There is something of a coincidence about articles by Paul Mason ( of Newsnight) in the Guardian and Neil Clark in The First Post Daily today.
As Paul Mason says:
'We will fight, we will kiss ‚Ķ" says the poster, over a picture of a single rioter leaping over a line of riot shields. "London, Cairo, Rome, Tunis." It may be a bit over-optimistic about Rome, but it sums up the zeitgeist. What's going on is neither a repeat of 1968 or of the "colour revolutions" that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nor is it enough to observe that "they're all using Twitter" — this misses the point of what they are using it for.
At the heart of the movement is a new sociological type — the graduate with no future.
Clark makes the same point:
Many commentators have portrayed the revolts against the ruling regimes in Tunisia and Egypt as something peculiar to the Arab world. It's all to do with Islamists trying to take control, or about the ‘Arab world's 1989', we're told.
In fact, they're part of a global phenomenon. What is fuelling the anti-government protests in the Middle East, in Serbia, Albania and Turkish Cyprus are economic factors. People are taking to the streets, not because they are Islamists, far-leftists, or far-rightists, but principally because they want a life. They want jobs and a decent standard of living.
I am convinced that that is true. Back to Paul Mason:
Why now? It's a mixture of the unsustainability of regimes based on repression and the sudden uncertainty about the economic future. Modern capitalism demands mass access to higher education. In most of the world this is funded by personal indebtedess — people making a rational judgment to go into debt so they will be better paid later. However, the prospect of 10 years of fiscal retrenchment in some countries means they now believe they will be poorer than their parents. And the effect has been like throwing a light switch; the prosperity story is replaced with the doom story, even if for individuals reality will be more complex.
This evaporation of a promise is compounded in the emerging markets. First, even where you get rapid economic growth, countries like Egyptcannot absorb the demographic bulge of young people fast enough to deliver rising living standards for them. Second, you have states and systems based on the suppression of information. In a suddenly information-rich age, they have struggled to adapt and are mostly dying
As Clark says:
The street protests in these countries illustrate a growing discontent, particularly among the young, with the neo-liberal model of globalisation and rising anger against corrupt and out-of-touch political elites who seem not to care about their predicament.
And the bad news for those elites is that the discontent is only going to spread.
Last August, the International Labour Organisation revealed that 81 million young people worldwide were without jobs at the end of 2009 - the highest level of youth unemployment ever. The ILO expects the increase to have continued throughout 2010, and with governments across Europe committed to deficit-slashing austerity programmes, unemployment is only going to get worse in 2011.
And to conclude: Clark again:
And there's nothing to say that large-scale anti-government protests won't spread to Britain, too, with economists warning of a double-dip recession and youth unemployment reaching a record high in January.
It seems that across Europe ruling elites have a choice: either change their economic policies and put full employment back on the agenda, or face an increasingly angry populace.
I'm not a fan of social unrest.
Nor revolution.
In fact I'm far from a fan of either.
But, how would I feel if 21, piled high with debt, no prospect of a job, or a house, or the well being I'm told I'd enjoy? I don't know. And, how do the parents of these young people feel? They're also being betrayed. And that betrayal is not by chance. It is deliberate. The ConDems tax policy, explored here over the last few days is clear indication of that.
The stress in our society is enormous, and growing. Threatening tough policing is not the answer. Delivering real reform is the answer.
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It is not just the young, increasingly it is the old. Check out carlex.org.uk about one aspect of this. When you get to the eventual financier mainsprings you are back in the tax havens.
@Demetrius
Well, I’m not old yet
But rest assured – I have promised my wife I will be doing this (or something else,m after we’ve won) in my 80s if I can…
And I expect to be in good company
I entirely agree with these comments and as Demetrius states it is not just the young who are becoming hostile to the neoliberal policies of the political elites. In the 80s the YOP generation probably felt the same but the social media outlets to express and harness this alienation did not exist. We must not think that the UK is immune to social unrest by the young – the student demos were evidence enough to suggest otherwise. As yet the really harsh policies have not impacted, when they do what will be the response of the Government? Rebalancing the economy is a glib comment designed to hide the fact that this Government has no intention of doing anything positive to foster economic regeneration. It believes in a small state except of course when law and order issues are involved. We shall have to wait and see but in the meantime many many lives and aspirations are being dashed in the course of our shock therapy of fundamental neoliberalism.
@Teresa Harding
I couldn’t agree more
Elderly people are also betrayed by the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey governments.
Usually it is youth that has the anger, vigour and inclination to seek change — with the old often seen as soft targets ready for exploitation.
But beware! The elderly can fight back and like Richard the PSG (average age mid seventies) has the passion to continue its campaign for as long as it takes.
Good company? You bet!
PSG, your rants are tiresome. The point about the elderly is that they have already had a better life than their grandkids will. If you are between 50 and 75 now, you lived in a time of economic prosperity, where the demographics were all in your favour. If you purchased any assets – property, shares, art – its value has grown out of all proportion. If you were educated at university, it cost you nothing. You didn’t enter the jobs market in your mid 20s a hundred grand in debt, competing against other applicants from all around the world and with no prospect of buying a property.
This is what annoys the young (of which I guess I am still one). We have been told for at least a decade that we won’t retire until at least 75 and when we do, there won’t be any sort of pension. It is rotten to pit young against old, but the real problem is that pensioners today are getting a far better deal than those in their 30s are being primed for now. That is, unless we have a very different society. But I’d say it needs to be a society based around localism, as opposed to globalisation.
But please don’t use the fact that you got burned investing in offshore funds hide the basic fact that your generation has already skimmed all the cream. Oh, and did I mention the environment? You did a good job with that too. The old are not a soft target: with their propensity to vote they are about the strongest pressure group in the UK.
@Mad
As an oldie myself, I agree with most of what you say. However, it is not true to say that we’ve ‘skimmed all the cream’. The cream is mostly still there in the hands of the super rich. We should aim to get our hands on it and have a share out soon (if you can get you’re hands on cream!).
Richard
A cautionary note re quoting Neil Clark, as I’m a huge fan of your blog and don;t want you to be smeared as a member of the loony left by association.
Mr Clark is essentially a genocide-denier in respect of war crimes (Srebrenica is “the genocide that wasn’t”) committed by the Milosevic (“a man whose worst crime was to carry on being socialist”).
He also said of Iraqi translators: “let’s do all we can to keep self-centred mercenaries who betrayed their fellow countrymen and women for financial gain out of Britain” i.e. let’s abandon them http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4124296.ece.
Amazingly, Clark continues to get the odd article published. Avoid him.
Paul Mason, however, is a lefty of the infinitly more wholesome variety.
@Patrick Osgood
I tend to agree – and emphatically so re Paul
Clark has an ‘odd’ record on foreign policy – but that does not remove the relative comparisons, which was the point, and I doubt they colluded
“they want jobs and a better standard of living”
A word of caution here. There are jobs and jobs. To be blindingly obvious, if the job consists of perfecting cluster munitions, then you are better off doing nothing.
So this post should be read in conjunction with Richard’s on the Green new deal of 6th december.
Find it under the heading of Economics
Or a fuller more comprehensive post here:
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2010/12/17/the-alternative-economic-policy-we-need/
@Daniel
Absolutely agreed!