Who will take up the cause of the shat upon generation?

Sometimes as a millennial it can feel that the world is against you. It is often stated that we are likely to be the first generation who are worse off than our parents. Housing is prohibitively expensive, jobs are less secure and pay less, whatever future we have is likely to be blighted by environmental disasters, economic instability and decades of Tory rule.

Sometimes it feels as if the planet itself is trying to crush our generation. Then I realise that it is not the world that is against us, it is one group in particular: the baby boomers.

The baby boom generation is pretty open about its hostility to my generation. Hardly a day can go by without an opinion piece accusing my generation of being entitled and lazy. Entitled seems to mean having the chutzpah to demand an affordable place to live and a decent job. That must seem like an outrageous demand to a generation who grew up with full employment and readily available council housing.

I was 22 when the 2008 financial crash occurred. I don't remember there being many people my age making the top decisions in banks and government, taking liberal advantage of the revolving door between public and private sector, leveraging as much debt as possible then taking a sledgehammer to the global economy. I don't remember there being many people my age deciding to invade Iraq and creating the conditions for a medieval death cult to grow and spread terror all over the world.

From where I stand there is only one generation that felt entitled enough to act as if there was no consequences to their actions. They are not the generation that suffers the consequences of every bad decision of the last 15 years.

There weren't many people from my generation who made the decision to sell off our council houses and not replace them. Nor are there many people of my generation in government failing to do anything to tackle the housing crisis or running developer firms that sit on land to keep the value of the few properties they do build high. It wasn't our decision to let house building fall to the lowest point since the 1920s.

It is my generation sitting in unsafe, expensive rental accommodation with little rights, while the prospect of owning our own home moves away faster than a space shuttle taking off. Apparently we're a spoiled and entitled generation, but if baby boomers were forced to deal with the rental market as it currently stands, you can bet reform would be top of all partys’ agendas. Instead we get useless advice and contempt for our problems, such as claiming that the reason why we cannot afford a house is because we spend too much on avocado toast.

So who is going to take up the cause of the shat upon generation? There is a general election going on, which means that someone should at least pretend to care about us. Which party wants to correct this injustice? Not the Tory Party: the only contact their leaders have with young people are Young Tories, who wear suits and take briefcases to uni lectures. The sort of people who probably get central London flats as a first birthday present.

Labour under Jeremy Corbyn has a lot of support amongst younger people. Although baby boomer columnists are pretty keen to pour scorn on our desire for a politics that is not complete cynical, from the comfort of homes that they could afford on a journalist’s salary. That is when they’re not using said columns to tell other baby bombers that we’re entitled and deserve the shit we get.

Now 60% of people in poverty are working families, which creates the feeling that society consists of a large number of people working hard and impoverishing themselves for the benefit of a rich, older class who do not work and benefited from cheaper houses and better jobs (the former of which they hog and the latter of which they did their best to destroy).

Perhaps I am being too harsh on the baby boom generation. Obviously, no one should be forced out of their home. Although to act as if that is being suggested when any corrective to the current state of the housing market is proposed is pretty entitled. People are living longer and the number of older people is rising, which is one of the causes of the current pressures on welfare and the housing marketing.

The solution to this is to bring in more immigrants to readdress the worker to dependent ratio. However, the baby boom generation's reaction to all this was to vote overwhelming for Brexit, so I guess that solution is off the table for now.

If immigration must come down to appease baby boomers who, for some reason, feel threatened by hearing Polish spoken on their bus, but welfare benefits to older people (the triple-lock, fuel allowance, freedom passes, etc) must remain despite a falling percentage of the population who are workers and more workers being in poverty then ... well ... all I am saying is, that is pretty entitled. So entitled that I can't believe someone would suggest that in public without fear of being laughed at.

Yet that is the situation we find ourselves in. The baby boomers get what they want and then accuse us of being entitled when we ask for things like jobs and houses so that we can do things like work every hour that God sends to pay for the triple lock and find somewhere to raise the next generation who are likely to be even more shat upon.

I don't know about you, but I get a sense that society is run for the benefit of old people against the interests of working age or young people. From housing to Brexit, young people are being kicked by the most entitled generation in history. Their cultural concerns, such as immigration or Britain's role in the world, are given credence, miles of column space and are the focus of government policy, regardless of how stupid, short-sighted and ruinous their demands are.

Our concerns, such as housing, employment or the environment, are either ignored or openly mocked. Sometimes I think that my generation has a parasitic creature attached, which is sucking the life from us until we die and then it can move onto the next host (ie our children).

The latest outrageous instance of this? A column in Sky News where baby boomers literally say they want to beat us and then send us off for National Service? Let us remember that the baby boom generation not only got everything handed to them on a plate, but also didn't fight a war because to have served in World War 2 you would have to be at least 90, by now and people over 90 were only 0.9% of the population in 2015.

It is the generation that came after the war, who lived in the glow of the post-war consensus and then dismantled it and told those who came after that we should be grateful to live in this dystopian hell hole of a future, who are the real problem. Although, record numbers of young people are registering to vote, so maybe in this election, or a future election, the most entitled generation that ever existed will get a surprise from the hard working generation who pay for their luxury.

Avocado toast image created by T.Tseng and used under creative commons.