To think young people have been totally forgotten ??

[Mossang3l]

I was watching something earlier and it was the very elderly talking about how the community has come together to take care of them. Christmas dinners, companionship, gifts, phone calls, check ins etc. Wonderful. I’m very happy they are being looked after.

But it’s really struck a chord with me. There is NOTHING like this to look after the young even though they are sacrificing so much for everyone else.

They don’t have careers or adult social connections, they’re probably single, they’re missing their educations and exams, they’re probably the highest percentage to have lost their jobs, they can’t see their friends, their future prospects have been reduced massively (through the economy, educational inequalities, brexit etc).

They’re all lonely and isolated and scared and all that adults seem to do is bitch about students and the young. They’re moaned about and criminalised just for being young (well they were is September anyway but it’s stuck I fear). Far too many of them are committing suicide and yet still nothing happens.

My daughter (20) lost her job and can’t get a new one, hasn’t been into uni once and is so lonely. She signed up to volunteer with every organisation she could find and hasn’t heard back from a single one.

Surely we need to be doing more to help the young ? I fear they are being totally forgotten and may be having the worst time of all.

I am genuinely curious to know if you think our children will benefit from all the social spending, safety-nets and law-keeping that older generations have been used to.

I feel depressingly sure that they won’t because I cannot see how the shrinking economy can provide what we have come to expect. I would be interested to hear how you or any other posters think society will continue to function and to finance itself.

@Flyonawalk Are you talking about the older generation that were born in the Great Depression, were teens or young adults during the ar, then still restricted by a completely broken economy and rationing for a long time after the end of the war? That had young families in the 1970s when inflation was running at 0% at one stage, and there were terrible conditions brought about by extreme unions. Then lived through the 80s and watched their on dc fighting to get on the YTS schemes, or to sign on with little hope of employment. Who might well have been effected by the miners strikes, and the closure of all the huge manufacturing industies (ship building, steel works, car plants, etc etc). The massive mortgage interest rates (13 - 15%) at the start of the 90s and then the crash which saw so many families in negative equity lose their homes ?
I mean it is a very brief and light touch run through the lives of my parents, but I do get a bit fed up of some posters implying that any one generation 'had everything rosy' and that whatever our current problems are they are somehow worse than anyone else has ever suffered.

As I said in my first post, I have 3 dc hit hard by this pandemic and the economic difficulties that it has delivered - along with nieces and nephews and Godchildren and then friends of my dc etc etc. I am hugely sympathetic to their plight but I really dislike these posts that say all of one generation have been treated terribly and are in despair. It is the generalisations I object to.

@BackforGood True, my phrase ‘older generations’ was unclear! I really meant parents of today’s teens and twenties, born say in the 60s and 70s. We were born into the security of a health service and welfare system, with free university education and expectation of a pension in due course.

People my age (born mid 1970s) have dealt with (relatively) high house prices and careers blighted by recession, but I think we took for granted that pensions and an nhs would exist. Today’s teens and twenty-somethings cannot do that.

Lack of these safety-nets makes their expectations very different from those of their parents, and not in a positive way.

I think that young people mostly have the means and knowledge to utilize the internet in the best possible way.
Instead they read shit all day, watch podcasts/videos that are meaningless.

It's not a case of them being lazy or idiots. My son does this as well (15).
It's more a case of not knowing what to do with themselves. If you think about it "kids" are being told what to learn, how to learn, all the time. The whole education system is built on spoon feeding them information and directing them along very strict lines. We cannot expect them to all of a sudden "grow up; take control of their learning". They can't because we haven't given them the tools to do it.
Society still values certification over knowledge.

