Remain Voters, quite granny (and grandad) bashing

‘The wrinkly bastards stitched us young uns up good and proper on Thursday’, wrote restaurant critic Giles Coren in The Times. ‘We should cut them off. Rewrite the franchise to start at 16 and end at 60 and do this thing all over again.’

An excellent article in Spiked by Jennie Bristow. She attempts to put this new 'generational war' into perspective.

Some snippets:

The fury and sense of disorientation experienced by some young Remainers is understandable. They have grown up with the particular idea of Europe as institutionalised by the EU and find themselves suddenly forced to imagine something different. What it means to be in Europe, European or British is no longer an assumption: it needs to be thought about, articulated and fought for.

What is curious about this idea of a ‘wrinkly bastard stitch-up’, though, is that it actually represents an enormous trust placed by the older sections of the electorate in their children and grandchildren. Ironically for those emphasising just how few years older people have left to ‘live with the decision’, it is these supposedly selfish, short-sighted and nostalgic folk who will experience all the political and economic turmoil in the short term, without themselves having a central role to play in shaping what comes next.

.. it is ironic that those complaining about young people’s disempowerment by large numbers of wrinklies are feeding the very detachment that has, for many years, characterised young people’s relationship with progressive causes, parliamentary democracy and concerns beyond their everyday lives. The ridiculous notion that people’s power to decide important matters should be weighted according to how long they are likely to ‘live with the decision’ encourages the consumerist, anti-democratic approach that has become such an unappealing feature of our political culture.

The idea that the young should be given more of a say than the old also fundamentally misunderstands the nature, and importance, of the generational transaction. This is a mediation between the past, present and the future, in which the wisdom, experience and mistakes of older generations are taken on board by those who come afterwards, to be learned from, built on, or rejected. Decisions about Europe made 40-odd years ago were informed by a combination of the experience of history and those who had lived through it, concerns about the problems afflicting the 1970s and visions of the future. The decisions that we make today are similarly based on a combination of past experience, present concerns and ideas about where we want to go – as a country and as a continent.

‘We don’t owe them a thing.’ This is the kind of self-regarding, insular perspective that commentators want to associate with the Little Englander mentality; the kind of vicious stereotyping that anti-immigrant propaganda engages in. It seeks to mobilise young people not around an inclusive, open vision of Europe, but a petty, self-righteous feeling of personal injustice. The sense of grievance at having lost the vote is seen as more important than the urgency to fight for the Europe that they want to be a part of.

We are better than this. In the uncertainty ahead, it is the responsibility of the older generations – whichever way they voted in the referendum – to encourage young people’s engagement with everything that happens next. And it is the responsibility of the young to carry on having the conversation – with each other, their elders, and, above all, with those who have different perspectives and experiences from their own.

I completely agree with Bristow. It was glaringly obvious from the age classification opinion polls that the older one becomes, the more likely the disenchantment with the EU. And yet this was completely dismissed by many of the younger generation. I am finding it difficult to believe that EU institutionalism is solely to blame, the rhetoric has been really nasty. The generational transaction appears to be losing integrity and that is very sad.


Spiked

a reply to: Morrad

The UK is so divided right now.

Youth bashing the old and the Guardian seems to be encouraging it...
www.theguardian.com...

57% increase in hate crime with some people telling migrants to go home etc...
www.bbc.co.uk...

Having a second referendum/ignoring the Leave vote will only make things worse.

I just hope people don't associate the whole Remain / Leave side with these morons.

originally posted by: 83Liberty

I just hope people don't associate the whole Remain / Leave side with these morons.

Your media will see to that. It's already the narrative.

a reply to: 83Liberty

Hey, young un's ....... get off your arse and vote, simple int it

Best quote so far for me "I thought there would be a polling station at Glastonbury" .......... erm, were you registered to vote at Glastonbury?

Read and understand the rules ..... you can't friggin vote in a polling station of your choice. AND that ignorance cost you, live with it ...... its called Democracy ........ no vote, no say

Hard Cheese

Politics are strange. Eight years ago if you didn't want Hope & Change you were an old, racist, fuddy-duddy. Today if you want Hope & Change you are an old, racist, fuddy-duddy.

a reply to: 83Liberty

It sucks. Unfortunately the actions of the few always seem to reflect against the many. Hopefully the old-bashing and the increase in hate crimes dies down over the coming days.

I think the media doesn't help in sensationalising everything. I voted in - I don't go walking down the street shouting at my elders (although at 40 I'm not exactly young!). I was brought up to respect them - life experience counts for a lot.

