21 thoughts on “Why are our children so miserable?”
Simon Neale
One of mine is miserable because he works in Private Equity and his company are bracing themselves for some kind of Labour stupidity-onslaught.
Another one is miserable because it’s the wrong time of the month, and she’s got a little spot on her chin.
And the youngest because he is due back at school and there’s some sort of project thing he hasn’t done over the summer.
Addolff
Because people like spud have been telling everyone that life is shit for the last 14 years (Tories) and that the planet is doomed and they are going to die soon (Gorbull warming)?
Anything else folks?
Steve
I suggest that factors contributing to this discontent include Brexit limiting opportunities,
Weird. My children hate foreigners and are happy.
Boganboy
Steve
I just knew your kids’d have the right attitude (that is, my attitude).
Boddicker
How can children be miserable when they’ve got drag queen story time?
Kids for a special treat this week how about an economics lesson from an unqualified potato? If you’re lucky he’ll tax your pocket money and show how he knows best how to spend it
The Meissen Bison
Boddicker: «he’ll tax your pocket money and show how he knows best how to spend it»
Gobstoppers?
Van_Patten
And yet it appears that a great many of our young people feel that way. There are a great many reasons for this, which I think are peculiar to the UK, and which we could address, and which Labour should be addressing, although I doubt that it will. Let me run through some of them.
One very obvious reason why young people in this country feel that they are being victimised if you like, is Brexit. They’re being denied the opportunity to move freely in Europe. Keir Starmer is standing up and proudly saying he is going to deny this opportunity to people under the age of 30, even though other countries in Europe want our young people to have that chance. It’s quite extraordinary that he is picking on our young people in this way. No wonder they feel as though they have a government that is not on their side.
Yes – those young people currently looking at custodial sentences after the ‘Murphy/O’Brien ‘ riots relating to Two Tier policing and blatant discrimination definitely want more people from lower paid countries in Eastern Europe. They’re quite clear about that.
They also have good reason to feel that the government is not on their side when it comes to poverty. Remember that nearly a million children in the UK as a whole live in poverty, and sometimes in extreme poverty, because of the government’s choice to impose a two-child benefit cap. But there are plenty of other benefits that also impact seriously on the well-being of young children. And that is something that Labour could do something about.
There’s extreme poverty for sure – much of it related to millions of people who have not contributed one bean to the exchequer being let in – with the author wanting to increase that number so a new London is allowed in every year.
Housing is also a big issue. We know that far too many people live in poor-quality private rented accommodation, subject to the vagaries of the market, and having to change schools and homes and friendship groups and everything else as a consequence, far too often. People are too vulnerable when they’re living in poverty. Families are at risk as a consequence. And children bear the price for that. Labour needs to improve the security of tenants in private rented accommodation so that children have the certainty that they need to develop as young people. But it isn’t planning to do it.
So the way to increase housing supply in the rented sector is to make it easier for tenants to stay in properties when they can’t pay their rent? And of course bringing people across from every country in the known world will have no impact on demand….
There are many other things. For example, in the UK we eat more ultra-processed food than any other country in Europe. And poor diet, which is heavily associated with the consumption of ultra-processed foods, is a major factor in the creation of depression.
Excess fructose in a young person’s diet is very likely to lead to depression. We consume too much fructose. Our young people consume too much fast food. The consequence is plain to see. They are unhappy. They’re also obese, and the two might well go together.
So state control will be extended to your shopping basket?
What else is there? There’s a lack of opportunity. Young people are treated as a commodity in the UK. We see that in our education system. Decades of largely Tory, but also Labour, education reforms have tried to standardise the educational process in this country to the point where a child feels as though they are pushed through an education process where they have to perform to pre-agreed standards or they are deemed to be a failure.
Yes – we even allowed a bunch of lunatics to shut down education for the better part of a year for a disease whose impact on the young was almost negligible – and noone, like yourself who advocated indefinite lockdown has been held accountable, or is more properly looking at a lengthy custodial or even capital sentence..
