This is the age of the ungrateful generation. The bed blockers who remember the 60s, a fact that annoys the hell out of everyone who missed it. They are the boomers who burst the bubble and then buggered off to the country.
Are they laughing? If they were more grateful they would be. They got a free university education, could cherry pick the job of their parents’ dreams, got great pension plans, and could save up to buy their own homes by the age of 30 and invite their friends around for fondue parties.
They had their annual two weeks holiday at the seaside or ‘abroad’, which usually meant a hovercraft to Calais in a Cortina and a long drive to a hot camping ground. No one cared if they got sunburnt.
Their children were happy playing Pacman on a BBC computer and printing their homework on a dot matrix printer. They didn’t have to move house unless their employer wanted them to. They didn’t want to change jobs because their pension wasn’t transferable. It made them feel secure.
When it came time for the children to go to university they were feeling a little less lucky. But everyone reminded them that they had a free education and they felt lucky again and then that made them feel guilty because they couldn’t afford the fees and their children had to take out loans they could never repay.
Luckily the children came home after university so their parents could make it up to them by supporting them until they were able to get one of the jobs that 200 other people were trying to get. And if the children were unlucky they might not be able to leave home until they were 30 – or until their parents gave them a deposit for a flat, whichever came first.
In spite of all that luck, they remain ungrateful. They don’t even use their free bus passes. In fact, a third of them don’t use it. When asked by the optimistically named International Longevity Centre Think Tank why this was, the ungrateful generation said, presumably in unison, that the bus was “not convenient and does not go where you want”.
The Martians could have told them not to move to the country.
Border Lines 