Well said Backforgood !!!!
Everyone can only look at things from their own perspective, because that’s how most people rationalise their feelings and emotions.
If everyone was honest, everyone will admit to being fed up of COVID-19 and all of the implications this horrific virus has had on all lives.
This virus had affected everyone to some degree or other, I like most people am absolutely fed up of staying in, apart from going out for walks. I am also sick and fed up of not being able to see my family and friends, my life has got really small and isolated away from people who matter to me.
Everyone at every stage of their lives have been affected by this virus, young, old and in between.
BUT... being cruel and horrible to people you feel don’t warrant support or help is a race to the bottom.
Everyone will have long lasting scars from this pandemic, but non more than the people who have lost family and friends who have died as a direct result of this pandemic.
Sometimes, we just have to try and think of these people, rather than ourselves, and be thankful we are not in their shoes.

What I find annoying about these convos is it's either the young - 29 and under of the old folk - 60+. The generations in-between are only relevant if they're the parent of a young person. If you're in your 30s bad 40s you aren't really considered. You should be settled into your forever life and thus not needing to date or have a social life. You aren't considered a medical risk so should keep working. If you wanted to study or buy a house you should have done it already and of you haven't you never will.

Maybe those generalisations were true a few decades ago but not now.

@Ginandplatonic We are in the UK, and my 19 yr old is doing all you say is missing - away at her first year at University, in halls, socialising and having a ball with all her new friends.
But I totally agree with you that I don't understand anyone wanting to turn this into a competition about 'who has had it the worst'. There will be terrible circumstances for individuals across the world. There will be lots of people who have just been 'a bit inconvenienced'. My argument is with people who massively over generalise

Totally agree @SleepingStandingUp

and with this :

I’d have imagined that somebody in their 30s with a partner, kids and a mortgage is going to be much more distraught at losing their job than a young person who can’t go out. Most young people don’t have dependents and haven’t really built up much they can lose

Thousands of young people, and those with young children, are going to die of cancer because the NHS stopped so much care

And if there had been no restrictions, then all would be going along swimmingly with the NHS and no one at all would have treatment delayed? Are you saying it's the restrictions that cause the lack of treatment, because if so I suggest you have a careful read of what is going on in hospitals right now. If there had been no restrictions, cancer treatment would be even more delayed leading to even more many thousands of people dying. I just don't understand how people cannot see this. If you can educate me and give an answer to this then please do - but nobody ever addresses this, because it doesn't suit the narrative to admit that things would have been far, far worse without these measures.

Baffling.

As a young person who's expressed on this thread just how hard it is I'm getting quite annoyed at all the 'what about this' going on.

This thread didn't say young people have it worst, everyone has it bad, it says we've been forgotten. And frankly this thread is just proving that to me with all the comment of 'oh that sounds tough but we need to fix self employed/schools/ect first).

There's no actual tangible support for students fighting for some kind of tuition fees rebate.

The no support, be it rent relief or grants, for student paying for overpriced accommodation which they're either being told not to go back to or actually vilified for daring to live in a house they pay rent for.

There's no employment thanks to the hiring freeze and no initiatives for companies to keep their grad schemes going. Not to mention the fact that all the typical 'stop gap' jobs which would normally taken such as pubs and restaurants have been shut down.

There's no recognition that whilst, yes, most young people are more competent with technology, the vast majority don't have the money to get tech which supports this technology and can't afford the wifi necessary to use it.

The government don't even talk about us. There's so much talk going on about schools right now but absolutely no mention of universities. We're all just sitting here wondering if we're going to be able I go back, if we're going to have any in person teaching, if there's going to be any increased support for students stuggling, and it's not even being mentioned.

There's absolutely no mention of non-cohabiting couples being able to see each other more than socially distanced outside and hasn't been for months. And yes, I understand that there are 30,40,50, 60 year olds who are also in this situation, as a percentage, young people make up the vast majority of these couples, so yes, it is us as an overall bring forgotten again. Everyone's suffering with it but it disproportionately affects people in theirs twenties more than any other group.

I'm well aware that everyone is struggling and giving up things. But it's very hard not to feel forgotten and hopeless at this point.
No this won't be a 'distant memory when I'm 25'. And frankly a lot of responses on this thread are just reinforcing that. We're not even allowed to have one place to talk about being forgotten without people calling us snowflakey.

