Any other millennials fancy a moan?

[MoscowMules]

I know everyone says, the generation before you had it harder, all the way back to the Crimean War probably.

But

Is anyone else who is a millennial just a bit fed up? Fancy a pity party?

I reflected this evening on things that have happened.

I was born in the very early 90's, so am pretty much smack bang in the middle of the millennials.

We've lived under pretty much unstable governments in adulthood. Mainly conservative.

We've had 2 global recessions

An illegal War

Brexit

A global pandemic

Housing Crisis

Cost of living crisis

Possible collapse of the NHS or if not collapse it continues to limp on with poor care

Russia invade Ukraine and global tension.

To mention but a few calamities, and now here we are, trying to raise Alpha Generation typically, in the midst of all this.

I just feel a bit like "wtf" how much more can we take?

Yes there were good things on a social level, we were the first to learn and grow from the internet and become digital. LGB rights moved forward with same sex marriage, education improved especially with the removal of Section 28 from the education act towards the end of some of our schooling.

But my god! What a generation to belong to and try and navigate in.

I totally accept if I'm having a pity party for one here tonight though 🤣

There been a lot of interesting reflection on the millennial generation now we're fully grown. Particularly around our political attitudes and lack of shift to conservatism as we get older. A lot of the issues you've mention - recession in particular - are highlighted as potential causes. There's optimism to be had in that we could organise around this and drive societal change.

I agree!

growing up the dream was to buy a house, now it’s to be able to afford rent.

technology has taken over. I was born in 91 and remember when there was just 1 computer to a class- now everything relies on computers. Don’t get me wrong I’m tech savvy and wouldn’t be without it but our children can’t appreciate it as much because it’s so common place.

I’ve seen government after government make things worse too.

Yes I'd say of my peer groups statistically probably 1/15 are conservative, the rest of us swing left, lib Dems, labour, plaid.

Are we ever going to outnumber the boomer/older conservative generations though at the ballots? Eventually yes by sheer time, but I worry not at a time we need to most!

This shows how resilient you are. That's a lot to navigate and the world has changed so much. No one seems to care any more, everyone is just out to get what they can for themselves.

Agreed! 👏

I love that I was born in 82 and being able to have lived in the 90s. That childhood where we could be out in the street with neighbours kids for hours on end unchecked. Only being fetched for dinner or cos mum n dad had to go to shops. How my mum would let us walk to the library (20 min walk away) with older sister in charge. We would go to school on our own too.

The independence we had!

How we lived a life with no technology to Internet age and see thay grow into what it is today.

Then by teenage years the 90s hit and all the dance and pop music scene...Ill even brag of living through the era of boy bands and teen sensations like Britney Spears! Then as I got older the 90s rave scene where you had clubs with 3 rooms one for cheese, one for dance and the third for rnb and garage

The only recession I recall is the one around 2008 or was it earlier and ended in 2008 something around then.

What a time to be alive though! I wouldnt swap it for anything.

The trouble now is that when Labour or Lib Dems get into power, they will spend the next 10 years blaming past governments for the mess we're in instead of focusing on what they are going to about it.

At least with the same government for the last 12 years, they couldn't do that. They have no-one to blame but themselves. I honestly don't think it matters much who is in power as they are all corrupt and all out to line their own pockets.

You know what, thank you, thank you for bringing some positivity in. 🤣

I was a steps fanatic and knew all the moves.

Maybe I shall just go to my bedroom, pop on tragedy when I'm feeling low and re-live the moment. 🤣 Honestly, genuinely contemplating it, rather than watching the news!! Said with sincerity not sarcasm. X

Yes! I love a millennial rant.

I have done everything ‘right’ - A’s through school, good uni, grad scheme, always saved and now have a six figure household income.

Scraped to buy a ‘nice’ flat in London and now can’t afford the next step on the ladder, right at the time I ‘should’ be having kids.

contrast with siblings ten years older, who have made £300k on their house, which they bought WITH THE EXACT SAME job as me, just 10 years earlier. I.e - their budget at 30 was £200k less than mine is now, but they could afford a 4 bed detached house (for £430k), whereas the same house is now £750k so I obviously can’t.

Pretty sure they don’t save much because they don’t have to.

The NHS is now shit, and the higher inflation means my student loan is just ever increasing just when I thought I might actually pay it off.

To use a toddler line ‘it’s so unfair!!!’

@Mushroo don't compare yourself to people a bit older. it's too depressing! they will have seen far more equity gains & salaries that didn't stagnate.

YANBU. We have lived our entire adult working lives under austerity, Brexit and Covid. There hasn’t been a single prosperous or even stable year. It’s not even like we’re mid 20s, we’re 30s now! And nothing any better than when we left school, in fact it’s much worse.

I'm a younger millennial and I'm getting pissed off really. I don't want to pit young against old but bloody hell my dad's about to retire aged 57 on a final salary pension. We will be working until we die with no NHS or social care. I hope euthanasia is legal then. I hope the older generations will respect the sacrifices the younger are going to have to make to pay for all this.

