GENERATION GAMES

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 their 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 consequences 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 Britain 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 …

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE MY ENORMOUS ELECTION ??

It's funny, but for ages I've been under the misapprehension that Britain is a democracy. I suppose I've concluded this from our electoral system. The parties present their manifestos to the nation, and after we've studied these* and compared Mrs May to Beardy Comrade Corbyn, Mr Squeaky from the Liberal Democrats, the balding racist from UKIP and that awful, pixie-haired, baggy-breasted woman from the Green Armpit Party who wants us all to have wire wool haircuts, hairy toes, no wi-fi and to all have to go to work on the back of a moose, we vote. Whoever gets the most votes, and the most seats, is judged to be victorious.

*(At least, those that can be bothered to ...)

Democracy works in many other ways as well. If six in a group of eleven fancy a pizza, and the remaining five a burger, we head to Frankie and Benny's and not Maccy D's. Provided those with the responsibility of casting their votes know what they are doing with them, it all seems very fair and clear-cut to me. I do NOT want the Labour party to win this election, as anyone with a job and savings will simply get squeezed until they bleed, then squeezed some more, then ordered by men in brown coats to give away all our houses and otherworldly goods to people whose idea of first-class travel involves a rubber dingy followed by the underside of the Eurostar. And if we protest, refuse or so much as raise our hands to say "errm, actually …", we get labelled with lots of things about us that are not true from people who have time to do such things in lieu of having any meaningful full-time employment.

However, if enough of the general, sensible adult population fails to come out and cast enough votes to stop the millennials from having their way and allowing a man who openly hates our own armed forces into Downing Street, I shall accept the decision, albeit in bad grace, and then move to a country with some common sense. If I were to approach my local council for funds to start a theatre group, they would turn me away, arguing I was too middle-class and not apologetic enough about the human rights record of countries where they host Formula One races. The money would go instead to someone who promises to charge a fortune for a (recycled) cup of lukewarm fair trade herbal tea and a commitment to employ at least three dolphins.

Now, if the majority isn't really affected by a minority's aspirations, then it doesn't really matter that much and if we can do a little bit to help out, then fine, it must be part of living in a caring society, I suppose. But when a minority wants, no, demands something that is deeply offensive to majority, it should simply be told in no uncertain terms, to bugger off. But what matters more to the country is surely the quality of Mr Corbyn’s ideas. And while he has been accepted by many as a nice, if naïve, man who just wants planning permission to build a bit of Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land, the reality is quite different. The man is an economic dinosaur. Ebenezer Scrooge and Bob Cratchit would be a better choice to run the economy. Corbyn favours printing money to finance increased expenditure – an idea that even sent poor Zimbabwe back to the stone age.

Corbyn paints himself as a progressive figure, but one glance at this manifesto and you see he's about as progressive as Pink Floyd. Maybe in the sense that he sees the future and wants to help all Britons to enjoy its fruits, but No: he is a nostalgia addict. And not in a 1990's Britpop way. It’s like finding out your old geography teacher just got a new job. The one you half remember, and then only because of that time he cried because some kid pissed in his slippers on the school camping trip. If Jeremy Corbyn is the limit of our political imagination then we are well and truly stuffed. He might well be a nice bloke, but the Labour Party have long been enemies of the kind of mass working class self-organisation that is needed if there is to be any meaningful change in our lives.

As a single, white, heterosexual male under the age of 40 with aspirations of home ownership [i.e; the very people that actually FOUNDED the Labour party] and with no wife, mortgage, kids or car, I ought to be at least SOMEWHERE near top of their agenda. But now it seems that I'm the last person on earth who the Labour party THEMSELVES even actually WANTS voting for them, as demographically speaking, I'm just simply not interesting enough for them any more.

It's true that one does tend to get naturally more conservative as you get older as you have gained more in life and therefore have more to lose, but it's a desperate sign of how much ground we have lost at the centre of British politics that Corbyn is considered radical at all. By promising the return of British Railways, powerful trade unions and even the coal mines, he offers a return to the Seventies when he imagines Britain was happier and more equal, but I suspect those who struggled to bury their loved ones or climbed through piles of rubbish during the Winter of Discontent probably remember it less fondly. My parents certainly do. We don't live in an age where socialism works anymore. We now have social media, of course, which is now one of the most powerful political tools this generation has ever known, but it started out as just a whizzier version of Friends Reunited.

But socialism doesn’t work anymore because it no longer reflects current human nature. This unnatural state of existence, by the way, is what makes socialism nothing more than an ideology – it doesn’t reflect what’s real, it only reflects what’s imagined. And in Corbyn's imagination, we'd all have no choice but to drop our trousers and surrender ourselves to the Borg. Turn ourselves over to the Empire. Worship His Divine Shadow. Give our consent to the Monks.

Corbyn's aims are quite clear. He wants to lead a Revolutionary Socialist Party of Great Britain which will one day gain power when the established order has collapsed. The one thing he does not want is a democratically elected Labour Government. He wouldn't know what to do with it. The elder voters of Britain therefore have a duty to save the millennial generation, who have never lived through a Winter of Discontent, from themselves before they realise that whilst socialism may seem a great idea, it only works until you run out of someone else's money. And because all the people with any money, along with ambitions, aspirations and desire will have long since buggered off, once again it will be down to those with a job and nothing else to foot the bill.

Yours truly, in other words.

And before anyone asks, I'm still holding out hope for a Monster Raving Loony Party Candidate on my ballot paper on June 8th. Don't forget, it was their idea for passports for pets.

