Why are today’s young people hell bent on self destruction?
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We were invited to the surprise 40th birthday party. It took place in a rural market town and everybody gathered early to be there to surprise the birthday girl when she arrived. The fifty or so people there were pretty representative of those who live in rural market towns across the UK. They worked locally, shopped locally, read tabloid newspapers and certainly knew how to party locally.
Now I’m becoming something of a recluse so rarely visit pubs, for one thing I don’t like smoke, so it was something of a revelation to watch a bunch of the town’s bright young things at play. The lads were oozing hair gel and testosterone, posturing, strutting and surprisingly tactile. Each had his shirt hanging outside his trousers, either to conceal a 28 inch waist or perhaps his growing ambition for later in the evening!
The girls were somewhat larger. Squeezed into tiny outfits, make up layered deeper than the paint on a ship’s hull, they tottered about in their fashionable footwear swigging alco-pops straight from the bottle, sucking cigarette smoke into their lungs and flashing their false eyelashes at anyone who’s attention they could catch.
Of course obesity is not the sole preserve of the young; there were plenty of 30 something women wearing tents and adorned with tattoos. In fact apart from the young lads, everyone seemed to be carrying too much weight, smoking something and limbering up for a long session at the bar.
The whole evening set me pondering on some massive societal questions:
Or should we accept that everybody has the right to self destruct if they wish, or at least to smoke, drink and fuck themselves to the brink? Of course it’s a political issues because actually, those young people are only doing what young people have always done; they’re simply having a good time.
So, as the Government takes an ever growing stake in our GDP (one UK Region now sees 76% of its GDP derived from public expenditure), what are they doing with how taxes? Should we encourage them to campaign harder for healthier living, or simply recognise that a wild youth is an excellent, naturally and largely wholesome precursor to a sensible, responsible adult life? You tell me . . . . . it seems to be one of those ultimate questions no one’s able to answer.
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