Right.
All this is going to be is me spraying some vitriol – if you find that kind of thing tedious then do by all means skip away.
Listening to Radio 4 on the way home today I found they had pasted in a segment from Radio 1s “Newsbeat” in which they asked “young people” (which apparently once you’re past the age of about 24 you’re not one of any more and no-one gives a toss about your opinion) their thoughts on the credit crunch. After roughly twenty seconds of this I was ready to rip my radio from it’s housing and hurl it at the nearest youth and then, while they were stunned, run them down. And then back over them.
It consisted in it’s entirity of clearly ignorant and misinformed cretins saying variations on “Why should I have to pay for the banks going wrong when I had nothing to do with it?” though inexplicably their protest is based entirely on the fact that because they are young they didn’t make the decisions that led to the situation we’re now all in.
I’m sorry, what? Because you are young you feel it is unfair that you have to deal with stuff that older people caused? Grow the fuck up. Welcome to every single person’s life for the past several thousand years. Yes, you have to deal with consequences that you did not cause. No, it’s not fair. Find me something in life that IS fair if you would, please. My dad’s from the baby boom generation – did he want to have chunks of his wages go to deal with the country’s collossal war debt? No, but he did anyway.
One particularly self obsessed little shit was protesting that her desire to go and study law would be hampered by the new tax rate for higher earners. I hate to break it to you dear, but what you actually had was a desire to go and make lots of money. Oh, and incidentally, it shouldn’t be a surprise to you that a Labour government is doing some redistribution of wealth, especially in times of dire financial straits. Oh, you’re a lawyer earning £200,000 a year and you think it’s a shame that some of your money goes towards keeping those who are less fortunate off the streets and back into work? Fuck off and find a country that doesn’t operate a welfare state then. Then you can keep all your money to yourself and use it to pay for your hospital treatment – oh, and make sure you save some for when you’re out of work because you’re getting fuck all jobseeker’s allowance kiddo.
You know how we’ve survived as a race? How we’ve managed to become top dogs on the planet despite the fact that practically everything is bigger, tougher or more poisonous than us? Because we actually co-operate and work together on things. We’re practically the only species on the planet that isn’t genetically programmed to stab and maim anything that stands between us and our goals; we’re capable of realising that sometimes we have to put aside what we particularly desire in order that as a group we can move forward. The sort of selfishness I heard from these young people is the antithesis of that, and if it becomes all pervading then we’re all fucked. We might as well hand over the keys of civilisation to the apes, burn everything we own and stand outside in the snow waiting to be eaten by wolves.
Big fucking wolves.