Even Jeremy Corbyn probably never thought of that.

SO LONG, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH - ING QUOTAS

In the midst of the fug I am currently going through about my lack of having a girlfriend (and having potentially missed out on one yet AGAIN !!), there are few things in life at the moment that make me truly happy. "Doctor Who" is finally back on our screens, Guinness, pizza and whiskey also feature pretty highly, as is having lots of money to go to comic cons instead of spending it on relationships, pensions, mortgages and children.

But nothing, oh absolutely nothing on God's green Earth, makes me happier about voting for Brexit last year than hearing that snivelling, slimy, odious, pathetic, perverted little bourgeoisie twat Jean-Claude Juncker's bitter and arrogant response to our perfectly democratic decision to bugger off out of his distopian little pseudo-Soviet empire / Borg collective / Fourth Reich last year.

He is undoubtedly shitting himself, because if the European Union collapsed, he would probably struggle to get a job on a parish council in Norfolk. Had this hare-brained, feeble-minded, not to mention horrendously ugly love-child of Bernie Ecclestone and Sepp Blatter got his way, anyone with a job and an independent, free-thinking lifestyle would have been squeezed by the parts until they bled. And then squeezed a little more. Then, eventually, men in uniforms would have come around to your house to take it away along with all your money, your blu-ray players, iPods, and children to give to people who make pipe bombs and drive around on pavements, killing people in urban city centres.

The man probably masturbates over the prospect of a federal Super-state with him as an ultimate, unchallenged, Palpatane-esque` ruler in his sleep,. If ever there was a symbol of the arrogance of the European Union, and its utter contempt for the personal liberty of its own citizens, it is this man. I'd love to punch him in his snidy little mush, then kick him in the bollocks as hard as humanly possible with a steel toe capped boot covered in rusty old nails.

This half-man, half-turkey hybrid. My God, he's ugly. He's really got a face only a mother could love. And that's if his mother had cataracts so bad they could be sent to a glass blowers and turned into marbles. Talk about a welder's bench. His father must have been a vulture, given how he looks and acts like one. Someone from CSI run his DNA please, because it cannot possibly be 100% human.

The reason that pricks like Juncker, Tusk et al are mouthing off, is because they’re becoming increasingly nervous. Their jobs depended on the UK voting to stay in the EU, but instead of trying to sweet talk us, or use facts and logic, they chose to use threats and insults. An out vote in France, should it happen, will bring about the end of the EU, and their vastly overpaid, cushy, unelected jobs of sheer pointlessness. As I said, that scares them, because it means they lose their undeserved positions of power. In a strange way, they’ve actually managed to prove Boris Johnson right, of all people.

Juncker the Joker is spiteful, he is petty, and he seemingly wants to cut his nose off to spite his face. He has shown his true colours, his view is clear: everyone must stick to the same, sterile, staid, standardised, outdated rules. His rules, even where they may irreparably damage you and make about as much sense as putting a handbrake on the Titanic. Should you leave, we will damage you further. Like a fire escape surrounded by an alligator-infested moat covered in barbed wire.

What a complete and utter bellend. The man’s a sadomasochist in a boring, ill-fitting suit. Stalin after a shave and with new spectacles. The very embodiment of Fifty Shades of Grey. That must make Nicola Sturgeon the modern day political equivalent of Anastasia Steele. Wanting to leave the UK in order to jump back into the EU is like divorcing your husband because he's little bit clingy, then marrying Max Mosely instead.

Earlier today, Juncker turned to Nigel Farage and asked him why he was still there. What a prick. It was a moment that shone a spotlight on what this waste of blood and organs really feels: he wants Britain to go so he can pretend the EU’s problems aren’t there, like George Osborne spending the last few days under the stairs pretending the economy wasn’t there, and start building his new little Soviet empire.

The problems of the EU, however, are only growing larger, and they do so because men like him refuse to change. Refuse to acknowledge. Refuse to act. Refuse to listen to the fact that ordinary, working-class people are sick to the back teeth of being told what to do by a simpering little coward who never had a single vote cast for him to get to where he is, and are voting across Europe with their feet to tell him to fuck the fuck off back to where he belongs, and to fuck off even more when he gets there. Even if he ended up on the dark side of the moon, the moon would be telling him to fuck off even further.

You would assume that the most powerful politicians in all of Europe are democratically elected, but no. The European Commission – the face of the EU and sole proposer of legislation – is entirely appointed. That alone makes them more faceless than a TOWIE actress and, unsurprisingly, it has led to the creation of a bureaucratic behemoth.

Even Adolf Hitler stood for election. People actually cast votes for one of the most reviled dictators in history. This means that Jean-Claude Juncker, the laughably-titled 'President of the EU', has more in common politically with Zaphod Beeblebrox than the man who wrote "Mein Kampf", started the Second World War and initiated the Holocaust. Come to think of it, the EU was Hitler's idea in the first place !! Juncker's not just a moron, he's a bloody plagiarist to boot !! Condemn the UK if you dare try son, but at least we now have the chance to ensure we are no longer lectured to by an absolute cockwomble like him, and I, for one, am delighted about it.

So long, Jean-Claude, and thanks for all the fishing quotas.

Because that is the only thing that history will ever remember you for, you arrogant, smug, narcissistic, nosey, odious, slimy, creepy, snivelling, smelly, hand-wringing, sodden, simpering, fat, rude, irritating, bullying, ugly, senile, pathetic, small-penised, drunken little Luxembourgish cunt.