Michael Gove’s insistence that every child must retake English and Maths GCSEs, even though the content of much of the syllabus in both those subjects is completely irrelevant to their ability to actually function in the world at large, is a clear indication of this. Quality control of childhood is a feature of our education system when the ability to explore, explain and understand is ignored.
So the ability to do basic maths and read and write (which is about the limit of the current GCSE syllabus) is not important?
No wonder children feel as though they’re being denied opportunity by the education system that doesn’t let them explore who they might wish to be. One of the refrains I often hear amongst my friendship group, when we look back at our careers, and that is something we now do, is that most of us did things that we were never told that we were able to undertake when at school.
Schools narrowly focus young people on an academic career. That is just so wrong for so many young people. I might have benefited from an academic career because I ended up as an academic. But a tiny proportion of people in this country do, and most do not benefit from the way we teach. Of course, young people are unhappy as a result.
You may have an academic title but its highly questionable whether you could be considered an ‘academic’ in the pre – Blair sense of the term..
And what else is there? There is the political environment. When we have had 14 years of austerity that has deliberately undermined the well-being of people in this country, and with Labour now talking about the fact that there will be more pain, is it really any great surprise that young people are unhappy?
Where is the politics of hope that young people should have an entitlement to enjoy?
The taxation burden is at the highest for five decades even prior to the coming onslaught – what ‘austerity’ are you referring to precisely?
I know it is commonly said that the 1970s were, apparently, a terrible time to be alive. Well, I’ll tell you. I don’t believe that was true, and I happened to be growing up and did my teenage years pretty much throughout the 1970s. And they were a great time to be alive, for a very simple and straightforward reason. There was hope.
‘I believe in a place called Hope’
I don’t think anyone I knew – and I knew a wide range of people in the 1970s, young people that is – felt that we were without prospects. Whether we wanted to be a gardener, or a professor, or an accountant, or a tax official, a civil servant, a builder, whatever it might have been.
It was easy to achieve that goal. We all knew that, in effect, we could do what we wanted.
You wanted to be a purveyor of total bollocks to the world on a medium that didn’t even exist then? What a fertile imagination you must have had! That explains a lot…..
There was an apprenticeship available to us. A genuine apprenticeship, if that’s what we wanted. Not some faux one of the sort now made available by large companies because they wish to use up government funding. No, there was real training in very many skills within the economy so that people had a chance of acquiring the opportunity to maintain themselves, maintain a family, have children in a home that they might well own or live in with security of tenure. And none of that exists now for young people. Are you surprised that they’re miserable?
And yet the obvious corollary of that argument, that too many people are going to University and as a result we need far fewer universities is apparently ‘unacceptable’??
I’m not. If we are to have genuine reform in this country, we have to recreate that hope. And we could. Hope is not dependent on owning the highest grade of iPad, or phone, or the greatest number of clothes, or whatever it is. Hope is dependent on having opportunity. And we have a political system that is intent on denying it.
And that is why so many young people are living in a world where they don’t feel, in this country at least, that they have the chance to flourish. And that really worries me.
In what sense are you offering hope?
– You support the complete replacement of the UK by immigration
– You support Net Zero which will lead to total impoverishment and tens of millions dying from starvation
– Your economic policies such as they are have no basis in reality and would lead to a combination of hyperinflation a la Zimbabwe and total state control like North Korea. Two countries where over 90% of the population would leave if they could. How is that offering ‘hope’?
Bloke in North Dorset
Another good Fisking VP, beats me how you have the stamina to even read his drivel.
Anyway,
“ even though other countries in Europe want our young people to have that chance.”
Just when you thought he couldn’t be less informed about any subject he plumbs new depths of ignorance.
There’s massive youth employment in most of Europe and they see us as a way to provide work and experience for their own young, especially in the English language.
Marius
Does anyone know how many British young people actually took advantage of EU freedom of movement when it was available?
In my broad circle, I can only think of a handful, apart from those who did a year abroad as part of their degree.
Boddicker
He talks of the golden age of the 70s when teenagers had hope but all (most) teenagers have hope – it’s part of what makes youth youthful.
