I was at Latitude, the festival, on the weekend. Had a great time, and settled in on Sunday night to watch Ben Howard and then Paul Weller
to finish the show.
The main arena filled with thousands of people in their twenties for Ben
Howard and then... they turned and left. Just drained away, leaving about a
hundred people near the front. While predictable, I guess, it was still
an incredibly chilling experience to be left standing there virtually alone ahead of what was supposed to be the headline act. Eventually the rest of the middle aged set moved in and Mr Weller put on a
stellar performance. But I haven't been able to shake the feeling of
all those twenty somethings not seeing anything in it for them. And it's
proving way too tempting to extrapolate from that to the current economic
scenario.
Where do we think economic growth is going to come from? Who are we going to be relying on to get the job done in the next decade? Who needs to be inspired to achieve something out of the current mess? Who should have been encouraged to go nuts that night ahead of turning up to work on Monday morning, hungover but happy?
Okay, we're all living and working longer and the old stuff is still good. But let's be aware there are a lot of old snouts still in the trough. Let's give the younger ones a bit more latitude.
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