With the revelation that the
population of Britain’s pensioners are now richer than the population of
Britain’s twenty-something’s, I thought about doing something to try and
restore the balance.
My
first thought of, ‘well, we could always ship them off to Poland or somewhere’,
was seemingly short-sighted and idealistic, as of course, we all know,
pensioners love the Spanish Costas. My second thought was more enlightening and
possibly thought provoking, as in the earnest ways in life that things
sometimes just appear to make more sense when you think about them for more
than all of five seconds.
Without
wanting to broach into the ideals of political debate and divulge which one of
the parties is telling the biggest porkies and spinning the biggest web of
deceit this year, I thought I’d cut straight past the endless jargon of policy,
promises, and oh yeah, pillocks, and crack straight on with giving some
insightful information about what the twenty-something’s, (of which I am one
of), can do about all of this, because if there’s one thing people appreciate
more than a promise; it’s the truth.
Let
me start by saying, no, killing them all is not the answer, although if another
seventy something does try and take your seat on the bus, you can always use
the polite excuse of ‘sorry, I paid for mine.’ After all, if these new age pensioners, and let me reiterate,
new age pensioners – not the ones that are eighty years plus, and
have had to endure being shot at in bunkers, locked in air-raid shelters and
live off bread and lard, all things that the currently upcoming generation of
pensioners will have never had to survive – are going to be better off than the
eighties and nineties pool of babies that have grown into a world that has
adapted all but every few seconds, do they not deserve at least to be able to
sit down and dissect the fact that they are poorer than any other segment in
society and poorer than any other generation of twenty-something’s that have
been before them? Quite right.
However,
we can’t just outright blame these new
age pensioners, (yes, I am labelling), for all of this, can we? It’s not their fault they peaked in a generation
of baby booming, back-seat-bonking, rock and rolling, cheeky chappy and flirty
skirty enthusiasts who appreciated nothing more than a good fag after work
before taking syphilis Sheila for a dirty dance in the local working men’s club
where they could inhale a lifetimes worth of tobacco in one sitting. Did
you know seventy percent of men and forty percent of women smoked in the
sixties? And we blame foreign migrants for crippling the NHS!
Oil
and fossil fuels, fishing and mining, the industry of boom – factories
producing cotton and steel, the political downfalls, and community strikes,
uprisings against the world, fighting with green peace, revolutions, saving the
trees but actually killing them all in the same breath, and generally being an
all encompassing over indulgent race were everything was used, abused, churned
out and destroyed; many past the point of return. Split to the generation
before and the generation after this, and both would be fighting in wars in a
world-wide struggle over the control for oil consumption and the balance of
retaining falling empires.
The
fifty years between 1965 and 2015 changed our world. Being twenty in one and
twenty in the other would be like the change in the appearance of Michael
Jackson over the same number of years.
It
wouldn’t be much of an overstatement to say that in short, what a complete mess
was created for today’s twenty-something’s.
However, there is hope.
In
the sixties the best you could wish for in terms of ambition was to go on
holiday to Spain once every two years. We, fortunately, now live in a world
where travel isn’t just accessible, but is a realistic ambition for a section
of society that is beleaguered from every direction and blamed for being the
Playstation generation and idle hoddie wearing dole moles that scrounge off the
estate. On behalf of all twenty something’s, to that, I’d like to say, you
handed this world to us.
In
a job market which is today over-incumbent with data jobs and desk ridden
slavery, guaranteeing you no less than a promise of a no hours contract,
minimum wage pro-ageing anti-democratic working environment, and a quick stop
cash flow injection to get yourself a two bed terraced house in a run-down
council estate, what more could one hope to achieve? Is this not the epitome of
success and making it, in your twenties? Once, maybe. The generation above the
twenty-something’s, now halfway past the duration of their life expectancy,
will gladly tell you that ‘that’s what it’s all about’, and ‘do what you have
to do’. That’s right, that’s what you should do, commit to a twenty year
mortgage that you could ill afford in the first place in an area you wouldn’t wish
your disposed toilet flush to arrive at, just so that you can manoeuvre your
way through the property market until finally at the grand old age of forty
six, you can reach the holy grail and afford a three-bed semi detached house in
a recently built estate where every house is a mirror image of the one opposite,
whilst ever presently maintaining a steady income flowing from an endless
supply of jobs that thrive on turning your brain into a vegetable, and allowing
you to turn up to the pub every once in a while to give yourself a well earned
pint. What a gleaming image of prosperity.
