Government ineptitude drives young to self blame

A young man helped finance his time at university by working as a part-time shelf-stacker in our local co-op.  Nothing exceptional in that.  But he graduated over two years ago and is till part-time shelf stacking.  When I asked him the other week how his search for a "proper" career was progressing I found his reply painful:

"Nothing," he said.  "I must try harder."

So our Tory party and their supporters in the overwhelmingly right-wing press have not only succeed in blaming Britain's Labour party for a world-wide economic crisis causes by Tory policies of financial deregulation, but have now managed to convince the principal sufferers from the crisis that their plight is their own fault.

It seems to me that the age of 15 to 30 is the most exciting period of a person's life in what we had come to assume were normal circumstances: growing independent of one's parents, gaining qualifications,  finding a suitable career, changing it if it turned out not to be suitable, finding a partner (and, sadly, these days, changing that if  not entirely suited), setting up home, starting a family, progressing in one's career.  Those wonderful years when the world is your oyster and everything seems  possible .

There is much talk of austerity and it is true that some of the poorest in our society  are suffering real inconvenience, even  hardship.  But the principal sufferers are those from whom their rightful experience of these golden years has been stolen.

Contrast the predicament of today's youth with the easy-going generosity of state and economy experienced by earlier generations, and aptly described by Professor Danny Dorling.