WHEN it comes to on-demand TV shows, smart phones and takeaways delivered to your door, the age-old parent to child mantra of “you don’t know you’re born” still applies.
After all, we had just three channels (and no remote control), we went to the library to look things up and the only takeaway in my town was a chip shop you had to brave the elements and walk to.
But these small blessings aside, who would be a young person in today’s Britain?
Let’s start with “Generation Alpha’s” education.
Or lack of it.
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At the weekend, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan warned about the impact of forthcoming teacher strikes on children who are still recovering from the enforced isolation of three Covid lockdowns.
She says: “Our children have been through so much . . . they have missed socialising with their friends . . . then they’ve got the anxiety of re-establishing themselves, catching up . . . then they’ve got exams.
“I can’t think of something that’s worse either than going on strike or refusing to mark homework. It’s children that you’re impacting.”
Quite. On top of that, Professor Lucy Easthope — an international adviser on disaster recovery — has revealed that, when Covid hit, she cautioned the Government against shutting schools, warning it would cause serious damage to mental health, development and life chances.
Not to mention a rise in child abuse cases and school avoidance.
Having worked on the UK’s pandemic response for 20 years prior to Covid, she reckons the harms to children “were predictable and in plain sight”.
Yet, astonishingly (some might say criminally), she says her warnings were “ignored”.
Now, analysis of 9million anonymised GP records has revealed some alarming statistics — including a 42 per cent rise in eating disorders among girls aged 13 to 16 and a doubling of “ghost children” who miss more than half the school calendar.
In addition, 1.7million children are “regularly absent” from school.
Professor Easthope knew that, in any disaster, children need some “normality” and “hope”.
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But on Zoom calls, she says Government ministers would tell her off for using the “D word” (aka disaster), claiming it was “hyperbolic and unnecessary”.
For her, the biggest low was on January 4, 2021, when many children returned to school only for lockdown to be reintroduced the next day.
She adds: “If there is another emergency on that scale, I would hope that we would see the needs of children and young people as a standalone consideration.
“Their voices should never again be so catastrophically lost.”
It begs the question, why employ the services of an independent adviser for 20 years if you’re not actually going to listen to them when crunch time comes?
Deserve better
And finally, let’s look at what’s happening to the young adults who have left school or university, fallen in love and harbour hopes of buying their first home.
Forget it. They’ll be nearing retirement age by the time they can afford it.
Now a new report by wealth manager Saltus has revealed that the “bank of mum and dad” is having to help adult children with rent or soaring mortgage repayments so they don’t lose their homes.
Little wonder, considering the Bank of England’s 13th consecutive interest rate rise last week.
And with 800,000 fixed-rate deals set to end later this year, and a further 1.6million next year, things can only get worse.
Yes, of course there are children in other countries who are far worse off, but that’s not the point.
This is a supposedly a First World, civilised, politically stable country and its young people deserve better.
MY £8 TRIP TO GLASTO
THE last time I went to Glastonbury (then CND) Festival was 1982, when the advance tickets cost £8.
Van Morrison was a headliner, along with Jackson Browne, Climax Blues Band and Thompson Twins.
U2 were way down the billing but, for reasons which now escape me, didn’t play.
On the Friday there was the biggest rainfall in a single day for 45 years so the whole place was a muddy bog, but we didn’t care.
It was all very rock ’n’ roll and we loved it.
Has the modern-day Glastonbury (tickets £335) become too huge and corporate for its own good? Discuss.
This year there were fun runs, sobriety parties, juice bars and chips for, gulp, £8 a packet, as well as outdoor yoga sessions.
Cripes. If I’d attempted a low lunge in the quagmire of ’82 I might still be there now.
FELINE BIT ICK
ANYTHING or anyone that gives them “the ick” is immediately dropped by young people today.
So may I humbly suggest that the next teacher who finds themselves confronted by a teenager claiming to be a cat (aka taking the puss) should take the following action.
Tell the class they’re going to watch an episode of Celebrity Big Brother, then show them the clip of George Galloway purring at Rula Lenska and noisily slurping pretend milk from her cupped hands.
If that doesn’t prompt optimum ick and an instant return to humanhood, then nothing will.
A STAGE version of Macbeth comes with a warning about blood, and now some of Ernest Hemingway’s novels are being reprinted in their original form with an, ahem, earnest trigger warning that the publisher does not intend “an endorsement of cultural representations or language contained herein”.
Surely, even the most cerebrally challenged student can work that out?
Meanwhile, while classic novels are subjected to such virtue-signalling scrutiny, there seems little understanding that the screens kids are glued to expose them to far worse travesties of human nature than a few out-dated descriptions.
Hayley’s big hips horror
TOM Cruise’s Mission: Impossible co-star Hayley Atwell is a striking young woman.
But she should sack her stylist immediately if it was their idea to wear this frocky horror show to the premiere of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One.
Or perhaps the event was an oversubscribed hot ticket and it was the only way to smuggle in two of her mates as plus ones?
lTHE Italians are rightly up in arms after a grinning man was filmed carving “Ivan and Hayley” on the wall of Rome’s Colosseum.
If caught (fingers crossed), he could be fined £17k or go to jail.
I went to Egypt last year and was horrified by how many of the ancient tombs had been defaced with dated initials stretching as far back as the mid 1920s.
It seems that moronic vandalism is not a new thing.
STONE ME! IT’S A RING
WHEN asked the significance of a new ring she’s wearing, Mick Jagger’s girlfriend Melanie Hamrick answered: “In my mind, it’s a promise ring. We’ll be immature and call it a promise ring.”
Promise of what? To load the dishwasher the correct way or put the bins out once in a while?
After all, it can’t be a promise of marriage because that’s called an engagement ring.
Or is it a promise of an engagement ring that might one day lead to a wedding ring followed by an eternity ring?
And so to Google, where I learn that a promise ring is “worn as an outward symbol of commitment and fidelity to another person”.
Just like a wedding ring then, but without the marriage bit.
Still, 36-year-old Ms Hamrick has six-year-old son Deveraux with the Rolling Stone, who hits 80 next month.
So co-parenting a child together is perhaps commitment enough.
AH-HA HARRY!
THE Wall Street Journal has revealed the “graveyard” of TV ideas pitched to Netflix by Harry and Meghan that failed to land.
One was an Emily In Paris-style sitcom with a man as the main character (Emile?), while another was a family-friendly show about gay characters that was reminiscent of Heartstopper.
One idea, a prequel to Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations recasting lonely spinster Miss Havisham as “a strong woman in a patriarchal society”, is said to be in development but hasn’t got the green light.
The respected Journal headlined its report Harry and Meghan Produce a Hollywood Flop: Themselves.
Oh dear. When it comes to creative desperation, Alan Partridge’s Arm Wrestling with Chas and Dave, Monkey Tennis and Inner City Sumo (“we take fat people . . . put them in big nappies, then get them to throw each other out of a circle”) are no longer parody.
