Hey Bloonface, this is great.

Can I offer some encouraging feedback?

First though, an intro. I am a Gen-Xer — born in 1970 in New Zealand. The economic shift you write about is very much the same here. A once generous state that has morphed into a neo-con wet dream of user-pays and massive debt. Okay, it’s not as bad as the US or UK, but the basic dynamic is the same. My experience is slightly atypical of my generation though — I dropped out of uni aged 20, and didn’t go back until I was 40. I completed a degree, and it got me a good job, which is great. But I am saddled with $25,000 of student debt. For me, house ownership is now all but impossible. So while I am not as thoroughly fucked as most, I do genuinely sympathise with you, and my some of university classmates who are now your age but living at home/working for shite money/paying off huge debts, not going to the doctor cause it costs too much.

Anyway, my feedback is this: your essay contains hefty nugs of pure gold, but they are buried in ‘young speak’. I.e.; funny sweary stuff. Which, as a university returnee I certainly appreciate. But in using this language, you’re preaching to the choir. More damagingly though, you are excluding an older crowd who will stop reading the instant they see a swear word. If you want this message to be read by oldsters (my age and up!), who might actually be able to effect change, I’d write a ‘clean’ version of this essay and submit to for publication. There’s definitely a growing awareness of the issue (did you see the recent story of the young Tory MP who has had to move home because he can’t buy a home?) Who knows, maybe even Tele readers would sit up and take notice.

Keep up the great work.