Sadly that hope gets beaten out once confronted by the real world. The joy of the first pay check spoilt by the realisation that a chunk has been taken out. The inspiration to start a side hustle to then find out the potato wants his cut of any profits.
Everywhere you turn you get shaken down, that’s if you get past the incessant regulation and meddling. It’s no wonder hope fades.
Yet this is the world that the potato wants and wants harder.
How pathetic of him to see a study and project the things that he disagrees with on to children – Brexit was 8 years ago – teenagers now were in primary school, doubt they even notice.
Spuds glory years were the 70s, so were Gary glitter’s and he’s locked up to protect children, the same should apply to the fat potato
Steve
Bboy – the kids are all right.
Marius – Does anyone know how many British young people actually took advantage of EU freedom of movement when it was available
Dunno but the fact that “rarely seeing your children again” was meant to be an EU benefit shows you what soulless, crusty jizz socks Remainos are.
Grikath
@Marius: Many, actually.
Most of them in fields that require actual knowledge of producing/manufacturing things. Y’know those jobs that the UK has eradicated over the past decades.
Around where I live it’s mainly shipbuilding/maintenance and offshore. Lots of brit expats, to the point where in some pubs it’s simply easier to switch to english.
The majority of them also arranged for a post-Brexit work permit, and are most definitely *not* planning to return in the near future.
Or the distant future, for that matter… Most of them have been here long enough to naturalise, and it’s probably going to be a repeat of the mid-18thC.
Interesting period that…. It’s why my paternal family name is german, and my mothers’ family name is british. Specifically from York.
John Turning
Jorvikky Ebor. Lovely girls name. Viking for lover of wide open grassy terrain with a river through the middle.
Sebalto
So working abroad is impossible now post Brexit?
I mean, there will be more forms to fill in, but has fewer forms ever been the deciding factor on Tarquin and Amily spending 2 years abroad working?
yeah, about that
@JT händer från vår gräsbevuxna terräng
But seriously, that’s good, and left me longing for the open grassy terrain 😉
ahem..
Well, tbh, it’s a PITA, most clients don’t want the hassle, and I don’t blame them. Sure for the Joscastas I’m sure it’s business as usual as daddy’s buddy/supplicant sits where he can push that cost (whether effort or $) downward. Rest of us, easier if twernt there, but was 8 frickin years ago… adaptability is supposedly a distinguishing feature of the species and all that….
ahem..
Oh, and to our host’s original question…. Because we’ve spent the last twenty years drilling into them they’re all doomed, world will end in the next (insert) years etc….
Not that dissimilar to the CND crap^H^H^H^H noise we were raised on really. Why was it we were more robust? Greater general cynicism in the populus?
moqifen
I keep on hearing this bollox about young people not being able to work abroad because of brexit. I’ve 2 friends who work abroad quite happily, but they are middle aged professionals. Even prior to brexit i didnt come across hardly any uk youngsters working abroad in the hospitality and hotel trade – not in France, not in the Netherlands, not in Belgium, not in slovakia, not in Poland, not in czech republic, not in slovakia, nor Hungary. I say the hospitality and hotel trade because i’ve met plenty of foreigners working in the Uk in these trades.
johnd
I traveled extensively in Europe in the 50s and early 60s,both with my family and alone. All that was required was a Passport, an International Driving Licence and Insurance for your vehicle. Crossing most National borders was a simple matter of slowing down at the border,looking enquiringly at the guard in his hut and then driving on when he waved you by. Even a visit to East Germany at the height of the Cold War was comparatively easy. Stop at the border, let the guard look in your vehicle and check the documents,pay about 10 Deutschmarks for a visa stamp and away you go.
As far as working abroad I worked at one time with someone who spent 6 months of the year in Greece in the vineyards and Olive orchards ,coming back to the UK when the harvest finished. All this pre EU.
As others have said, the unrelenting torrent of doom coming from the left and the climate cultists is enough to make anyone depressed.
Bloke in Wales
So working abroad is impossible now post Brexit?