My wife voted out, for her own reasons, and she's not suddenly transformed into a racist bigot either. Neither do we tear each other's throats out over our differences (well, not on this issue at least

Fingers crossed the next few weeks things will start to get back to some semblance of normality. At the moment I'm quite down over how things are panning out.

It's interesting that this group of younger folks are for the rights and protection of every group on Earth, except the older people in their own country? Whom they discount and despise based on their age? How prejudice is that? They are ageists. Pretty low going.

Some of these people, maybe many, experienced life in the UK before the EU. Maybe they remember it as being a better time, and want the younger generations to experience that. Maybe they have something to teach. The younger generations should listen.

I doubt it's a generational issue really.

18-24 has the lowest turnout ever. Loads of both Pro-EU and Anti-EU from that age bracket didn't bother turning out. I know from the grapevine the Students Union was organising people to vote remain, I also know quite a few leavers who didn't bother going (don't know why) and were fairly pleased with the result.

If you don't like the result then maybe you should've gone and voted, instead of getting high or self criticism for being white or whatever it is uni students do these days, been 2 years since i graduated.

a reply to: angeldoll

On top of all that...
If I'm honest, when I think back to what I was like at that age I was a naive, idealistic, embarrassing little twerp who didn't really understand the world and thought everyone was lovely and we should all, like, get together maaaaan!

I saw one girl get all upset because she thought it meant she could no longer travel and teach English as a foreign language!

One day they will thank us for it.

a reply to: Morrad

I don't have much sympathy for the young Remainer 'old-bashers.'

I was in my 20s once, too, and I know that it took me until about 40 to develop a healthy cynicism toward government and realize -- from experience -- that counting on the government to be compassionate and productive is absolutely clownsh*t crazy.

I've lived with huge disappointments -- I haven't voted for a winning POTUS candidate in 20 years -- and I had to learn to get past it. They will learn, too. Honestly, I think leaving will allow the young voters to ultimately shape EXACTLY what they want to an Independent England to be. If they want to be friendly and super cooperative with the EU/EU agenda, they can do that. If the EU turns a cold shoulder to that effort -- then eventually these young, bitter Remainers will realize that leaving was the best outcome.

a reply to: Morrad
It's quite simple really:

A people divided will never unite.

And so we fight on.....

The euthanasia of the elderly seems appealing when you're young.

Then before you know it, you hit the critical age and bye!! No matter how you were feeling at the time.

The truth is, 55% of 18-24 year olds were apathetic enough not to cast their vote one way or the other, you screwed it up for yourselves. The education system doesn't encourage the discussion of politics, unlike in my days, but then, most teachers were lefties.

The real problem lies with the youth and their instant gratification society or so we're told. The truth is, the youth are fed up with the same old, same old and have made up their minds to disengage from the whole process.

Still, 72% turnout is a good show. It's a shame so many people, mainly young people, decide not to engage in the process.

a reply to: Morrad


I have told the youngsters in my family that i have the experience of living

within and outside of the EU and they have not.... and therefor

i am bequeathing to them the wealth of my experience.


Years from now, when I am gone they will remember my gift to them, a life

in a proud free and democractic country, and as such I have *saved them

from a fate worse than death.

The young of this country are so uneducated, have no life experience and have so much disrespect for their elders, it makes me sick! These idiots dont realise how much the older generations have given for this country, they faught in 2 world wars so kids can have a future, they have paid into the system for many decades while the young reap the benefits of the system.

Im 28 and grew up looking up to my elders, my dad was pretty much my best friend and i was friends with his friends and they all said how mature i was for my age and thought i was older. By the age of 16 when i left school i was drinking in the pubs with men aged between 30-60, i learned a lot from my elders and most of all i learned humility and respect.

I cant stand lads my own age as most of them are ungrateful little s###s and have little to none life experience, they think they know it all when really they know nothing. The elder generation has given our nation back and im grateful for that.

So thanks to all you older folk for voting to leave, dont think that all us young people are pig ignorant and think selfishly.

a reply to: Morrad

If somebody does not want a foriegn body of unelected officials coding and zoning their lives into control freak oblivion then they are little Englanders?

The larger picture here that many are failing to talk about is the goal of the European Union is consolidate more power and wealth into the hands of the few under a global One World Order.
When the likes of Obama who is an anti American pig and total NWO puppet speaks out against Britain and threatens to put them at the back of the queue on trade deals you know he's not doing so because he loves the British people but because it threatens the power structure that is rolling ever forward towards a Global oligarchy.

And now they wish to make the European Union a superstate whereby countries are dissolved of sovereign elected officials and have a federalized European army.

