In Defence Of Youth

How soon they forget, those who once drank Canada dry, as it were. Those who slept with anyone they could. Those who inhaled and then some. Don't they remember how they felt themselves? How angry they felt at parental strictures on drink and drugs and casual sex and going into dark streets and high-diving and generally doing wild and crazy things? To listen to the latest chorus of disapproval of teenagers you wouldn't think so. Indeed, you'd think that many people on this island were never young at all.

Of course, you know why. It's been building up for a while, but this summer Ibiza came to Hurl-land. And was greeted with a chorus of blame. Everything was in the firing line. Lack of parental control. Alcohol. Videos. Movies. Video games. Schools. The absence of GardaL at crucial times, like when everyone spills (how appropriate that word) on to the streets. Lack of taxis and buses. You name it. Reactionaries, as expected, took aim at the permissive society. Holy Mary, we're all to blame. Get them saying the rosary.
But most of all, young people have been blamed, even demonised. It's the easy way out. Not me, guv. Must be the young people. They're different nowadays. No respect. Loads of money and no ideas or morals. More drunken and more violent than in earlier times. And so on.
Bollocks. Old folks have been saying that for ten thousand years. The drunkenness we see on our streets is unpleasant and unwelcome. But it's not unusual and it's not new.
We have more people of a certain age, and greed has encouraged the development of enormous drinking emporia, so young drunks are more concentrated and much more visible. But be clear getting shitfaced on a Friday or Saturday, or whatever day you've some reason, is a Northern European, and especially Scandinavian and British and Irish, phenomenon.
Furthermore, young people haven't changed. Nor has Ireland. It's just more British than we thought, more obviously in thrall to the patterns encountered on weekend trips to see football teams and in those cringe-inducing fly-on-the-wall docusoaps made in Ibiza, or Down Under, or in Thigh-land, or Manchester, or wherever and whoever. (I was channel-cruising one night and chanced on a particularly awful one made about Newcastle in the UK. You think Dublin is bad? Phew.)
So, if young people haven't changed much, and we're all basically the same, the explanation for increased aggression should be sought elsewhere. Personally, I don't buy the 'stress of modern living' argument, nor the collapse of moral values either.
Personally, I think the difference lies in what young people drink and the pattern of their drinking. Specifically, I think they imbibe more spirits, increasingly mixed with caffeine-based drinks, which give a false impression of co-ordination. These are frequently taken (during happy hours) on empty stomachs. I don't care what anyone says, spirits don't suit everyone, and are particularly troublesome if you have an attitude problem.
In truth, Irish young people are very like British young people, for all the anti-English huffing and puffing that often goes on. And this fits the general pattern of neo-colonialism we find washing around these islands. Look at the shopping malls, the shops. Can you really tell one pedestrian area from another? Listen to the ads on telly; check what people are eating and drinking.
Take soccer. The Premiership gets full pages in Irish papers, much more than local football. There are leading articles, down even to the details of who's moving from here to there. It features in adverts for papers, radio stations, television companies, all vying to convince the Irish fans of British teams that they give the best coverage.
Look at Channel 4's Big Brother programme and the interest it generated in Ireland. Okay, there were two Irish people on board. But if you met one of your mates who was back from a year in Australia, how would you explain it?
Or look at the fuel crisis the hauliers took a lead, not from France, but from the UK. And car owners here panicked and started queuing, not because of what was happening in Ireland, but because they were spooked by Sky TV, which was reporting on a very different situation in the UK. But a lot of people didn't seem able to tell the difference.
And what about Coronation Street? Captured by TV3 from RTE (and that was major news itself), it was one of the major advertising draws on RTE. I mean, what does that say?
So, are we little British rather than Europeans? Or are we, as Mary Harney and Smle de Valera seem to think, actually half way between Brit and Yank??!!??
Okay. Okay. I'm advocating for the devil. It's still not the UK. Not quite. There is still a chink of Irish and European, notwithstanding Mary Harney's and Smle de Valera's dismissal of Europe.
Harney is wrong. Many parts of Ireland, including the meeja, are closer to Bradford or Bingley than Boston. Berlin? Would that it were my dear!
And de Valera is wrong too Europe isn't bad for our culchur, far from it. In fact, the European experience has been, almost without exception, hugely positive in terms of the Irish identity. Can you say the same for the wholesale importation of value systems and media and loyalties and so on from the UK and the USA? I mean, when Dublin supporters of Liverpool boo Bohemians at a football match in Dublin, it's pretty pathetic, isn't it? (By the way, bud, the supporters of all other Premier League would do exactly the same).
Look. These are great and powerful forces. It's capitalism. They aren't evil, but they aren't good either. They just are. I'm not for a second blaming or accusing UK tee-vee companies, or football clubs. If we are so pathetically devoid of football clubs to support here, or if we can't find more meaningful things to do than watch drunken oafs in Ibiza, or if we can't think of a better way to pass the time than getting utterly plastered and sick and violent, well, that's our problem. And it's one we need to sort out.
And we need to take responsibility, each one of us. And a lot of people should stop blaming young people. They were like that themselves. Once and maybe still.
The Hog