My current contract is with a company based in the eu. It’s no hassle at all, only downside is I’m currently being paid in euros. In fact, some hassle is reduced as IR35 does not apply.
One of mine is miserable because he works in Private Equity and his company are bracing themselves for some kind of Labour stupidity-onslaught.
Another one is miserable because it’s the wrong time of the month, and she’s got a little spot on her chin.
And the youngest because he is due back at school and there’s some sort of project thing he hasn’t done over the summer.
Because people like spud have been telling everyone that life is shit for the last 14 years (Tories) and that the planet is doomed and they are going to die soon (Gorbull warming)?
Anything else folks?
I suggest that factors contributing to this discontent include Brexit limiting opportunities,
Weird. My children hate foreigners and are happy.
Steve
I just knew your kids’d have the right attitude (that is, my attitude).
How can children be miserable when they’ve got drag queen story time?
Kids for a special treat this week how about an economics lesson from an unqualified potato? If you’re lucky he’ll tax your pocket money and show how he knows best how to spend it
Boddicker: «he’ll tax your pocket money and show how he knows best how to spend it»
Gobstoppers?
And yet it appears that a great many of our young people feel that way. There are a great many reasons for this, which I think are peculiar to the UK, and which we could address, and which Labour should be addressing, although I doubt that it will. Let me run through some of them.
One very obvious reason why young people in this country feel that they are being victimised if you like, is Brexit. They’re being denied the opportunity to move freely in Europe. Keir Starmer is standing up and proudly saying he is going to deny this opportunity to people under the age of 30, even though other countries in Europe want our young people to have that chance. It’s quite extraordinary that he is picking on our young people in this way. No wonder they feel as though they have a government that is not on their side.
Yes – those young people currently looking at custodial sentences after the ‘Murphy/O’Brien ‘ riots relating to Two Tier policing and blatant discrimination definitely want more people from lower paid countries in Eastern Europe. They’re quite clear about that.
They also have good reason to feel that the government is not on their side when it comes to poverty. Remember that nearly a million children in the UK as a whole live in poverty, and sometimes in extreme poverty, because of the government’s choice to impose a two-child benefit cap. But there are plenty of other benefits that also impact seriously on the well-being of young children. And that is something that Labour could do something about.
There’s extreme poverty for sure – much of it related to millions of people who have not contributed one bean to the exchequer being let in – with the author wanting to increase that number so a new London is allowed in every year.
Housing is also a big issue. We know that far too many people live in poor-quality private rented accommodation, subject to the vagaries of the market, and having to change schools and homes and friendship groups and everything else as a consequence, far too often. People are too vulnerable when they’re living in poverty. Families are at risk as a consequence. And children bear the price for that. Labour needs to improve the security of tenants in private rented accommodation so that children have the certainty that they need to develop as young people. But it isn’t planning to do it.
So the way to increase housing supply in the rented sector is to make it easier for tenants to stay in properties when they can’t pay their rent? And of course bringing people across from every country in the known world will have no impact on demand….
There are many other things. For example, in the UK we eat more ultra-processed food than any other country in Europe. And poor diet, which is heavily associated with the consumption of ultra-processed foods, is a major factor in the creation of depression.
Excess fructose in a young person’s diet is very likely to lead to depression. We consume too much fructose. Our young people consume too much fast food. The consequence is plain to see. They are unhappy. They’re also obese, and the two might well go together.
So state control will be extended to your shopping basket?
What else is there? There’s a lack of opportunity. Young people are treated as a commodity in the UK. We see that in our education system. Decades of largely Tory, but also Labour, education reforms have tried to standardise the educational process in this country to the point where a child feels as though they are pushed through an education process where they have to perform to pre-agreed standards or they are deemed to be a failure.
Yes – we even allowed a bunch of lunatics to shut down education for the better part of a year for a disease whose impact on the young was almost negligible – and noone, like yourself who advocated indefinite lockdown has been held accountable, or is more properly looking at a lengthy custodial or even capital sentence..
