To be fair Fatso, if the libraries keep closing where are the young going to drink underage and take drugs behind?
I agree with education and the property market. youth centres, I don’t know. Libraries - given that the youth of today are internet focused, Google is their library. In another twenty years they will cease to exist through lack of demand.
With regards to employment prospects - that’s cyclical. It was fecking hard to get a job the early eighties and definitely in 93 /94 when economy was in the shitter.
Actually with unemployment being low and those in employment being at an all time high, I would suggest prospect are not bad at the moment. The real issue is wages and the pressures keeping that low.
Here are a few reasons why I think my sons have it better than I did; hopefully, they will be enough to persuade them against murdering me in my bed. 
Education: My two sons both gained degrees; one in Japanese Studies, the other in Criminology. When I left school in 1974, less than one in ten people went to university and there was a much smaller range of degrees on offer. Okay, nowadays, students have to take out loans; but neither of my two sons seem that pissed off when their incomes rise to the point that triggers the low-interest repayments on these loans.
Health: Like the majority of kids growing up in the 60s, I had to endure the obligatory but completely unnecessary removal of my tonsils and adenoids - both necessitating week-long stays in hospital. Like everyone else, I also had mumps, measles, German measles and chicken pox, at least two lots of teeth extractions under general anaesthetic, and by the age of sixteen sported a mouth full of mercury fillings. My sons had chicken pox and one tooth filling between them! Not to mention, their projectedlife expectancy is about twenty years more than mine!
Travel: My eldest son had undertaken voluntary work placements in Japan and Nepal and had travelled extensively in Europe and the Far East by his early twenties. Okay, there were intrepid young people back-packing around the world in the 70s; nevertheless, I think it’s fair to say that there are far more opportunities for this type of travel available to young people nowadays. On a smaller scale, a few weeks ago, my youngest son travelled by himself to watch Hamburg v Bayern Munich and, the following night, Ajax v Vitesse Arnhem. By using budget flights, coaches, trains, hostels etc. his travel costs were ridiculously low. Again, I think this type of thing would have been much more problematic to organise in my day.
Access to Information: At the press of a button, my sons can access news or information, study, or interact with their friends or complete strangers anywhere in the world. Access to many museums etc is free.
Tribalism in the UK: My sons have lived in multicultural and multi-ethnic areas of London, Manchester, Sheffield, Cardiff, Bristol and Oxford with very few problems. Growing up in the Isle of Wight in the 70s, me and my mates risked a good kicking if we strayed into the neighbouring village or supported the wrong football team!
Expectations: In my younger days there was a kind of expectation as to how young people should lead their lives: i.e. leave school and get a job straightaway - often the same sort of job as your dad - get married, saddle yourself with a mortgage, have kids, get old and die. These days there is, I believe, a much less regimented attitude to leading an ‘unconventional’ life, being gay, or whatever.
Housing: Okay, there definitely needs to be more affordable housing for young people. People that were able to get on the house-ownership market in the 80s - or even better, the 70s - AND have been able to keep up their mortgage repayments, have benefitted in a way that young people today, and quite probably young people of the future, never will. As for my two sons, however, for the time being at least, they seem to prefer the flexibility of renting.
Papsweb: Just wasn’t around in my younger days. 
4 Likes
Originally posted by @Chertsey-Saint
OK, so the same shit I’ve had to deal with then. Nah, I’m sorry, don’t buy that, just seems like a good old excuse to have a moan.
Yeah, and I’m sure that when an education costs a million in real terms, someone else with just as poor a memory and just as much projection will be making the call.
Probably one of my kids’ generation. “I had to pay 50 grand!” they might say.
And why the fuck did they? Really? We could afford it if we want to, but we’d rather monetise every aspect of human existence.
1 Like
If you’re going to be obtuse about it, then what’s the point in debating. As I’ve said previously with student loans, when you’re starting employment it’s all about how much you pay back, and this generation pay back at a lower rate than I did. The burden only becomes more about the total amount as you get older.
Coming out of university looking for a job to be hit with the recession - check
No university grants - check
Buying our first property 1 year after the financial crash with reduced choice and expensive mortgages - check
Not benefitting from the property booms of the 90’s - check
Woe is me, the Government waged war on me blah, blah, blah…Suck it up and work hard, and you’ll make your way in life.
Some comments.
Originally posted by @Halo-Stickman
Education: My two sons both gained degrees; one in Japanese Studies, the other in Criminology. When I left school in 1974, less than one in ten people went to university and there was a much smaller range of degrees on offer. Okay, nowadays, students have to take out loans; but neither of my two sons seem that pissed off when their incomes rise to the point that triggers the low-interest repayments on these loans.