I
mean, what’s the alternative, right?
Potentially,
you could leave this country, and work abroad, most notably in Europe. There’s
this stigma attached to Europe, like it’s some evil place of unending
super-villains that eat olives and drink tequila whilst causing havoc and
mayhem – like the characters on Scooby Doo, minus the tequila and olives – by
taking our jobs, crippling our healthcare, indebting our country further into a
financial meltdown, and driving the cost of a holiday to Tenerife upwards by
the year. But it’s not an all encompassing
evil continent of vastly under-populated cultural possibilities situated a mere
shade across the windy depths of the murky North Sea. Or is it?
Whether
it’s ‘let’s leave Europe’, or ‘don’t let any more migrants into Britain.’ or
‘stop giving money to Greece’, it seems as though the stigma of Britain being
attached to this vast continent of wildly and seemingly boisterous nations all
currently experiencing their own financial meltdown’s and end of the world
approaches to all things bright and beautiful, is captivating our nation into
believing their oppressed views of the big place across the North Sea are one
way or another, correct.
Quite
the opposite, I feel.
If
there’s one thing that today’s twenty something’s can do to get out of this
ever impregnating situation of dire working life’s, miserable looking council
estates, and god forbid, the oppressive generation of forty-sixty something’s
that tell us getting a job is the be all and end all of life, then it’s
travelling around a little bit.
At
26, I found myself wondering if this really is all that there is to Britain.
Having worked across France, Italy, Finland, and travelled around a bit of
Europe, what is to stop me arriving at a destination of no particular name and
getting a job there myself? The answer of course, is nothing. Endless jeers of
‘migrants taking our jobs’, and the like, are really all just a little bit to
say the least, untrue. And, without having the exact figures of this to back me
up, (as I am a piss-poor journalist), but knowing this for a fact, migrants
contribute more to the U.K economy than they indeed take out. So what is to
stop you, twenty-something, from grabbing your things and getting across the
North Sea to a destination of no particular name and getting a job there?
Unfortunately,
I hear a lot of people talk about commitments, i.e. children, mortgages, and
such, but then they complain about the fact that they hate their job and would
love to travel but can’t, and many other oxy-moronic statements that all lead
me to think ‘well, what the hell did you go and have a child and get a mortgage
for then? You idiot’. Why anyone would make a commitment such as lifelong are
children and mortgages, at an age when you should be seeing the world and
making the most of the youth you so naturally bear, is beyond my intelligence.
And quite frankly, as unfortunate as it may be, you only have yourself to
blame. Or maybe it’s the overindulgent breed of people we called parents and
such, that made us believe that this is what we should do in our twenties?
My
point of all of this – as I realise I’m starting to sound like some
underachieving half wit from a deprived part of our world waffling on a whole
hearted rampage about life’s misfortunes in this nonsensical existence we live
– which isn’t exactly a thousand miles away from the truth, is that, even I,
this clueless person of no particular importance, have understood that those
rules, those notions, those ideals that we have been led to believe are
correct, are realistically, as out of date as all of those party popping baby
booming smokaholics are. And I say this, because it is, I feel, of pertinence
that the twenty-something’s of today don’t feel helpless. I know that if I had
the choice to be twenty something of today, and a twenty something of the
swinging sixties, I would choose to be the former – which luckily, I am.
Throughout all of these nonsensical ramblings, my theory I hope, of being in
some way, if at all, encouraging to any one particular person who may or may
not read this, is that we as twenty something’s of today have more than what
any other twenty something’s have ever had, and something far more important
than being able to get a mortgage.
So
here is the truth; we may not be entitled to a free bus pass, we may not be
able to boast about growing up with the Beatles as our soundtrack, or joust in
goofy trousers about our latest golf clubs that we managed to buy with our
insidious wealth called a pension. But we have something that these
coming-of-age pensioners never had. And that is opportunity
