I don't know that Bob Ellis was being entirely serious in his latest "Unleashed" column. ("Unleashed", incidentally, seems to be a government run service where those ignored at their own websites can seek a larger audience.)
Anyhow, Bob thinks that youth today binge drink, do drugs and don't marry because - there jobs are all crap:
They have jobs that demean and shame them, jobs that offend their conscience and wound their pride, jobs out of which they have no clear hope in their lifetime of getting out of, into jobs that are any better.Well, I'm still waiting for Bob Ellis' definitive paper on quantum gravity to appear at Arxiv, but it has yet to appear. Too many red wine stains, I suspect.
Where once they might hope to get a university degree in Roman history or music composition or quantum physics and a job thereafter teaching it, they now find these things unavailable to them.
When Bob was a youth:
....the jobs young people got in their teens were plentiful and most of them agreeable.I would like to see people of Bob's age surveyed and see what they have to say about that. According to Bob:
Electronic robot slaves have taken over the nicer, unconflicted jobs, and all that are left for humans to do are the nasty, humiliating, shaming, lousy jobs.Come on, I think Bob's having a lend of us, don't you think? How about this line:
And so it is and so it goes, with bad jobs everywhere, jobs from which you might be sacked at any point, and rents going through the roof and frequent foreign travel no longer an affordable option, that young people, yes, take drugs and hit the piss and go down on one another as if there's no tomorrow. I would too in their shoes.Funny he should mention foreign travel: in Bob's youth that usually involved a one way sea trip to England to work and save up money for the return leg in 2 year's time. There was no way the average youth could afford return holiday travel to New Zealand, let alone the rest of the world.
Did Bob miss out on a seat at the 2020 Summit? What a pity!
2 comments:
What a croc
Contrary to the ellis theory ,i think most of these kids haven't
got jobs yet.
They are still being suported by their parents who have a resonable disposable income due to the prosperous times we are in, while their kids attend uni and finish school
Nothing wrong with that i hope to do the same for my daughter to increase her chances of a rewarding career
Kids have a much better chance of a good job now from when i left school 25 years ago, and certainly a lot better chance than when my father was kicked out 50 years ago
I tend to think some of them have too much time and money on their hands
Peter
(crusty old fart)
Have to agree with Pete the crusty old fart.
I can't believe Ellis - or anyone - would write such unmitigated bilge.
I know "kids" who have done more overseas travel than I can dream of (still hoping ...), have totally indulged lives thanks to their put-upon parents, and expect to - and probably will - walk into overpaid jobs for which their education has not prepared them one jot, and which they will then perform to a level of incompetence that beggars belief, all the while their self-esteem and sense of entitlement growing by the nanosecond.
Ellis has never had a real job, so, truly, what the foooking hell does he think he's talking about?
As for drinking and drug taking: yawn, yawn, yawn. Every generation continues to believe that they invented sex, drink, drugs and music. All a bit tedious really.
I'm guessing that Ellis has had the odd binge drink weekend or year, if not the odd humiliating, shaming, lousy job.
Load of drivel.
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