Indeed, remember the old acorn computer, with it's sad dirty cream colour, or maybe a Dell!

The joys of it being your turn to be on the computer and feeling all fancy.

My child now expects every screen to be a touch screen, and if something takes longer than a millisecond to load on fibre broadband "it's not working"

Kid would have had some sort of meltdown with dial up!

I’m a geriatric millennial and agree. We are much poorer than our parents were at this age. We were told work hard, go to a good uni and you’ll have a good life. In reality despite lots of educational success and plenty of hard work I’m getting poorer each year. My special needs child is getting a worse education than they would have done 20 years ago and NHS support for them is laughable. I’ve never vote Tory, I marched against student loans and campaigned strongly against Brexit. This mess is absolutely not of my doing but here I am, daily clearing it up (I work for a charity plugging a lot of holes in our now virtually nonexistent societal safety net ).

Here endeth the rant.

Kids of today will never know the buzz of listening to the dial up as you contemplate how to grab the attention of your ‘crush’ on MSN. Sign out then back in maybe? Change your name to something cryptic? Haha

It's just depressing isn't it. We were sold a lie, work hard, do well in education, become a "global citizen" , buy your own home with expected salary growth..blah blah blah.

In actual fact we are faced with piss poor outcomes no matter how hard we tried in our youth.

It just seems to get harder and harder each year to even make ends meet never mind be a global citizen!

And to add to the scourge of the millennials, now we're responsible for low birth rates! Well I can't raise multiple children on air and hope can I, I need money to pay for extortionate child care🤦🏻‍♀️

You’re the problem. Of course it matters. Have the last 15 years taught you absolutely nothing? <goes to bang my head against a brick wall>

I hear you! Also sorry to hear about your son.

I am also a 3rd sector worker plugging holes daily. So hello fellow shipmate.

Do you honestly believe any of the current parties are worth putting your faith in? I'm absolutely dying for a new party to come to the fore. Politically homeless like many of us. Civil servants who do the job because they want change, not to get cushy jobs for themselves for the rest of their lives.

We might but the generations behind us are larger I Belive so power will skip us and end up behind us.

schemes and services which were withdrawn in front of us such as sure start centres, affordable housing, final salary pensions etc all will be reinstated but to late for us.

"MUM!! GET OFF THE PHONE!! I'M TRYING TO CHAT ON MSN!!" 😂

I was born December 1978. I had a great time in the 1990s. But the 80s were dire. Strikes, NHS a mess like it is now, miners strikes, council tax riots, third world food crisis, HIV discovered, boom and bust recession in late 1980s massive job losses in building trade, banking etc. Homeowners with massive negative equity. Northern Ireland troubles, Kuwait war. Every generation has its challenges

Hmmm I hear you OP, this has been a tough period.

bit some of what you describe isn’t unprecedented you just missed earlier cycles of it.

im an ‘xennial’ (right on the cusp of the two gens).

i was a teen in the 1990s and the economy, NHS were SHIT.

Blair and New Labour were elected when I was a student it was the first time I’d lived under a Govt that wasn’t Tory.

my parents would tell you the 1980s strikes and PiL shock inflation and 3 day weeks and power cuts of the 1970s were awful too.

so yes it’s tough now, and yes there is a generational inequality which will one day have to be reckoned with.

bit it’s not like it’s never been bad before.

TBH the boomers are starting to pay now as they are the ones most affected by poor healthcare (though there’s a scary lottery there for all of us). But definitely by poor social care. Lots of them are going to have a miserable last few years because as a group they’re too tight to sell their houses and pay more taxes.

it feels like we’re waiting for enough of the boomer generation to die to end their strangle hold on political power. And when that tipping point comes the changes could be fast…

I don't think it's too bad. We've been lucky enough to live through technology growing so we're not stuck not understanding it. We've had a tonne of opportunities like cheap global travel, education, food our grandparents could only have dreamed of. We haven't had to deal with a world war or rationing or our friends dying of polio.

Granted the house price situation isn't ideal and it's grim hearing about all the awful things in the world all the time and I do worry about climate change but we've had it pretty good.

Living standards in the UK have been dropping since the 70s really. We're a country in decline now we're not profiting from slavery and imperialism although we did have a brief breather in the 90s when we'd paid off all the WWII debt before we started bombing Iraq. Europe as a whole is a continent in decline though. It's just that we shot ourselves in the foot for extra effect a couple of years ago. Plus because we never had a proper revolution we're still completely in thrall to the upper class even though all they do is funnel money to themselves.

I agree that the last couple of years have been extraordinarily awful but that's true for the entire world.

You need to listen to that Billy Joel song, We Didn't Start The Fire! I grew up waiting for mutually assured destruction to happen, my parents came of age during the Cuban missile crisis which as we know now brought us closer to global annihilation than we have ever been before or since. There's always some shit going on somewhere. Even in the 90s there was actual genocide in Europe. Everything is pretty shit at the moment because we've all lost loads of money and time. But I don't know if there's ever been a point where there wasn't some big issue or other.