Generation shameful

As I get older, the more grateful I become for the sacrifices my grandparents made so that we could live in a relatively peaceful democracy.

Now it is our turn to step up and make, in comparison, a few measly sacrifices, such as washing your clothes at 30oC, driving a little less, buying fewer items and turning lights off when not in use, all in order to secure the world's resources for future generations, we somehow can not muster the gumption or self control of our grandparents.
We whinge and moan about it and consider the whole thing a massive inconvenience.

Thank goodness we pampered lily-livered lot were not about circa 1900-1950 and if we had have been the results of two world wars may have been very different indeed, with Cabinet talks looking something like this:

Commander in Chief:
Good day Ministers Chantelle Vicky and Chanelle Desiré, my team and I have come to meet you today for an update on the latest war effort.

Minister Chantelle Vicky:
Well, Chanelle Desiré and I are making a great effort at the moment.
Our drunken escapades and tangled sordid love lives have sold millions of trashy cheap magazines to influential young girls.
But Sir, this whole war thing is very unpopular with the people.
The public are saying that they can't actually see Germany, so what's the point in us doing anything. If War ever does arrive here, it will be in years to come and won't affect any of us.

Commander in Chief:
I beg your pardon, but what about the future of our children and what of peace and prosperity?

Minister Chantelle Vicky:
What about the children and who are Peace and Prosperity - are they the latest X factor band?

Commander in Chief:
Umm, ahem, so Minister Chanelle Desiré, tell me what IS our current position on the genocide of millions of Jews

Minister Chanelle Desiré:
Well Sir, we don't actually have any proof that it's going on and it appears that genocide occurs as a part of a natural cycle and if it IS happening then it's most likely that it's just due to an expected genocide high taking place at the moment.

Commander in Chief:
Interesting, but how about the fact that the world's top politicians and eminent journalists are telling us that this is occurring?

Minister Chanelle Desiré:
That's not exactly true Sir, Mussolini has said that there is no evidence and I have this report here paid for by Hitler himself, to say that everything is hunky dory in his neck of the woods right now, and that any genocide taking place is nothing to do with human intervention but just a natural turn of events.

Commander in Chief:
Hmmm, right then Minister Chantelle Vicky, can you let me know our position on rationing

Minister Chantelle Vicky:
The general feeling on rationing is 'why bother'. I mean what's the point when the Americans are still eating all their fine food and wooing us ladies with their silk stockings?

Commander in Chief:
Should I even ask about the Black-outs?

Minister Chantelle Vicky:
People just keep forgetting to turn the lights out Sir, honestly, what does it matter anyway if a few houses get spotted and bombed because Mr Smith at No 54 forgot to turn his lights out?

Any of these arguments sound strangely familiar to the sort that we put out for not bothering to look after our planet and its people? Unfortunately so.

Before I write about where we are currently found wanting, let us just consider for a moment the sort of sacrifices that were made for us in previous times.

Women saw their sons, husbands, fathers and brothers off to fight Hitler's Germany and all that it stood for, not knowing if they would ever see their loved ones again.
I know that this sentence has been written a thousand times in war books, but anyone with a child can comprehend just how heart wrenching that must have been.

Words and sayings such as sacrifice, 'dig for victory', responsibility, thrift, 'make do and mend' were common place for my Grandmother and her peers.

It is to our shame that these have been replaced with 'have it all', 'let the card take the strain', 'my rights', 'no win no fee' and my personal least favourite, 'because I'm worth it'.

Whilst my great-grandmother made sure every piece of rationed food lasted the week, and that no one had more than they needed, we are now in the position whereby almost a third of UK children are officially obese and we throw away around £8 worth of uneaten food per week.

Going without luxuries, education and making-do were the least painful sacrifices that were made.

Men, some just 18 were willing to give up their lives for something that would benefit generations to come, not just themselves.