In 1974, any degree you would have taken would have been seen as an investment by the state. In 2016, anyone looking to go to University is looking at a 50K charge. Additionally, a degree back then was a much more solid pathway into a career. For that reason, and one main other, I don’t think you can look at the range of degrees and say that they are qualititatively any better.
Shit, even kids at decent Universities these days may have to contemplate an unpaid internship to get a top job. This is after they’ve racked up 50K of debt, and before they’ve gotten a paying job. It’s a fucking trap, a way to turn them into debtors before they’re fully formed, to lure them into jobs that may not exist.
Health: Like the majority of kids growing up in the 60s, I had to endure the obligatory but completely unnecessary removal of my tonsils and adenoids - both necessitating week-long stays in hospital. Like everyone else, I also had mumps, measles, German measles and chicken pox, at least two lots of teeth extractions under general anaesthetic, and by the age of sixteen sported a mouth full of mercury fillings. My sons had chicken pox and one tooth filling between them! Not to mention, their projectedlife expectancy is about twenty years more than mine!
Do you think that any youngsters perceive it this way? Did you? It’s only really the comparative experience that has allowed you to make the comment. I’m not saying that the point is invalid; I’m just saying it’s not going to occur to most people, who really don’t consider shit like that (and have no reason to).
Travel: My eldest son had undertaken voluntary work placements in Japan and Nepal and had travelled extensively in Europe and the Far East by his early twenties. Okay, there were intrepid young people back-packing around the world in the 70s; nevertheless, I think it’s fair to say that there are far more opportunities for this type of travel available to young people nowadays. On a smaller scale, a few weeks ago, my youngest son travelled by himself to watch Hamburg v Bayern Munich and, the following night, Ajax v Vitesse Arnhem. By using budget flights, coaches, trains, hostels etc. his travel costs were ridiculously low. Again, I think this type of thing would have been much more problematic to organise in my day.
Over the same period, buses have been deregulated (and fucked up) to such an extent that we’ve lost a billion journeys a year, down from 2bn. Most train routes are subsidised monopolies which are designed to eke maximum revenue from the already-put-out, traffic is near-on unbearable in many parts of the country, and many places lack any sort of capacity to deal with problems, Southampton included.
Access to Information: At the press of a button, my sons can access news or information, study, or interact with their friends or complete strangers anywhere in the world. Access to many museums etc is free.
Your sons probably never had to use the Internet while going through senior school. It’s a double-edged sword, because many of the interactions kids face through “better” communications really aren’t healthy ones. Cyberbullying is another side to that coin, as is very scary stuff like grooming.
How many kids had to worry about getting bothered by that sort of thing? They can’t switch off.
Tribalism in the UK: My sons have lived in multicultural and multi-ethnic areas of London, Manchester, Sheffield, Cardiff, Bristol and Oxford with very few problems. Growing up in the Isle of Wight in the 70s, me and my mates risked a good kicking if we strayed into the neighbouring village or supported the wrong football team!
I’d agree, but only to a point. That point was 2002.
Expectations: In my younger days there was a kind of expectation as to how young people should lead their lives: i.e. leave school and get a job straightaway - often the same sort of job as your dad - get married, saddle yourself with a mortgage, have kids, get old and die. These days there is, I believe, a much less regimented attitude to leading an ‘unconventional’ life, being gay, or whatever.
I think we’re socially less regimented. Financially, little has changed or has actually gotten worse. People aren’t going to reach their full potential if they’re fixated with hand-to-mouth issues. It’s a theoretical freedom for most. I’m sure those with enough cash to fully realise an unconventional life are loving it.
The rest of us have bills to pay.
Housing: Okay, there definitely needs to be more affordable housing for young people. People that were able to get on the house-ownership market in the 80s - or even better, the 70s - AND have been able to keep up their mortgage repayments, have benefitted in a way that young people today, and quite probably young people of the future, never will. As for my two sons, however, for the time being at least, they seem to prefer the flexibility of renting.
So much of that has to do with the loss of council housing stock. When my rellies got their council places in the early 1980s, there was never any expectation that they’d be staying there for life, or that they would be housed in a palace at the taxpayer’s expense. It was always seen as good, solid, affordable accommmodation that would give tenants the financial wriggle room to get on the ladder.
We make our kids fight for the most basic of rights for a third of their lives. We also expect them to pay for us all when we’re older. Those expectations have always been true; they’re not modern. What is new is this fucking crazy idea that the best way to achieve those first two objectives is to financially cripple our young out of the blocks.
1 Like
A thread about Auntie Beeb.
Debates House Prices, Education, the Economy. Cyberbullying.
You’ve only got Football & the Weather to go.
#onlyonsotonians
1 Like
You want Weather? I’ll give you weather.
