I read a massively, massively depressing recent Graun article about conservatism among British young people. Basically, today's young people grew up post-Thatcher, with precious little support from the welfare state and are looking at a bleak future without guaranteed pensions, affordable higher education, secure housing or reliable healthcare; they have no reason to believe that the welfare state is in any way on their side. Instead, they buy the Tory line that the poor are their enemy, making things 'unfair' for the rest of us 'hardworking' people.

On the other hand, there's Occupy and plenty of leftie idealism among today's young (I know, I teach them). But the sour poor-hating attitudes seem to dominate.

Sigh. I don't blame Ailz.