost identical to turnout among seniors. Youth aren’t an afterthought, they are a political force.

The result? Policies don’t just cater to homeowners and retirees, they invest in families, education, renters, and the future. They fund innovation, green infrastructure, and affordable housing - not because they’re “nice ideas,” but because the people voting for them exist in the system.

3. Consensus-Based Politics

Scandinavian countries tend to operate via coalition governments, proportional representation, and political compromise. That means winning doesn’t mean crushing your opponents, it means working with them (crazy idea I know…) As a result, policy becomes slower, yes, but also more durable, less reactive and more generationally balanced.

When Sweden reformed its pension system in the 1990s, it wasn’t blocked by retirees fearing change. Instead, five of seven major parties agreed on the model and sacrifices were shared. The result? One of the most sustainable pension systems in Europe.

Imagine that level of compromise in Westminster.

4. Housing Without NIMBYism

In Denmark and Sweden, housing is seen as a public good, not a zero-sum game.

There are still local debates, but new developments aren’t met with existential panic.
Older voters don’t reflexively block housing for fear it might “ruin the view” or “bring the wrong people in.” Because when you don’t treat your house as a retirement fund, your politics changes.

Trust in the system = flexibility within the system.

5. What Trust Makes Possible

• More intergenerational solidarity

• More climate action

• More policy innovation

• Less media-induced fear

Scandinavian societies are not utopias, but they have made one crucial decision: to trust each other more than their fears. And that decision changes everything.

Personal Reflection – A Czech Bridge

Living in Ostrava, you start to notice what isn’t broken. There are no culture war headlines plastered across supermarket shelves, no morning radio hosts railing about migrants or gender (at least to my knowledge given my basic understanding of the Slavic toungue), and no daily sense of national decline – but rather opportunity and a future.

Instead, there's coherence. Food, bills and services cost significantly less. Public services work. You can get from one side of the city to the other without needing a car, a workaround, or a survival instinct. People walk, they gather, share stories. They trust each other - maybe not completely, but enough.

And the politics? I haven’t lived here long enough to fully understand but my feeling and from initial conversations indicate that whilst it is messy, slow and sometimes frustrating (as is the general feeling of politics around the world), it is’t poisoined. Czechia isn’t Sweden, but it’s not Britain either. And in that middle space, you start to realise: the UK didn’t have to become this way… it chose it.

If You Started From Scratch, Would You Build This?

Strip away the flags, the nostalgia, the property supplements and the morning radio outrage. Strip away what you inherited, and I ask you to look, just for a moment, at what we’ve built.

Would you design this?

A country where those who no longer work decide the fate of those who do. Where houses are tax shelters, not homes. Where fear makes front pages, and creation is pushed to the margins. Where the most influential voters read only of what might be lost, never of what could be gained.

Would you build a nation whose policies are shaped by asset preservation instead of imagination? Whose youngest builders live under a system designed to protect what their parents bought by accident?

Or would you build something else?

Something built on contribution, not nostalgia. On shared reality, not weaponised headlines. On the belief that society should serve the future, not just guard the past.

We’re not the first country to face this imbalance. Others chose differently:

• They built trust.

• They built consensus.

• They built homes, not talking points.

• They taxed capital when it mattered.

• They remembered that democracies, like houses, fall apart when only one generation holds the keys.

This country wasn’t designed to fail its future. But it was redesigned, carefully, to protect its past. And unless we change direction, that redesign will become destiny.

So if you started from scratch today, with nothing to defend and everything to imagine, would you build this? Or would you build something better?

Because someone will – history tells us that someone always does. The only question is whether we’ll be too busy protecting our fears to notice.

- AK x