I've avoided this thread and forum all afternoon and I've not even read anything since my last post yet.
So firstly let me say sorry to @bigjohnrichie for my post earlier as I feel it was quite aggressive in nature.
I get triggered when people use labels towards my generation because I've had similar debates with family members who try to say the same.
So I know I was a bit of a dick myself when I did similar and just threw out some baseless accusations. Well not quite baseless as I do think on the whole employment is much higher nowadays and much more women work much more hours compared to generations gone by. But calling people lazy dossers isn't nice and not something I believe either. I just wanted to use that language more to try and trigger the same in someone else by making accusations about their generation.
Like I said previously I don't really care about being in eu or out of EU. And living in Northern Ireland I'm not overly bothered about being in uk or United ireland either. My decision is solely based on what's economically better for me and my family and communities futures. I can understand however why for some sovereignty and patriotism is valued higher especially I'd you or close family have served for the state in some form.
Personally though I think our generation right now have been well and truly fucked over and honestly being born in the 30s or 40s on reflection I don't think would be too bad. I actually think if you asked every member of this forum if they'd rather be born in 1940 or 2000. I think more would say 1940 than 2000.
I think now if I had no dependants and no intentions of having any more kids, a mortgage near paid off, in or nearing retirement, a fairly comfortable pension. I actually think I wouldn't be that annoyed about the current scenario. Your biggest expenses are all paid off for life, you don't really need to worry about job security or pay. You're settled.
When you still need to buy a home, raise a family, save for retirement, care for elderly relatives and the pressure is on you as a bread winner and you don't have valuable assets or anything to fall back on. And when house prices are astronomically high with high interest rates too in relation to the cost of the homes. Your energy bills are through the roof. The NHS has went to shit. Your food bill is 50% higher. Cancer rates increasing. Extremist terrorist attacks and stabbings on the rise. Childcare costs at mad prices, no cheap reliable social housing but instead expensive private rent roulette, food Bank usage at record levels. When all that is going on its very difficult to sit back and look at someone in the 0.01% who is doing really well and come to the conclusion that I'm just not taking my opportunities.
If it was just a case of everyone not taking opportunities and we all owning 10 houses at 30 if we did then who would we be renting them to? The system is built so that only a minority get such opportunities.
The saddest thing about it all though is growing up listening to my grand parents talk about rations, or my grandad working 2 jobs to provide etc.. and talking about such things in the past tense to show how much better things have got.
For my generation we talk about the past tense as "remember when we were younger and we could regularly eat out and go on holidays with our parents? Now we're lucky if we manage to get meat from the foodbank.".
Basically everything is shit. Like everything. Nothing has got better these last 13 years. And I'm tired of it.
I hope I've explained myself better in this post. And I hope you can recognise thar while I did lash out in anger before, that it wasn't personal but I'm sorry for that.
What I said comes from the heart and with passion though. I respect your views. And I don't blame brexit for these issues either because none of this is new. Things were getting worse before brexit too. But yeh people like me are pissed off and I'm personally very anxious about the long term future of the uk. We're in a very bad position in my opinion and left right or centre, I'm not sure how anyone fixes this anytime soon.