Millenials Don’t Matter. And Now, Neither Do The Elderly.

“Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings.” – Helen Keller

Regulars will know that as I have advanced in years, the cynic in me has become ever so smug and sure of itself. Recent events have reinforced my cynic’s pomposity and self-righteousness and it has taken great delight in reminding me how it has guided me over the years. It reminds me that I never believed the “we are the world-hold hands around the campfire-polysexual-post racial-kumbaya singing-uber tolerant-culturally homogenous” society existed and I tried to tell people so. Which makes me seem like some sort of fatalistic dick and not a person genuinely seeking to remove some people’s blinkers, but the cynic just wants me to feel superior so it doesn’t give a **** where my validation comes from. The cynic jabs and prods and likes to think it’s responsible for any disagreements, observations or musings that I have. But what my cynic doesn’t know is that it’s the optimist in me that responds to the increasing lack of social justice, right-wing demagoguery, cultural destruction and politically compromised, inept leadership. That’s right. I may be a pragmatist but I’m waayyyyyyy more optimistic than cynical. That’s why I love millenials. If they can be optimistic after having their futures raped and their present limited by the Baby Boomers, how can I do any less?

As usual I digress, but only ever so slightly. In seeking out optimistic (but not deluded) perspectives over the past few years I found myself consistently encountering one demographic above any other. People who are genuine in their desire to effect world change, protect the planet that we share and share what the planet has blessed us with. And of course I mean millennials. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a bunch of them that get on my very last nerve. Being a vegetarian is a dietary choice, not a revolutionary act so get over yourself Sebastian, I don’t empathise with your guilt at having grown up with money and the poor ****ing native who you befriended on the beach hut in Gambia is not happy in poverty, he’s just being nice so that you give him a tip large enough that it will likely feed his family for a month but means you can’t have that extra cocktail you don’t need. So yeah, like every segment of society they have a number of twats in their ranks but I’d venture that they have far less in their numbers than other demographics. But hey, that’s just my opinion, not a fact.

Millenials have been screwed over by our political class and dumped on from a great height by the baby boomers and their offspring. Free university education? Piss off you ungrateful sods – we didn’t have the opportunities you’ve got now. It was a job for life in the factory or down the pit. Pensions? You having a laugh? We worked hard rebuilding this country (after the war(s)/recession etc) so the least the country can do now is look after us in our golden years. Plus we vote and if you try to remove the triple lock on our pensions we’ll really **** you up. What do you mean there’s no jobs? You need to get on your bikes and stop pissing about on the interweb you little shites. There wasn’t any of that online surfer nonsense in our day; we waited by the post box for letters to our job applications so count yourselves lucky. And stop being whiny little bitches about Brexit and Trump - **** your globalist, inclusive, immigrant hugging, refugee loving, hippy claptrap. I/my dad/my uncle fought for this country in the war to protect us from them darkies/Arabs/Muslims/immigrants.

You get the gist. Millenials have been taken for granted by politicians who take the opinions of bitter octogenarians hankering for the days of empire, over the progressive liberalism and internationalist thinking of their descendants. It has always been thus, but never as profoundly as today. Old people vote and more importantly to the Tories, wealthy old people who are more likely to vote Tory vote. The elderly seem to have abdicated any responsibility for the future of their grandchildren and have voted en masse to ‘return’ to a time of more certainty, when the world made sense. Or at least that’s what they think. Because things are also changing for the worse for the elderly too. Under this government, no one is safe.

According to The Observer the Chancellor failed to identify a serious financial crisis brewing within the care system for the elderly. 77 of the 152 local authorities responsible for providing care for the elderly have seen at least one residential and nursing care provider close in the last six months, because cuts to council budgets meant there were insufficient funds to run adequate services. In approximately 30% of the boroughs, they have seen a company that provides care for the elderly cease to trade and in 40% of the councils, new care arrangements have had to be identified because providers have handed back services to local authorities due to their inability to sustain their businesses on what the council could afford to pay them. The most optimistic estimates suggest that an immediate injection of £2.6 billion is needed to plug the funding gap and the fact that this is an oversight by our government appears indicative of ineptitude at best and indifference at worst. Maybe they’re just not the right kind of elderly; too poor to be Tory voters therefore too insignificant to care for. I hope I’m wrong but in this age of claim and counter-claim where facts are an inconvenience, would it be that surprising if I’m right?

At these times we all feel like we’ve made mistakes. And the painful, private truth of each of us is that we feel like the mistake was ours, for trusting them – whoever ‘them’ might be.