Introduction:
The global demographic time bomb, or more correctly the problem as it is developing in the developed economies, now looks like spreading to those economies such as Africa and Latin America, where those aged under thirty far outnumber older workers. As we know, this pending crisis is leading to an intergenerational battle, as the baby boomers – those born between the end of the Second World War and the mid-1960s – continue to grab all the goodies for themselves: occupational pensions, homeownership, investments and leisure activities.

As the southern Europeans have shown us, particularly Greeks and Spanish, young people are not taking this laying down. The closest I can remember of this kind of social upheaval was the student rebellion at the end of the 1960s; with students in Germany, France, Britain and the US creating mayhem in protest against the Viet Nam war. There was also the Black Power movement in the US, the rise of the Anarchists and out of these powerful social uprisings came the feminist movement, the Greens, Gay rights and the general shift in popular sentiment to the Left. However, I recently attended a meeting of students movements here in London at which I was asked to address the question of intergenerational conflict. Someone had heard me speaking at a meeting at the Trades Union Congress a few years ago, that time in relation to pensions and home ownership, and though I could add a bit of spice to the debate.

War:
But this is no laughing matter, it is serious. In Britain, young people are finding it very difficult getting on the housing ladder, yet their parents’ and grandparents’ generations are buying every empty home then renting it at exorbitant rents to the very generation who cannot afford to buy a home. The big policymakers, misguidedly, are banning 100 per cent and interest-free mortgages, making it even harder for these young people, even though it is pointed out that making the mortgage payments is not the problem – the rents more than pay the mortgages – but the down payment.

But the divide goes further than this. We do not even speak the same language: adults believe the young grunt, wear their trousers below their bottoms and take no interest in the welfare of their elders. It is what Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, in their book The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement”, call the Me Generations. In this selfish Me culture, the young and those who refuse to grow up, indulge in obsessive habits, from plastic surgery to tummy tucks, to re-shaping noses, to adjusting their eye sight, to farming out child birth to poor women in underdeveloped countries, to do it yourself divorces, to ‘secular’ religions; everything about modern culture, they suggest, is focused on satisfying the greed and selfishness in young people and nothing at all is about out collective social needs.

But the symptoms are worse, according to this narrative. Everyday you read some of the more popular newspapers about some brain-damaged person talking about how their parents abused them by not buying them designer toys, or reading fantasy stories to them at bed time, or not putting enough sugar in their corn flakes. How they were abused by class mates who would not tell them the answers in arithmetic tests, or share their homework with them; they were abused by local shopkeepers who told their parents they were caught shoplifting with their school mates. After a lifetime of having parents drooling on them, telling them they are the best in the world and wonderful, line managers at work who reject their work as grossly incompetent or simply just bad are bullies. The Me Generation is a generation of takers, but not givers, the first and only word they fully understand is me, me, me. It is a generation which believes in entitlements, but not obligations, in receiving, but not giving, in rights, but not duties.

Most parents have the little stay-at-homers pests nestling in their bedrooms, sometimes not getting up until mid-day, if they have to meet friends, and if they do not, just coming out long enough to ask what’s to eat. If they are fortunate enough to be working, no matter how much they are earning – especially the ones with their degrees and exaggerated sense of self-importance – they believe to contribute to the household budget is further parental abuse.

A friend of mine, a senior Fleet Street journalist, every time we meet up, his first words, said rhetorically, are always: we were not like that them when we were younger, were we? And we were not: we were in to playing, in my case cricket, setting fly sticks and down falls, shooting our gutter perks at innocent birds, and, by our mid-teens, smarting up and looking for girl friends. Our conversations were around passing our O levels and going on to university and studying some terribly important subject; we thought we knew about politics and fancied ourselves as athletes, or sportspeople of some other kind, we certainly were not in a hurry to grow up. For some of us, the generation ahead were our heroes. Again in my case, people such as John Connell, Aldon Lloyd, Don Blackman, Keith Miller, and loads more, most of whom went on to Harrison College and Combermere and ended up in law and politics or now reside in North America or Britain. Our heroes were Harry Sealy, Leroy Harewood, Frank Collymore, Tom Clarke (especially his essay in the independence issue of New World, which my father sent to me as a symbolic rite de passage). What is it that separates us so profoundly culturally from this current generation of short-memoried young people with little attention spans?

Education:
Even in terms of education, with their grade inflation, they digitalised short attention span would not allow them to read a book, however central to their education, from cover to cover. They started out reading chapters, now they only read sentences and paragraphs. They ‘google’ everything, incapable of retaining anything to memory; if they cannot ‘google’ it then it is not important; they follow trends and fashion like gaggling turkeys, incapable of stopping even when they can obviously see trouble ahead.

Work:
According to the elderly narrative, this younger generation cannot get to work on time, and even if they do, their output is minimal; they complain if anyone asks them to work, they even complain when they get a pay rise, since it is never enough. They want a pay rise, no matter how the firm or economy is performing; they strike if they perceive to be threatened with sick building syndrome, they get to work late, have extended lunch breaks and leave early; and, the cost of any training and further education must be borne by the employer.

Analysis and Conclusion:
If our view of young people is true, who is responsible for the creation of the self-destructive Me Generation? Are the parents responsible for drowning their kids in too much love, making them believe that the world owes them a living? Are teachers responsible, for inflating grades, even taking exams for pupils to make the schools look more successful in the grade tables? Are politicians responsible for the ‘stupid’ over bearing legislation, such as health and safety, human rights, equalities? Or, is it over-reacting employers with their ever-expanding HR departments which encourage even the laziest member of staff to take time off as they are stressed from travelling to work, or from meeting deadlines, or from not getting enough time off to have a smoke or to socialise with their old university pals?

You often see children, who have ignored their parents while they were alive, rushing to hire a lawyer the moment they die so they could challenge their Will. They believe they MUST inherit, but never think it important that they look after their elderly parents and siblings. Are these young people rebelling against the orderly, regimented, disciplined lives of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations? Or is it anything to do with the medicalisation of social problems?

In the digital age, young people have lost all sense of privacy and responsibility, some may say even decency, they think just being famous is an honourable career objective; it does not matter if it means sleeping with every second rate footballer or being caught in compromising positions with B list entertainers. But who are we to judge? The truth is that our generation cannot crown ourselves in glory; we have failed young people, if only simply by not passing on a more prosperous and moral society and sense of moral responsibility.

Maybe the prime minister’s call for a gentler society is a reflection of this awareness, if so, we want to see moral leadership from the very top, and not just people shouting about money and material goods. Let us make Rihanna the symbol of the New Barbados.