Lost generation

They traded boys...they sold girls (Joel 3:3) 

Today I am asking you to come with me on an imaginary journey. So, if you are willing, open the door and get in. First we travel back in time. In your personal clock it's back to teenage years. Sorry. I don't know what they were like for you but post 16 I quite enjoyed. The worst of puberty was done with, friends and peer groups were established and exams seemed a blessed way off. However, the date clock is not running to the same timetable. It is not 1960 but 2016. External exams happen every year and every exam matters. Drop a grade and your university choice may be beyond reach. Not only that but the pressure to 'know what you want to do' is immense. In 1960 if you went to university you got a job and no one much worried about it. In 2016 all that has changed. Getting a 1st class degree doesn't guarantee a job. It may even make you unemployable. Nearly 50% of students are graduates and the currency has devalued beyond anyone's expectation. The new solution is to 'know what you want to do' so on this journey you are in the carriage marked Creative Industries. Your ambition is to work in the global fashion market. This can mean the UK but the field is quite narrow so for the most part your hopes are in Europe. Work, sales, travel are all predicated on the single market and being British is a great way in. It's on the destination board and you are keen to get there soon.

At this point, you are travelling through a town called Politics. Outside the carriage windows you can see people arguing. Not much of it makes sense to you, but you hear the word Europe. You have been brought up in a cosmopolitan world. You go to school with people from all across Europe, your culture and music are multinational, you travel freely in a way your parents only dreamed about and you do it the poor way, which means you have to live among and get on with everyone you meet. You are in fact European through and through. It's not a choice, it's simply who you are. So the word is a good word. It's a sleeping carriage so you quietly doze off. When you awake something is wrong. You look out of the window and you seem to be on the wrong track. Europe has suddenly disappeared from the destination board. Someone has taped a hand-written 'USA' over the place where Europe once was, but it's not exactly secure. You panic, you ask around if it's true, and then, when it settles in, you start to cry. It's the only response you have left.

A little later, the train makes a stop at a very busy station called Finance. Everyone of your age has to get out and fill in a form that allows them to continue on their journey. The form is a long and complicated one. Reading it, it soon becomes clear that the next section of the journey, which your parents passed free of charge, requires you to invest roughly the amount of money they spent on buying their house. This is more surprising than you expected. You had realised something like this would happen but words like Student Loan and Tuition Fees had hidden the truth. You would be borrowing £15,000 a year to attend, plus costs of food, books, travel and social events. In all you'll be lucky to be less than £60,000 in debt just to travel the next three stops. And you can't even get where you wanted to go. 

The next stop passes well. You've had to make enough friends in the first few weeks of college to choose a house for next year, but, amazingly, it's happened and, unlike school, which was like sharing a ball pool with hyenas, people like you and you like them back. You have real friends, a fascinating course and renewed hope for the future. 

Quite suddenly it starts to get dark outside. The train slows to a crawl and then judders to a halt. A man with a torch that barely throws light walks up to the carriage door. Everyone out, he calls, leave everything behind and go, now. You find your way down the embankment. There's a warm hearth waiting for you but your friends are far away and your course is closed down. And the future? Well, that seems to have been stolen. 

As you ponder you notice a pattern. It's the same faces at the window over and over again. Who changed school to a place of permanent stress? Who made university degrees worth so much less? Who added fees that prevent you and many of your friends ever being out of debt, or ever owning a home? Who switched the track while you slept so Europe was no longer on the destination board? Who needs protecting so that you cannot stay at college with your friends? Ah, now it is 1960. We, the booming generation, have not traded our young people, but we are at risk of forgetting what our choices have cost them. We are in danger of ignoring what we gained so easily and what they have lost.

View through a window in Majorca