Mastodon Feed
Reblogged by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
GeofCox@climatejustice.social wrote:
I had the privilege of growing up in the 60s and 70s - how I wish I could get across how important the feelings of security and optimism were to us then.
Some will say it was just the optimism of youth, or point to the threat of nuclear war that hung over us - similar, perhaps, to climate-ecological breakdown now.
But here's the thing: my family was unskilled working-class, and we had little; I was never really hungry, but I was often cold, my toys were secondhand, etc... But when I was ill the doctor came out to our little terraced house, when I got to university my full grant was the most money I'd ever had, and then I went traveling and working casually around Europe for a year. I was free to live life to the full - because I was safe in the knowledge that if everything went wrong the NHS would pick me up, and the social safety net, the welfare state would provide enough to live on until I got back on my feet.
Most young people in the UK now don't have that feeling of security that bestows freedom; instead they feel they have to get down to the daily grind or they'll be left behind in the rat race. Which is of course just what their wealthy and privileged potential employers want them to feel.