Completely agree, Furonacoat.

It’s a disgrace.

@madhairday no I'm certainly not suggesting that it would have been possible to do no measures at all, however it seems pretty clear that what we have done, ie lockdowns, and all the economic and health destruction was the only way of mitigating. If we look at Japan they never had the severe shutdowns we did, but did do social distancing etc (which was almost universally adhered to until recently here too) despite having a far larger elderly population, more urbanization etc. As such it would seem pretty clear that it's not the severity of lockdown that curb the spread rather other factors which Japan has done. Instead we did a poor imitation of what the Communist government did in China, and here we are. It's also worth noting that this time of year the hospitals are normally choked with elderly respiratory patients, as we see in the press. Either way much more should have been done and should be done now, rather burning our house down to get rid of a very nasty rat infestation in the cellar.

Should say was not the only way of mitigating*

@furonthecoat Starting university/returning to university in Sept 2021 was a choice based on the knowledge that courses would be delivered online (universities were clear about this). If you were willing to pay £9,000 to study online and have other restrictions then you can't really expect a reduction in fees now. Graduate training schemes are always the first to go in difficult times but will come back. Maybe you have been forgotten because others need more support now - those with children to support, vulnerable people, people who are hungry, those facing eviction.

I'm a student, and really the £9250 is not, and does not function as a loan. Instead it functions as a graduate tax, paid back in a progressive manner. The only difference is that unlike with every other tax, there is a cap in how much is repaid. Given the university system is now a form of accreditation and so many people go (which is an awful system, but it's the one we have) then it doesn't matter if I owe £1000 in student loans or £1000000, it is still paid as a tax.

[quote AliceBlueGown]@furonthecoat Starting university/returning to university in Sept 2021 was a choice based on the knowledge that courses would be delivered online (universities were clear about this). If you were willing to pay £9,000 to study online and have other restrictions then you can't really expect a reduction in fees now. Graduate training schemes are always the first to go in difficult times but will come back. Maybe you have been forgotten because others need more support now - those with children to support, vulnerable people, people who are hungry, those facing eviction.[/quote]
No, not true at all. Plenty of Unis were saying it was blended learning - a mixture of real face to face alongside online/remote. They basically lied. Many lecturers have admitted that they knew they weren't going to campus, in fact, the uni had instructed them not to go onto campus - at exactly the same time that those same Unis were saying "blended" learning on their websites. Funny that uni websites changed just days after the deadline for binding acceptance of offers/accommodation, i.e. they changed their tune once they'd conned students into committing themselves to their course and Uni accommodation.

[quote AliceBlueGown]@furonthecoat Starting university/returning to university in Sept 2021 was a choice based on the knowledge that courses would be delivered online (universities were clear about this). If you were willing to pay £9,000 to study online and have other restrictions then you can't really expect a reduction in fees now. Graduate training schemes are always the first to go in difficult times but will come back. Maybe you have been forgotten because others need more support now - those with children to support, vulnerable people, people who are hungry, those facing eviction.[/quote]
What utter bullshit. You clearly have no idea what the universities promised or what they're actually delivering.

Universities promised us blended learning. In person seminars/workshops with online lectures delivered live. Instead we got all our seminars pushed online, workshops cancelled with no even attempt at a replacement to fill the gap in knowledge. And pre recorded lectures, often last years recordings so not even updated as syllabuses update. I get 1 hour a month per module time with a lecturer, and that's still in a massive teams call with shitty wifi. That's 3 hours a month actually engaging with anyone from the uni and the rest is basically just watching YouTube videos - that is not worth 9k.

Not to mention if you were going back to uni this year rather than starting it's not as easy as just choosing not to return for this year. I'd already invested nearly 19k in my degree and you have to apply to defer and year and the uni approved it. everyone wanted to defer this year but the uni wouldn't let you without an exceptional reason, even international students for whom getting to the U.K. was incredibly difficult didn't get defferals approved. So either I dropped out making the last two years and 19k a waste or I came back to finish my degree but paid 9k for a fraction of what I'm supposed to get. That's not really a choice is it?