Michael Gove’s insistence that every child must retake English and Maths GCSEs, even though the content of much of the syllabus in both those subjects is completely irrelevant to their ability to actually function in the world at large, is a clear indication of this. Quality control of childhood is a feature of our education system when the ability to explore, explain and understand is ignored.
So the ability to do basic maths and read and write (which is about the limit of the current GCSE syllabus) is not important?
No wonder children feel as though they’re being denied opportunity by the education system that doesn’t let them explore who they might wish to be. One of the refrains I often hear amongst my friendship group, when we look back at our careers, and that is something we now do, is that most of us did things that we were never told that we were able to undertake when at school.
Schools narrowly focus young people on an academic career. That is just so wrong for so many young people. I might have benefited from an academic career because I ended up as an academic. But a tiny proportion of people in this country do, and most do not benefit from the way we teach. Of course, young people are unhappy as a result.
You may have an academic title but its highly questionable whether you could be considered an ‘academic’ in the pre – Blair sense of the term..
And what else is there? There is the political environment. When we have had 14 years of austerity that has deliberately undermined the well-being of people in this country, and with Labour now talking about the fact that there will be more pain, is it really any great surprise that young people are unhappy?
Where is the politics of hope that young people should have an entitlement to enjoy?
The taxation burden is at the highest for five decades even prior to the coming onslaught – what ‘austerity’ are you referring to precisely?
I know it is commonly said that the 1970s were, apparently, a terrible time to be alive. Well, I’ll tell you. I don’t believe that was true, and I happened to be growing up and did my teenage years pretty much throughout the 1970s. And they were a great time to be alive, for a very simple and straightforward reason. There was hope.
‘I believe in a place called Hope’
I don’t think anyone I knew – and I knew a wide range of people in the 1970s, young people that is – felt that we were without prospects. Whether we wanted to be a gardener, or a professor, or an accountant, or a tax official, a civil servant, a builder, whatever it might have been.
It was easy to achieve that goal. We all knew that, in effect, we could do what we wanted.
You wanted to be a purveyor of total bollocks to the world on a medium that didn’t even exist then? What a fertile imagination you must have had! That explains a lot…..
There was an apprenticeship available to us. A genuine apprenticeship, if that’s what we wanted. Not some faux one of the sort now made available by large companies because they wish to use up government funding. No, there was real training in very many skills within the economy so that people had a chance of acquiring the opportunity to maintain themselves, maintain a family, have children in a home that they might well own or live in with security of tenure. And none of that exists now for young people. Are you surprised that they’re miserable?
And yet the obvious corollary of that argument, that too many people are going to University and as a result we need far fewer universities is apparently ‘unacceptable’??
I’m not. If we are to have genuine reform in this country, we have to recreate that hope. And we could. Hope is not dependent on owning the highest grade of iPad, or phone, or the greatest number of clothes, or whatever it is. Hope is dependent on having opportunity. And we have a political system that is intent on denying it.
And that is why so many young people are living in a world where they don’t feel, in this country at least, that they have the chance to flourish. And that really worries me.
In what sense are you offering hope?
– You support the complete replacement of the UK by immigration
– You support Net Zero which will lead to total impoverishment and tens of millions dying from starvation
– Your economic policies such as they are have no basis in reality and would lead to a combination of hyperinflation a la Zimbabwe and total state control like North Korea. Two countries where over 90% of the population would leave if they could. How is that offering ‘hope’?
Another good Fisking VP, beats me how you have the stamina to even read his drivel.
Anyway,
“ even though other countries in Europe want our young people to have that chance.”
Just when you thought he couldn’t be less informed about any subject he plumbs new depths of ignorance.
There’s massive youth employment in most of Europe and they see us as a way to provide work and experience for their own young, especially in the English language.
Does anyone know how many British young people actually took advantage of EU freedom of movement when it was available?
In my broad circle, I can only think of a handful, apart from those who did a year abroad as part of their degree.
He talks of the golden age of the 70s when teenagers had hope but all (most) teenagers have hope – it’s part of what makes youth youthful.
