Is this the jilted generation? Ed and Shiv at Battle of Ideas, 19th October in Brighton
Ed Howker and Shiv Malik will be part of this event hosted by The Battle of Ideas at Bellerbys College in Brighton on 19th October at 7.30pm.
They’ll joined by Rob Lyons, deputy editor of Spiked, and Para Mullan who is operations director for cScape Strategic Internet Services Ltd and fellow member at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
Here’s what it’s all about:
Generation Y is in revolt. Young people born since the Thatcher years can’t afford a house, they protest. Even the top graduates can’t get jobs that pay well and they think politics – voting or protesting – is pointless. Their parents, born of the post-war boom, received free education and jobs for life. ‘Britain’s young people are insecure, unstable and poor, (while) their parents are the richest generation ever to have lived and they have flatly failed to share the wealth,’ argue twenty-something journalists Ed Howker and Shiv Malik. Their book Jilted Generation describes how the Baby Boomer generation, ‘seemingly squandered a nation’s communal wealth, turned their backs on society and broke all barriers in a lifelong quest to express themselves’. Gen Y writer Neil Boorman is even more blunt in blaming the boomers, calling his manifesto It’s allREAD MORE
Spot On!
This is a great post from the director of the think tank Policy exchange about how high housing costs hurt us all. Neil O’Brien, on this, we salute you. Slowly the debate will shift…
Ed Howker on Newsnight
Ed Howker was on the BBC’s Newsnight programme last night, as part of a special program on retirement and the generation gap.
The programme is available for the next 7 days on iPlayer here – he’s on at at 28 minutes in
‘The difference between now and then is that we had hope.’
‘There’s a new and noisy book just out which you must read to discover why the young and the old are shouting at each other over the supper table in a way I’ve not heard since those great divides over drugs’n'rock’n'roll or even the Iraq invasion.’
Margareta Pagano writes on Jilted Generation in the Independent on Sunday.
Meanwhile at Liberal Conspiracy Laurie Penny and Ben Little ask: Why is it easier to cut services for students than elderly?
‘Simply slashing the state, however, will not solve the problems of what Shiv Malik and Ed Howker call the ‘jilted generation’.’ Read more here.
The book is mentioned on Interns Anonymous and Jilted Generation has gone international too, in this piece by Paul Stanway in the Calgary Herald.
We're not mean, bad and mad. Our generation got a raw deal.
Ed and Shiv respond to Madeline Bunting’s article today in the Guardian – read more here.
JILTED GENERATION IS PUBLISHED TODAY!
Ed Howker and Shiv Malik’s Jilted Generation: How Britain Has Bankrupted Its Youth is published today, 2nd September 2010.
It is available from all good bookshops, including Amazon, Foyles, Waterstones and the Book Depository.
If you prefer your books to begin with an ‘e’, the electronic version is available from Amazon (for Kindle) and WHSmith (for other versions).
When you’ve read it, head back to this site or the book’s Facebook page to say what you think and spread the word.
77 per cent of the decline in employment has been suffered by young people.
David Blanchflower is a well respected economist. In the New Statesman he takes up the cause of young people. This stat says it all, “77 per cent of the decline in employment has been suffered by young people”.
No wonder unemployment hasn’t been taken seriously by this government. It hasn’t hit the key marginals yet…
Review in the Telegraph
There’s a great review of the book in the Telegraph today by Robert Colvile who says, ”while every generation thinks it has things uniquely bad, today’s teenagers have the statistics to back it up”.
Robert Peston and the boomers
We’d just like to remind readers that boomers aren’t to blame for the mess we’re in. It’s the politics of individualism that’s at fault because it has no account of the future (something we unpick in the final chapter of the book).
Saying that, a week or so after Stephanie Flanders posted a great piece on economics and the age divide, today there’s a post by the BBC’s Robert Peston on pensions and the position of the old and the young. Looks like the economists understand the point now and are starting to see things differently which is good.
However we’re not sure if we agree with everything he says. Peston doesn’t talk about the State Pension for example. But he does make the point that if young people want a better future for themselves they should unite and work with those who are also not very well off. Note that the BBC is now also thinking of closing its final salary scheme to new entrants.
Extract from The Sunday Herald…
“No-one can put the genie of globalisation back in the bottle. We cannot return to post-war economics, we have to be dynamic, we have to think smart. But if government really wants to equip its workforce to thrive in the vicissitudes of a global economy it has to do much more to help them. Apprenticeships and paid worker training must become a priority. The tax system must be re-tilted to incentivise private investment into research and development and also in employees – particularly new ones. Nor can we pretend for a minute longer that the invisible hand of free-market economics will provide the housing our country really needs…”