Furthermore in previous years universities have hammered into us that watching lectures online just isn't as good as going to them in person and students grades suffered for it. They've also justified not giving refunds during strikes because we still had access to other uni facilities such as libraries and labs. So this year we don't have any in person teaching, nor do we have any access to all the other facilities that our fees apparently pay for. So how the hell can they justify us paying 9k for this shit? And not even giving us an option to defer out of it.

Im not saying any of those people done deserve support but we deserve support too and we have absolutely been forgotten. I think we have a right to complain and feel disenfranchised. And people like you telling us to put up and shut up really don't help.

[quote Student133]@madhairday no I'm certainly not suggesting that it would have been possible to do no measures at all, however it seems pretty clear that what we have done, ie lockdowns, and all the economic and health destruction was the only way of mitigating. If we look at Japan they never had the severe shutdowns we did, but did do social distancing etc (which was almost universally adhered to until recently here too) despite having a far larger elderly population, more urbanization etc. As such it would seem pretty clear that it's not the severity of lockdown that curb the spread rather other factors which Japan has done. Instead we did a poor imitation of what the Communist government did in China, and here we are. It's also worth noting that this time of year the hospitals are normally choked with elderly respiratory patients, as we see in the press. Either way much more should have been done and should be done now, rather burning our house down to get rid of a very nasty rat infestation in the cellar.[/quote]
Some reasons why Japan's response was more successful, and why they simply cannot be compared to a Western European country:

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/22/from-near-disaster-to-success-story-how-japan-has-tackled-coronavirus

Yes, you're right that hospitals are often packed with respiratory viruses in the winter. Which is why we must act to contain an extra one which is growing exponentially and threatening to overwhelm the services like no other time in recent history. Covid on top of normal winter stuff, unchecked, is a disaster waiting to happen:

BBC News - Covid-19: Hospitals under pressure as coronavirus cases rise
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55462701

I agree much more should have been done. I am no fan of our government and believe their response was too late in both instances. But sometimes when you have an infestation you must act more comprehensively so that it does not keep on infesting and go on for years until the house falls down around it.

My DD is a uni student too and I feel desperately sad for her and others like you. It's really, really crap. But what are the options?

No one has any solutions that are workable, to this.

@alfieum

Sat next to darling dd who has missed a year of uni, will be spending her birthday in lock down tier 4 after a miserable curtailed year. She has had a tough last five years with her health so she is used to not living a full life, still, I see the mental toll. No placement year happening, no hope for her future. She is trying to be positive but it is horrible to see. My little one had a mental collapse during lock down one, I am terrified of the schools closing again.

I work in a front line role, in 15 years I have never made so many safeguarding referrals for young people and babies. I see the covid queens on here talking about resilience and the war and it makes me want to scream. We are sticking to the rules, nearly all our family have had covid, two members hosptalised, I know it is serious, but there is no consideration for young people at all. The teens and early 20's generation are being chucked under the bus. And don't get me started on pre-verbal kids living in deprivation. By the end of this so many little children will have indirectly died or being harmed for life in our quest to hide from covid.

Thanks for saying this. When I pointed this out on Twitter I was told they were, essentially, a fringe minority and I was just a Tory feigning concern for such children because I didn’t agree with immediate, all encompassing hardcore lockdown until COVID had completely gone.

Also I am mod 20s and I definitrly feel I have wasted a year of my 20s, when my parents talk about what they did in their 20s Im just sad that I am missing out on that. I feel like Im wasting a massive part of my life.

Young people might miss a year, 18 months tops of work, a social,life, travelling whatever, but the 70,000 people who have died have lost their lives. They all died too soon, even the very old ones. No one deserves to die before their time and separated by their loved ones, unable to see family and friends to say goodbye.