Bet the bloody Beeb won’t report this #doesnotfitglobalwarmingagenda
It’s been snowing in the UAE
[Sarwat Nasir](http://7days.ae/author/sarwat) | February 18, 2016
Picture courtesy: Facebook user Kamal Nazar
Mountains and a few roadways in the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah were covered in snow over the past two days.
Several residents in the area uploaded pictures of the weather on social media platforms, with many appearing to enjoy the unusual weather in the Northern Emirates.
A hailstorm also struck parts of Dubai on Wednesday followed by heavy rain. Temperatures in Dubai dropped to a low of 15C and the highest was at 23C.
Picture courtesy: Instagram user @mym_mustafa92
Malcolm Ward, a Mirdif resident had told 7DAYS.ae: “After about 5 minutes of hail storm, heavy rain lashed with thunder.”
Also in Ras Al Khaimah, a 25-year-old Emirati mother died and her three children went missingafter their car was swept away in the floodwater in a Ras Al Khaimah wadi on Wednesday evening.
_ sarwat@7days.ae _
I get hammered for that, bias with an agenda…
Labour devalued degrees with a noble cause, not everybody is University capable, me as such and to prove how shit the system is/was I was bored on Grand National day in 2005 and walked into Edge Hill University and was offered a course straight away in criminology or some crap, all nice but worthless from Edge Hill.
I also got pissed that night heavily and woke up in Sefton Park with a random bird, good times.
Sorry, haven’t been online much. Pap has mostly said the things I was referring to.
In addition to those things, youth unemployment is still at some of the highest rates in a generation, cuts are made to services for younger folk - i.e. you aren’t entitled to housing benefits anymore, which of course has seen homelessness rocket under young people. Mental health issues amongst younger people is also soaring, whilst services to help them are again being slashed.
But hey, reactions here definitely don’t prove my point. Statistics for pretty much any pressure demonstrate what I’m saying, but atitudes, as always, are “toughen up”, “kids just whining etc”, “it was much harder in my day”.
Prospects for younger people are diminishing constantly, and yet talk is always of how awful young people are. Young people don’t save enough, don’t plan for the future etc. What is there to plan for? A lifetime of next to no job security, increasingly slim chances of staying in one profession through out your life, living at home until you are 40 or dealing with arsehole and landlords with no secure home. Access to education becoming increasingly harder, especially to those from worse off backgrounds.
All this because previous generations failed to plan ahead. Poor infastructure investment for decades, poor investment in education and constant politicisation of education and then undermining of kids results. A wrecked economy, unprecedented levels of debt, the most unbalanced society, decreased social mobility.
Yeah kids, toughen up. Cherts did it, so stfu.
1 Like
Originally posted by @Barry-Sanchez
Labour devalued degrees with a noble cause, not everybody is University capable, me as such and to prove how shit the system is/was I was bored on Grand National day in 2005 and walked into Edge Hill University and was offered a course straight away in criminology or some crap, all nice but worthless from Edge Hill. I also got pissed that night heavily and woke up in Sefton Park with a random bird, good times.
Probably a good move, Bazza.
You might have ended up as Batman.
Lol. That actually looks like bazza!
1 Like
Russell Group of nothing for me Pap, only the finest and if that can’t be got then bollocks to it.
Originally posted by @Barry-Sanchez
Russell Group of nothing for me Pap, only the finest and if that can’t be got then bollocks to it.
Guess it’ll have to be the Russell Group of nothing then. Is it hard to get in? My mate says “a void”.
On a serious note employers of certain positions will always go for a Russell Group over any other institution, because of my wife I mix with hign brow people who have 2 cars and a spare room etc etc and they say if they take on people for instance in law they will always go for someone who has a 2nd from Durham or Queens over a 1st from John Moores.
3 Likes
Originally posted by @Barry-Sanchez
On a serious note employers of certain positions will always go for a Russell Group over any other institution, because of my wife I mix with hign brow people who have 2 cars and a spare room etc etc and they say if they take on people for instance in law they will always go for someone who has a 2nd from Durham or Queens over a 1st from John Moores.
Aye, but even a crappy John Moores degree still gets you into the professional world. I’ve been unemployed for about a year in eighteen. I’ve even got a spare room!
I agree but my poorly put across point was people thought that as they had a degree they are now in the land of milk and honey, the more courses old polys and institutions did the more money they got and in turn so did the worthless degrees grew, people were hoodwinked but it was their fault in some part as well.
I suppose it matters more you do a degree where there is a need for it as opposed to simply doing a degree, the debt but will slow down bollocks courses but its not by design. An example is my brother who did classics at Kings and is now an accountant.
1 Like
Originally posted by @Barry-Sanchez
I mix with hign brow people who have 2 cars and a spare room
omg the aristocracy
Whew. For a moment there, I thought you were being elitist and trying to wind up people that went to former polytechnics. Saves me pointing out that any degree is infinitely better than none.