art.design.science.narrative

artdesignsciencenarrative:

Test 6

Test 6

This is an appeal to people I would class as my peers. To those ‘millennials’ who left their seemingly provincial small towns at the beginning of this century for a bigger world of mind blowing possibilities.

This is to those grandchildren of coal miners, factory workers, ship builders, blacksmiths, mechanics, builders, electricians, joiners, plumbers and so on.
To the children of the baby boomers. To those whose parents are said to be blamed for the ills of the planet and society we have inherited. They are not.
You, whose parents saw their financial situation sky rocket compared to that of the generation before.

When you came of age, you left. Perhaps to go to university, perhaps to study abroad, maybe you joined a band and toured Europe, even the world. You settled in metropolitan areas, or spent your twenties hopping from city to city throughout the country, or even across Europe.

You became doctors, teachers, artists, designers, musicians, solicitors, marketing executives, academics, accountants, architects, professionals.
Maybe you feel your hometown had nothing left to offer. At first you would visit in reading weeks and holiday time, but as the frequency of your visits declined so did your attachment to those communities. You despaired at the lack of culture, you dissociated yourself from the friends you left behind, those who appeared gripped by the allure of Blair’s hyper-consumerism.

Disgusted, you ran from those deindustrialised wastelands, you ran from the Chavs, the homophobia, the racism, the hopelessness, and the precarity. You wanted more than jumpin’ jacks on a Friday, x-factor on a Saturday, and a brand new Fiesta Zetec on finance. You wanted more than a job at a call centre, or working in HMV.

But we too have been royally screwed. Screwed by successive governments from ‘left’, ‘right’, and ‘centre’. Governments, that took away our right to a free education, governments that burdened us with more and more debt.

But the future was bright for us. We were excited by a digital revolution. Aren’t we the ‘millennials’, some of us cannot remember a world without the internet, none of us were adults without it. What an exciting promise - the democratisation and proliferation of infinite knowledge! We have Facebook, a giant social network that comes with the promise we will never lose touch with anyone we ever met - ‘friends’ from across the world. Yet we have become so atomised. The algorithms carefully balanced so that we only see points of view that mirror our own. We have Uber, cheap, convenient, friendly, and accessible direct from our smartphones. Uber, that undercuts the business of independent black cab drivers, bullies its ways into cities with its financial might, disenfranchises those without a credit card, whose drivers are lonely - taking orders from a computer algorithm. Our sharing economy. But who benefits from Airbnb? Its great to cut out the middle man. Cheap accommodation in combination with the cheap flights the EU has provided means the cost of lovely villa on a Greek island for a week in September is an achievable goal for all of us. Anything to get away from the hoards of topless tangerine meatheads and beer bong toting PR girls on the Costa, eh? That wonderful democratising force of Airbnb that pushes local residents out of their beautiful Mediterranean cities, skipping the taxes and regulations that hotels and small guesthouses have to pay.

We have been willing tools of property developers. Young professionals move into deprived areas of the inner cities, drawn in by low rent and grittiness, depleting private and social housing stock for communities that have lived there for generations only to find that we ourselves are soon pushed out once our work is done.

So why did those we left behind vote to leave the European Union? The European Union that has allowed us to travel freely, has brought friends into our lives from across the continent, sustained peace, and brought regeneration funds to those communities we left behind. Some have accused them of being racists and xenophobes (myself included). Is that really true? Sure, Farage’s city funded bile has been a rallying call to racism. The popular explanation for the Brexit result has been that of revolt. A smack in the face to the ruling class. It has certainly been effective on that front. Whether or not those communities that voted leave knew what they were voting for is not for me to question. I would rather assume they did know what they were doing and that it was not fuelled by hate and xenophobia.

I voted to Remain because I believe in the EU. Furthermore, I am not afraid to admit, that a world without it scares me. A colleague of mine suggested that the reason young liberal people are so outraged purely because they have lost some part of their economic status, rather than feeling sorry for the small towns that will face more hardship from further recession and austerity. I can concede that this is might be in some way true. But what also concerns me greatly is that it was our aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, the people we went to school with, that rejected what we hold so dear.

Whether or not there is a second referendum, whether or not Scotland leaves the union, whether or not Jeremy Corbyn’s efforts to reinvent the labour party are sabotaged by Blairites, let us fix our society. To quote Jo Cox, “we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.”

If we all want a revolution lets do this together. But before we start can we all get rid of Johnson, Gove, IDS, and Farage. Because regardless of which way you voted, they have lied to us all, incited racism and perpetuated xenophobic rhetoric that led to the death of a young woman.

And if we do have another referendum on an undemocratic power that has belittled us for generations can it please be the monarchy.