Ed Howker 29, is a journalist at The Spectator magazine and previously worked on current affairs documentaries for Channel 4’s Dispatches. He was born and brought up in Yorkshire, trained on the Daily Telegraph and has also worked on the comment desk of the Independent. He is married and lives in London.
Is this the jilted generation? with Ed Howker, Shiv Malik and Rob Lyons
Image Above: Book Cover of Jilted Generation: How Britain Has Bankrupted Its Youth by Ed Howker and Shiv Malik.
Tuesday, 19 October 2010 - 7:30pm to 9:00pm
Generation Y is in revolt. Young people born since the Thatcher years can’t afford a house, they protest. Even the top graduates can’t get jobs that pay well and they think politics - voting or protesting - is pointless. Their parents, born of the post-war boom, received free education and jobs for life. ‘Britain’s young people are insecure, unstable and poor, (while) their parents are the richest generation ever to have lived and they have flatly failed to share the wealth,’ argue twenty-something journalists Ed Howker and Shiv Malik. Their book Jilted Generation describes how the Baby Boomer generation, ‘seemingly squandered a nation’s communal wealth, turned their backs on society and broke all barriers in a lifelong quest to express themselves’. Gen Y writer Neil Boorman is even more blunt in blaming the boomers, calling his manifesto It’s all their fault.
A Battle of Ideas Satellite Event
It is argued that the postwar generation abolished the stop-go economy and created the knowledge economy, but gave the young stop-go lives and will charge them for their knowledge. It appears that politicians who need Baby Boomers’ votes encouraged speculation on property and locked the young out of ownership. They pushed post-retirement working while millions of young people remained unemployed. The jilted generation’s politically engaged parents outnumber them, and politicians are skewing policy in their favour. Even some Boomers have started to wake up to what they have done. Conservative minister David Willetts outlined in The Pinch: how the baby-boomers stole their children’s future how the time has come for his generation to bear the brunt of the austerity measures caused by their own fecklessness, while Boomer author Francis Beckett asks in his latest book, What Have The Boomers Ever Done For Us?.
Can we really blame one generation for the troubles of the next? Have the Boomers really squandered their children’s future, or have Generation Y been spoiled with expectations of home ownership and material comfort which their parents could only have dreamed of? If twentysomethings don’t get politically involved, have they nobody to blame but themselves?
Speaker
Speaker
Rob is deputy editor of spiked. His topics of interest include science and health issues, particularly the panic about obesity, debates about the environment - particularly what to do about waste - and the moralisation of everyday life.
To read more about Rob visit www.robertlyons.co.uk.
Speaker
Shiv started his career in investigative journalism working for the New Statesman. Reporting from Afghanistan and Pakistan, he has since gone on to write for The Observer, The Sunday Times, Prospect, The Independent on Sunday and The Washington Post amongst many others. In broadcast he has worked extensively for the BBC and Channel 4 News. He is a contributor on radio shows; The World at One, PM, The Asian Network, The Moral Maze and TV; Sky News, Channel 4 News and Newsnight. He’s been involved in a High Court battle with the Manchester Police to protect his sources, and has just had published a book about intergenerational conflict called Jilted Generation. The Evening Standard listed him as one of the most influential Londoners of 2008.
Chair
Sean is a founder member of The Brighton Salon and a journalist who formerly worked in the local press industry and on the magazines Computing and Campaign. Sean has written dozens of reviews of salon events and occasionally contributes to other publications. He has been involved with many and various political and cultural campaigns for many years.
Sean writes freelance about the relationship between journalism the public and runs an editing and proofing company. He also organises activities for The Brighton Salon as its secretary.