The World Is Your Oyster, The Future Your Clam

You'd think as the sickening passing of time goes on, I'd become more and more resentful towards young people. What with their youth, energy and ability to go on 12 hour benders without needing a whole week afterwards to recover.

But not so much these days. In fact, I'm pretty glad I'm not 21 in 2012, just leaving university and looking for a job. It was hard enough when I did that back in 2002. Now, it must be a nightmare trying to find a half-decent job that pays more than minimum wage. It's not getting any easier, either - not when the government has decided to stack the deck more against you.

Even children are taking it in the neck. Your exams are too easy! With this in mind, Education bod Michael Gove made plans to revolutionise the system by, err, reverting it all back to how it was over 20 years ago. Whether he gets his way is another matter, but that such a stupid idea should gain the approval of certain media figures shows the trouble we might be getting into.

Nye Bevan once noted that the Tories always need a bogey and it seems as if young people could be the new one. Obviously, as the line seems to be, they're all scrounging bastards - how dare working class children aspire to go into further education! Best to get rid of the cap on tuition fees. How dare they need help paying the rent! I'll scrap housing benefits for them so they'll have to return to their parents, says our Prime Minister, if we vote for him in the next election.

Of course, the last one there is a complete nothing of a policy designed purely to grab media interest. After all, most people on housing benefits aren't unemployed (though you'd think differently from the newspapers), nor is everyone aged 18-25 capable of moving back home. They might live on the other side of the country, might not be on good terms with them or, sadly, not have living parents. What happens in the latter case? "Well, Billy, you have a elderly Aunt living in Bangor. She'll put you up."

Perhaps the Tories have done some kind of cost/benefit analysis on this. Young people are less likely to vote, ergo it's fine to disregard them. Edwina Currie obviously thinks so: challenged on Twitter that "under 25s and futureless youth" will make her old party pay, she responded that "no they won't. They have the vote, don't use it and have no economic power. Not till they start working, pay taxes, learn sense".

Of course, this is a woman who chose to have sex with John Major, so her judgement may well be off the scale here as well. All the same, it gives an insight into the mindset of the kind of people running the country: "economic power" is key. Put everything into the system, only to find out it's one that is so fucked that you get nothing out of it in return. "Call me Dave" may well be turning "Call me 'Sir', you peasant scum".