Category Archives: Politics and policy

The toxic legacy of Boomer-blaming

If you had a baby in the new year, congratulations—you’ve given birth to a new generation. According to the Australian research consultancy McCrindle, as of January 2025, babies will no longer be “Gen Alpha” but, somewhat underwhelmingly, “Gen Beta.” Apparently, they’ll be a lot like the “Alphas,” born between 2010 and 2024, but shaped even […]

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No, Gen Z is not ‘yearning for fascism’

  • Posted by jennie
  • Posted on February 5, 2025
  • Gen Z,Politics and policy
  • Comments Off on No, Gen Z is not ‘yearning for fascism’

More than half of British youngsters allegedly ‘believe Britain should be ruled by a dictator’, according to new research from Channel 4. Apparently, Gen Z is ‘yearning for fascism’, led down this path by difficult economic conditions and ‘right-wing grifters’ like Andrew Tate, Nigel Farage and Donald Trump. There is ‘clear evidence of disengagement from democracy’, Channel […]

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The biggest misconceptions about Gen Z, Boomers, & Millennials

I enjoyed taking part in this episode of The Next Generation podcast, with 19-year-old host Elliot Bewick. We discussed everything from generation labels and Boomer-blaming to the Covid lockdowns, depoliticisation, populism, parenting culture and education.

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Keir Starmer’s war on mothers

As their swift suspensions indicated, Keir Starmer can probably cope with a rebellion of “pissed-off” Labour MPs over his failure to commit to scrapping the two-child benefit cap. But when even Suella Braverman, the Right-winger that right-thinkers love to hate, gets in on the act, he must sense trouble brewing. The benefit cap, which prevents parents […]

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The cult of Plastic Woman

How fantastic is life in plastic? I’m not talking about Barbie here, though of course the film’s defining moment is Gloria’s bitter feminist monologue: “I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us.” I mean the longer-running cult of plasticity, popularised in the 2000s with […]

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The toddlers have taken over

  • Posted by jennie
  • Posted on April 5, 2019
  • Politics and policy
  • Comments Off on The toddlers have taken over

As the parliamentary pantomime over Brexit carries on procrastinating, the audience is united on one thing: utter embarrassment about the behaviour of MPs. Almost three years on from the EU referendum – the referendum they voted to hold, the decision they voted to deliver, the commitment they made in the last General Election – they […]

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Buying off young people

As adults, we have some major obligations to our children. We nourish their bodies, helping them through the chaos of toddlerhood and the hormonal hell of their teenage years, so that they grow into physically healthy adults. We nourish their minds, helping them to access the cultural heritage that our society has built up over […]

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Time for a truce in the ‘generation wars’

  • Posted by jennie
  • Posted on January 9, 2018
  • Politics and policy
  • Comments Off on Time for a truce in the ‘generation wars’

The old and the young need to come together. But how? Mixing Matters, a new report by the charity United for All Ages, has called for the promotion of ‘shared sites’ that can facilitate contact between older and younger people. These include nurseries sharing a space with care homes, sheltered housing developments letting flats for […]

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The promotion of ‘generational equity’ is a divisive pursuit

It has become fashionable in policy and media circles to talk about inequality between the generations. We are warned that today’s young people belong to a “jilted generation” (1), or a “stagnation generation” (2), who have been cornered by the economic and political problems of the moment and are unable to buy a house, start a […]

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The manipulative flattery of the youth vote is demeaning to young people and bad for politics

  • Posted by jennie
  • Posted on June 15, 2017
  • Millennials,Politics and policy
  • Comments Off on The manipulative flattery of the youth vote is demeaning to young people and bad for politics

Jeremy Corbyn has gained much of the credit for the apparently high youth turnout for the General Election, and fair enough. But let’s not kid ourselves: there are deeper currents at work. The big thing that seems to have propelled young voters back to the ballot box was the EU Referendum of 2016. Contrary to […]

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