Voting eh ?? What a messy business. As the dust settles on the second General Election in three years, it seems that anyone who actually won was considered to be the loser, and those who lost were running about clutching their parts waving their hands in the air claiming the kind of victory not seen since we sent the Germans packing in 1917, 1945 and of course, 1966.
In my last post I made a point about the older generation needing to vote the save the younger generation from themselves and their idea that we can live in a something-for-nothing, everything-can-be-free world, arguing that a Labour government would chase all the wealth and inspiration out of the country, forcing anyone with savings and a job to pay through the nose for so many things that other people want that they wouldn't be able to buy anything for themselves other than a cheese sandwich and a packet of Smarties, even if they did double overtime every day for the rest of their lives.
Even though the final result of this election meant a bloody nose for the forces of common sense, I thought about how much of the coverage seemed to focus on the views of the very old vs the views of the very young. A bit like the parties themselves I suppose, both having plunged off so far to the left and the right that I'm amazed nobody has thought of the term 'cleavage politics'. Until now. Maybe I should form the first political party to fill that particular gap. Our campaign slogans would be something to behold …
Anyway, opinions differ as to the exact parameters that define each group, but the "baby-boomers" are generally thought to have been born between 1946 (the results of the post-war 'baby boom', when people were so happy to be back home alive after six years of fighting and being bombed the bejesus out of that they jumped, en-masse, into the sack and literally shagged for Britain …) and the early 1950s. The millennials, on the other hand, are usually defined as being born either around the turn of the millennium, or a little earlier.
The boomers don’t like the millennials because they think the younger generation are spoiled, impractical, feckless, whiny, easily-offended SJW's glued to their mobile phones, scared of hard graft and obsessed by reality TV and status, disrespectful of the sacrifice of their parents in wartime and more interested in posting a selfie to social media and playing video games than getting a job and doing anything useful with their lives.
The millennials, on the other hand, see the boomers as a bunch of racist, Alf-Garnett / Victor Meldrew-esque` old fogeys that have pretty much ruined everything for them. They’re living too long, taxpayers’ money is gushing into looking after them. They’ve ruined thier future in Europe, kept house prices high, meaning young people can’t afford to buy. Workplace pensions are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. They're against gay and interracial marriage and keep buying music in a physical format.
Boomers are, by and large, Brexiteers and Tories. They remember when they were young themselves at a time Britain was great when, in the 80's, under Thatcher, your house was worth more than Egypt, and think that coming out of Europe will be a doddle. Millennials have never known a time when we didn't have to bow down to meddlesome foreign politicians, there was no channel tunnel for immigrants to sneak into the country through, Calais was a holiday destination, and how much of a fuss there was in order to JOIN, never mind want to leave the EU.
Not me though, or a large number of us that are currently more concerned about the here and now. The ones that always have to end up paying no matter who comes out on top. The ones living out the consequnces of the actions of both.
So then, who are we, if we’re not boomers or millennials ...
Why, we’re Generation X of course.
And when the whinging, moaning, slapping and fighting is all done and dusted, we’re the ones that are going to save the world. Generation X-ers were born from around the first third of the 1970's to the early 1980's. The children of the boomers. We didn’t even get a name until Douglas Coupland wrote a novel about us in 1991, and for a long time people thought Generation X meant we were a bunch of greasy-haired, weed-smoking, baggy-jean-wearing, Hooch-drinking slackers who would never amount to much. But, oh man, we’ve come of age now. We’re mainly in our late thirties and early forties, and boy, this is our time.
Generation X has the benefit of possessing the best characteristics of both the boomers and the millennials, and few of the downsides. We know how to work hard and we know how to play hard. Generation X-ers are very industrious, because we went to school to learn, not to be lectured to.
Boomers don’t understand the internet, millennials were raised on it. But Generation X created it, then dove into the glittering waters of this brand new thing, and made it what it is today. We walked around with phones the size of rucksacks, playing snake, and sent the first text-messages. We knuckled down and worked hard and now we write books and make TV shows and direct movies based on the things we used to love when we were kids ourselves, to preserve them for the millennials whilst they try and come up with something new. We stream the new series of "Game Of Thrones", but binge on our DVD box sets of "The X-Files".
We still get up early to go to work, and we come out in the middle of the night to fix your burst pipe and reset your wi-fi. We appreciate the finer things in life, but know how to take our brains out of gear and have a laugh. We grew up with few people from outside our ethnic group, but because of that we didn't care about racism, because it wasn't something we manically obsessed over.
Culturally, we never had it so good. Generation X invented indie, grunge, Britpop, dance, techno, and any bloody musical genre of worth that you care to name. We transformed the Eighties and we owned the Nineties. We had alcopops and ecstasy and we were fearless and stupid and happy, but we still got up for work on Monday morning, no matter how bad we felt. Ours was the era of Cool Britannia, the last true, genuine, pre-Facebook people's movement, and we didn't care who was along for the ride, because everyone was welcome.
(Mind you, we also thought that MySpace and the Nokia N-Gage was going to the be the next best thing, but hey, nobody's perfect …)
Boomers live in the past and fear the future. Millennials feel they ARE the future and are ignorant of the past. Generation X acknowledges what has gone before, learns from it, and resolves to shape the future into something better without tearing everything up completely. We don’t throw our hands in the air and say the job’s a bust, let’s give up. We don't create viral memes and whinge and moan on Instagram. We know we can’t go back to those mythical halcyon days, but we still take time to be nostalgic about it, even though we know we can’t just rip it up and start again. We work with what we’ve got and try to make it better. We change things from the inside out.
We're evolutionists, not revolutionists.
Yes, Generation X had some things easy. We were paid by the state to go to university. We remember when it was easier to get a job, not having to compete with floods of unskilled immigrants. Then again, we remember three million unemployed. We remember the systematic destruction of UK heavy industry. All without Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia.
However, we also remember the stories our parents told of us the 'Winter of Discontent' that was caused by a Labour government just as left wing as we are seeing the party today under Corbyn, how it nearly brought Britian to it's knees, how it almost left our parents homeless and how much we want to avoid the same fate. We remember how happy we were to see Tony Blair and New Labour in office in 1997, then were also shocked to see his support for the Iraq War and how much uncontrolled immigration he had allowed, arguably triggering the very path of history culminating in the events of this week.
Generation X is unique because nobody has had lives like we’ve got. Boomers were old by the time they were 40; millennials have ages to go yet before they hit that milestone. Generation X is pushing back the envelope, of getting older like never before. We can do the shopping, still go to comic-cons, but still read books, pay the bills, read our comic books and play video games. We can be 'adult' all you like, but we’re still kids at heart.
The problem with you millennials and boomers though, apart from the fact that you both think you're right and you're both robbing each other of each other's futures, not that you’d never admit it, is you’re too alike. You’re both insular, in different ways. You’re both selfish. You’re both so blinkered and blinded by ideas of your own personal utopias, and you think you’re the only two factions in this petty little fight of yours.
But you forgot about Generation X. The children of the boomers and the parents of the millennials. We're not going away, we’re still here. Working hard, playing hard, innovating, learning from the past and planning the future. All with a healthy dose of irony, humour, cynicism, experience and wisdom. So have your little generational war, let the rest of us get on with our work, and when you’re done, don’t worry, we’re Generation X, and we've got this in hand.
Just don't expect us to have to pick up the bill for BOTH of your mistakes …