Frankly my teenagers missing out on a bit of education (which can be caught up with if we loosen our ridiculous expectations of targets and exams), hanging out with friends - which they have done at school and online and a few parties (again which they can catch up on) is a price worth paying for no one, of any age, dying alone in an ICU bed with their families only able to say good bye by FaceTime.

Plenty of Unis were saying it was blended learning - a mixture of real face to face alongside online/remote. They basically lied.

Utter rubbish. Universities had no more crystal balls than anyone else.
In April, Lecturers were told to prepare several different lots of delivery - as if everything were F2F, as if there were going to be no F2F and if there were to be a mix of the two.
This was very clear to my dd (now a first year), and she also has the intelligence to grasp that, even where people were being optimistic and have had to rein in their expectations, that has been done, in response to the situation as it evolves.
In March / April, everyone was talking about things (concerts, parties, weddings, conferences, AGMs, etc etc etc) 'being postponed'. At that point most of the nation thought things would be much improved in the Autumn, and not worse.
Everyone, everywhere has had to respond as the situation has evolved over the months.
You are talking as if this is some sort of plan concocted by the Universities

I think the problem for young people is that while social contact is vital for human beings, as we go through our teens we are developing our social skills. For that we need to be among our peers. Watch any group of young teens out and about - there is a great deal of jostling, play fighting, taking stuff and pretending they won't give it back, leaning on each other, and so on. It's as if they need physical contact in order to learn how to do social interaction.

For older people the isolation is still very hard, but we have developed our social skills and often social contacts to the extent that we can 'keep them ticking over' for months over various media.

For the oldest people you can see they are back to needing the physical presence of familiar people. Many have seen the huge decline in elderly relatives who they cannot meet with regularly in person. Many, not anchored by familiar people, drift off away from reality.

So I would say that roughly 12-24 and over 80 are the groups most profoundly damaged by the restrictions. But the over 80s have something to gain: possibly having a few more years of life, for better or worse, if they avoid Covid, provided something else doesn't kill them. The vast majority of youngsters have little to gain from avoiding Covid, it's just one more potential infection that they may pick up and which might make some quite ill but most will hardly be unwell at all.

I'm a student, and really the £9250 is not, and does not function as a loan. Instead it functions as a graduate tax, paid back in a progressive manner. The only difference is that unlike with every other tax, there is a cap in how much is repaid. Given the university system is now a form of accreditation and so many people go (which is an awful system, but it's the one we have) then it doesn't matter if I owe £1000 in student loans or £1000000, it is still paid as a tax.

Exactly.
It staggers me how many people STILL can't grasp this.

Totally agree. Friends/relationships are EVERYTHING at this age. They've just been told to stay alone oh well. Awful.

@Chimeraforce

I agree. My child is 14 and has received f11ck all education in school since March. Her year are meant to have the hpv jab. Meant to have 1st jab Jan 5th 2021. Looking unlikely. She needs both by September as she turns 15 then. She had surgery a week before lockdown 1. No aftercare or physio. Isolated from mates. Older ones, where are the pub, shop jobs for them? Disappearing rapidly. All the while all I hear is bitching. I told the inlaws when they started on at the youngsters. Wish I knew the answer. Throw a dog a bone though😔

If it helps, medically the HPV jab can be given at any age - I had mine when I was 19. If it's been missed because of the school not doing it, they should be catching them up even if they're over 15.

And what about the people in their 40's and 50's who have lost their jobs - the people working in the travel, entertainment and hospitality industries. Some of whom will never be able to work in their field again?

And so what if young people have to pay for this when they start work? That's just the way society and tax works. When I started work I was paying for the Second World War which I wasn't even around to see!

There's absolutely no mention of non-cohabiting couples being able to see each other more than socially distanced outside and hasn't been for months

Anyone I know in this situation has been seeing each other properly for months. If you are not, it's very noble, but I wouldn't put other people ahead of my relationship.

It staggers me how many people STILL can't grasp this

I grasp this very well, but it's still not considered a tax, it's treated as a loan, so for example, you can borrow less for a mortgage. If it were actually treated as a tax it would be better, but it's not.