Sadly that hope gets beaten out once confronted by the real world. The joy of the first pay check spoilt by the realisation that a chunk has been taken out. The inspiration to start a side hustle to then find out the potato wants his cut of any profits.
Everywhere you turn you get shaken down, that’s if you get past the incessant regulation and meddling. It’s no wonder hope fades.
Yet this is the world that the potato wants and wants harder.
How pathetic of him to see a study and project the things that he disagrees with on to children – Brexit was 8 years ago – teenagers now were in primary school, doubt they even notice.
Spuds glory years were the 70s, so were Gary glitter’s and he’s locked up to protect children, the same should apply to the fat potato
Bboy – the kids are all right.
Marius – Does anyone know how many British young people actually took advantage of EU freedom of movement when it was available
Dunno but the fact that “rarely seeing your children again” was meant to be an EU benefit shows you what soulless, crusty jizz socks Remainos are.
@Marius: Many, actually.
Most of them in fields that require actual knowledge of producing/manufacturing things. Y’know those jobs that the UK has eradicated over the past decades.
Around where I live it’s mainly shipbuilding/maintenance and offshore. Lots of brit expats, to the point where in some pubs it’s simply easier to switch to english.
The majority of them also arranged for a post-Brexit work permit, and are most definitely *not* planning to return in the near future.
Or the distant future, for that matter… Most of them have been here long enough to naturalise, and it’s probably going to be a repeat of the mid-18thC.
Interesting period that…. It’s why my paternal family name is german, and my mothers’ family name is british. Specifically from York.
Jorvikky Ebor. Lovely girls name. Viking for lover of wide open grassy terrain with a river through the middle.
So working abroad is impossible now post Brexit?
I mean, there will be more forms to fill in, but has fewer forms ever been the deciding factor on Tarquin and Amily spending 2 years abroad working?
@JT händer från vår gräsbevuxna terräng
But seriously, that’s good, and left me longing for the open grassy terrain 😉
Well, tbh, it’s a PITA, most clients don’t want the hassle, and I don’t blame them. Sure for the Joscastas I’m sure it’s business as usual as daddy’s buddy/supplicant sits where he can push that cost (whether effort or $) downward. Rest of us, easier if twernt there, but was 8 frickin years ago… adaptability is supposedly a distinguishing feature of the species and all that….
Oh, and to our host’s original question…. Because we’ve spent the last twenty years drilling into them they’re all doomed, world will end in the next (insert) years etc….
Not that dissimilar to the CND crap^H^H^H^H noise we were raised on really. Why was it we were more robust? Greater general cynicism in the populus?
I keep on hearing this bollox about young people not being able to work abroad because of brexit. I’ve 2 friends who work abroad quite happily, but they are middle aged professionals. Even prior to brexit i didnt come across hardly any uk youngsters working abroad in the hospitality and hotel trade – not in France, not in the Netherlands, not in Belgium, not in slovakia, not in Poland, not in czech republic, not in slovakia, nor Hungary. I say the hospitality and hotel trade because i’ve met plenty of foreigners working in the Uk in these trades.
I traveled extensively in Europe in the 50s and early 60s,both with my family and alone. All that was required was a Passport, an International Driving Licence and Insurance for your vehicle. Crossing most National borders was a simple matter of slowing down at the border,looking enquiringly at the guard in his hut and then driving on when he waved you by. Even a visit to East Germany at the height of the Cold War was comparatively easy. Stop at the border, let the guard look in your vehicle and check the documents,pay about 10 Deutschmarks for a visa stamp and away you go.
As far as working abroad I worked at one time with someone who spent 6 months of the year in Greece in the vineyards and Olive orchards ,coming back to the UK when the harvest finished. All this pre EU.
As others have said, the unrelenting torrent of doom coming from the left and the climate cultists is enough to make anyone depressed.
My current contract is with a company based in the eu. It’s no hassle at all, only downside is I’m currently being paid in euros. In fact, some hassle is reduced as IR35 does not apply.
Maybe expensive housing is part of the problem?