Dear Gen Y

Fifty-eight-year-old author Irvine Welsh wrote an article earlier this week in which he made an excellent point. He said, “In my youth, old people moaned and told us that we were lucky and had never had it so good. Only the most brain-dead are seriously making that contention to today’s young people”.

Welsh and his friends grew up without the wonders of modern technology that make young people’s lives so much easier now. But there aren’t many other redeeming features the world has to offer us.

If I may include myself and the rest of Gen Y in Welsh’s definition of young, then the first years of our lives took place in pertinent times. By definition, we were born as early as 1980 — right in the middle of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s reign and her free market assault.

A few decades later, the richest fifth of Britons received 45.5% of all UK income — and that’s just income we know about.

And now, our NHS is crumbling before us. This week it was reported that plans are being considered for an indefinite walkout of junior doctors following their next strike against the top-down reorganisation that the government explicitly said it wouldn’t do.

We have a housing crisis driven by unfathomable house price inflation, and rent that would have made Welsh’s generation run to the other end of the world when they were young.

Young people’s ambitions are being dampened because only those who can afford unpaid internships are given the opportunity to forge a career in what they love. Five years after graduating, I’m yet to see the average salary for a graduate — I work very hard, and I’m not alone.

We have the fear of an uninhabitable earth hanging over our heads as we watch people with power choose money over our planet. This week scientists warned that the global agreement to keep temperatures below 1.5–2C may already be impossible.

To contrast the lingering and distant threat of climate change, we have the fear of an imminent terrorist attack hanging over us, subtly encroaching on our minds — even if it’s just a fleeting thought in a busy airport.

Of course the government hasn’t got away lightly. But while we’ve fired our own shots, those with the loudest echoes have fallen on the very people the system has failed.

Our ruling party, the party of aspiration, slips an emphasis on the merits of hard work in every party line. Their poor-bashing keeps the struggling unable to take control of their lives. Their relentless attack on “scroungers”, their pick-yourself-up-and-get-into-a-zero-hours-contract, we’re-all-born-equal message has permeated so far into policy that the welfare state has blood on its hands.

The EU referendum campaigns are pertinent examples of the cruel, and downright false, claims that are forced into our subconscious, in an attempt to force our thinking into line with personal political ambitions.

The racist undertones of the prime minister as he smears Labour’s London mayor hopeful Sadiq Kahn with unfounded, hypocritical and vitriolic accusations of him being “radical” do little to help the number of disaffected people running from Britain into the hands of Isis.

Of course, many of these issues are affecting other age groups, too. But we’re looking through the lens of our proper, adult lives — and let’s just say we don’t require a zoom lens. We’re making important decisions that will affect us for ever. We’re deciding whether to bring children into this world, whether to continue the impossible struggle of getting a job we love (where we will undoubtedly work long hours for unsubstantial pay).

The politicians we voted into power talk about the hardworking, who deserve tax breaks and great public services for being so great — but we don’t have the time, energy or money to cultivate that life for ourselves, even if we want it.

One thing we have that previous generations didn’t is the internet. But even that is used against us as a tool of hate and vanity. Previous generations were no doubt as imperfect, but they didn’t have the same opportunities to make that known on such a scale and with such immediacy.

Our goal may be to get a little blue verification tick next to our Twitter handle, or 100 likes on a selfie, but that’s because it’s easier to achieve that than making it in the real world.

But even the internet is turning against us. Every story we see online about tax evasion or climate change seems to come with an existential meaning behind it, reiterating the fear we were born at the wrong time.

It’s not a matter of us not being intelligent enough to see through the lies covering up why life’s more of a struggle for our generation. We know the excuse of austerity is wearing thin, we know there’s no long-term economic plan other than another Conservative government in 2020.

But it’s easier to turn in on ourselves than be angry at a distant, far-removed Westminster. It’s much easier to feel bad about ourselves and accept the cycle of struggle, rather than try to change a perceivably fixed system from the ground.

The government makes us feel like this is a choice, and not a reality that has been imposed on us through extortionate rent, tuition fee debt, low pay and the audacity to go after what we want. The government doesn’t want ambition, it wants money-makers.

The biggest risk to us all, though, is that the deflation and despondence this is understandably causing will influence decisions we make, and persuade us to give up on something. But if the prime minister can have his bacon and fuck it too, so can we.

Let’s continue to laugh at the ridiculousness of power, because we do such a good job at that. But let’s also not give up on what we wanted for ourselves before free-market fuckery became the monster it is today.

While personal adversity makes us stronger, collective hardship will turn us into the generation that can cope with anything.