Last Straw

Richard Burn­ing:

I chat­ted with some of my kid’s friends — cur­rently @ uni­ver­sity — they paint a pic­ture of their gen­er­a­tion as being totally dis­trust­ful of gov­ern­ment, politi­cians, the media and the fin­an­cial sys­tem. They view com­pan­ies as only out to take as much money off them as pos­sible and they see those in power as cyn­ical, self-interested people who don’t have their best interests at heart.

Most don’t read a news­pa­per and get their news online from a wide range of sources — blog­gers, social media etc. Those who are on the escal­ator to a job and a career are pretty damning about youff cul­ture — the Chav gen­er­a­tion — of real­ity TV, obssessed with celebs and football.

They fully expect the fin­an­cial sys­tem to col­lapse sooner or later and seem to rel­ish this pos­sib­il­ity so that they can fun­da­ment­ally remould soci­ety when it does — more just, less pol­lut­ing, less viol­ent seems to be the aim.