I take my hat off to the old wrinkly bastards.

a reply to: Morrad

I think you could have titled this,
Smartphone Addiction Prevents Young People From Engaging In Politics
'Yeah, I'm going to vote in a minute. I've just got to check . . . '

By making experienced input unfashionable, the manipulators are able to create a captive audience in today's young people, sucking them into the quagmire of globalist control.

I can't forget the dreadlocked, posh, eco-warrior type customer I dealt with last year. I explained a government approved scam to him. He didn't believe me. He actually said he thought the government wouldn't allow it. Young alternative types trust the government? What have they put in the Granola bars?

This spook/media encouraged ageism is yet more proof the system is set up to create divisions between people.

originally posted by: Morrad

‘The wrinkly bastards stitched us young uns up good and proper on Thursday’, wrote restaurant critic Giles Coren in The Times. ‘We should cut them off. Rewrite the franchise to start at 16 and end at 60 and do this thing all over again.’

An excellent article in Spiked by Jennie Bristow. She attempts to put this new 'generational war' into perspective.

Some snippets:

The fury and sense of disorientation experienced by some young Remainers is understandable. They have grown up with the particular idea of Europe as institutionalised by the EU and find themselves suddenly forced to imagine something different. What it means to be in Europe, European or British is no longer an assumption: it needs to be thought about, articulated and fought for.

What is curious about this idea of a ‘wrinkly bastard stitch-up’, though, is that it actually represents an enormous trust placed by the older sections of the electorate in their children and grandchildren. Ironically for those emphasising just how few years older people have left to ‘live with the decision’, it is these supposedly selfish, short-sighted and nostalgic folk who will experience all the political and economic turmoil in the short term, without themselves having a central role to play in shaping what comes next.

.. it is ironic that those complaining about young people’s disempowerment by large numbers of wrinklies are feeding the very detachment that has, for many years, characterised young people’s relationship with progressive causes, parliamentary democracy and concerns beyond their everyday lives. The ridiculous notion that people’s power to decide important matters should be weighted according to how long they are likely to ‘live with the decision’ encourages the consumerist, anti-democratic approach that has become such an unappealing feature of our political culture.

The idea that the young should be given more of a say than the old also fundamentally misunderstands the nature, and importance, of the generational transaction. This is a mediation between the past, present and the future, in which the wisdom, experience and mistakes of older generations are taken on board by those who come afterwards, to be learned from, built on, or rejected. Decisions about Europe made 40-odd years ago were informed by a combination of the experience of history and those who had lived through it, concerns about the problems afflicting the 1970s and visions of the future. The decisions that we make today are similarly based on a combination of past experience, present concerns and ideas about where we want to go – as a country and as a continent.

‘We don’t owe them a thing.’ This is the kind of self-regarding, insular perspective that commentators want to associate with the Little Englander mentality; the kind of vicious stereotyping that anti-immigrant propaganda engages in. It seeks to mobilise young people not around an inclusive, open vision of Europe, but a petty, self-righteous feeling of personal injustice. The sense of grievance at having lost the vote is seen as more important than the urgency to fight for the Europe that they want to be a part of.

We are better than this. In the uncertainty ahead, it is the responsibility of the older generations – whichever way they voted in the referendum – to encourage young people’s engagement with everything that happens next. And it is the responsibility of the young to carry on having the conversation – with each other, their elders, and, above all, with those who have different perspectives and experiences from their own.

I completely agree with Bristow. It was glaringly obvious from the age classification opinion polls that the older one becomes, the more likely the disenchantment with the EU. And yet this was completely dismissed by many of the younger generation. I am finding it difficult to believe that EU institutionalism is solely to blame, the rhetoric has been really nasty. The generational transaction appears to be losing integrity and that is very sad.


Spiked

All i can say is, it's shameless. The PC Overdrive Crowd have hit a mountain and now their going rabid.

Considering that the forecasts for the next few years were pretty gloomy (financially) following Brexit.

If you think about it, the old will not reap the benefits of leaving as much as the young will, their latter years will be more of a struggle....so who made the sacrifice here?

A 60 year old has more experience of life than an 18 year old, probably read some history too, and can think outside the box, and can weed out the crap in the MSN we all see just what we want to see, however, sometime lightning strikes twice, and the real world pokes its head round the door.

originally posted by: pikestaff
A 60 year old has more experience of life than an 18 year old, probably read some history too, and can think outside the box, and can weed out the crap in the MSN we all see just what we want to see, however, sometime lightning strikes twice, and the real world pokes its head round the door.

Good point.
Working 80 hour weeks to clothe and feed a family, taking up arms for your country, keeping on being strong despite all the worst that life may throw at you gives one a different perspective on things.