They did this because they saw the potential for what the world could become under Hitler's leadership and decided that was not what they wanted. Not just for their children, but future children and grandchildren yet to be born.

Both my grandparents in the UK played their part in the Second World War.

My grandfather Tim Richards would have been the first person in his family to go to University, no mean feat back then given his social status at the time.
He didn't take up his place, choosing instead to sign up to defend our values for tolerance.
Mercifully he survived and although I heard rumours of the terrors he had witnessed, he himself never dwelled on the matter but forged ahead, determined to make a good life for himself and others in the world.

My Grandmother Eileen Mary Richards (nee Hughes), a dedicated young girl from a poor Irish immigrant family won herself a scholarship at a prestigious school in London. Her much coveted education was cut short due to evacuation.

Hating her time as an evacuee and keen to help the war effort, she persuaded a boyfriend to teach her to drive, fibbed about her age and joined Bomber Command aged just 16. I can only imagine what a worry that must have been to my wonderful Great-grandmother, who had lost her darling brother as a child soldier during World War One.

It was my Grandmother's job to drive aircrew, some as young as 19, to their planes. She did this in the pitch black of night, bumper to bumper with other trucks.
Bomber Command lost 57,000 'boys' as my Grandma refers to them.

It is only in the past few years that she has started to talk about her experiences, of waiting to pick up aircrews and returning to the barracks with half empty trucks. Airmen silenced by what they'd seen and at the grief of realising who hadn't returned.

In her early eighties now, she raises a lot of money for charity and is a key campaigner to erect a memorial to the 'Bomber Boys', who sadly in the midst of political weakness have been sidelined.

Reading the news on occasions, about yet another ASBO family milking the benefits system for all its worth, or more bored youths stabbing others for entertainment, I wonder if my Grandmother must think to herself whether all the sacrifice was worth it.

One thing and one thing only makes me think that it was; amongst his group of playmates, my 7 year old son counts boys of Jewish, Sikh and Hindu faiths, a boy with partial hearing and speech impediments and a boy with cerebral palsy as friends.
The thought that anyone would consider his pals less worthy truly shocks him.

A friend recently videoed both my son and daughter interviewing my grandmother about her wartime experiences for a school project.

It was through this that my son came to the upsetting realisation, on our journey home, that had we lived in Hitler's England, most of his friends would simply have not been allowed to exist.

Now two things have brought me to write this blog tonight.

Firstly the odious story that appeared in Saturday's Journal regarding Northumbria Students' Union's, quite frankly, insulting decision, to ban the Officer Training Corps from their Fresher's Fair.

The spokesperson from the Students' Union talks about it being a democratic decision.
Errr that would be the same democracy that millions of young men, of a similar age to students, went and died for wouldn't it?
Those responsible should be utterly ashamed of themselves as should their parents.
I know that my two would be feeling a sharp clip round the ear if I found out that they were involved in a decision like that (although I think that 'clips round the ear' may now be illegal).

Whilst, thankfully we are not relying on the Students' Union to defend our country, we do rely on young people in general to be the ones who turn around our rather gluttonous ways and try and conserve a bit of the planet for the future but I'm left wondering if they're actually up to the job.

This brings me to the second point.

I have been listening to my family's preparations to go and watch my Grandma's yearly march to the Cenotaph with Bomber Command in a couple of Sunday's time.

At this time of year I think about the sacrifices made by her and her fellows a lot and I thought about the video that she did with my children, her great grandchildren.

In our own time now, we are storing up a mass of problems for our children and grandchildren not yet born. I look at my Grandma and what she did and then I look at younger women and sadly conclude that they just don't make them like her anymore.

I imagine what a future video of a grandmother and grandchildren might be like:

Child:
"Hi Nanna, now we are de-facto run by the Russians due to them controlling the oil supply, I am doing a school project to find out what life was like back in the good old days.
Is it true you could buy as many shoes as you wanted for £10 and drive your car as much as you liked?
Did people really live in Africa and did elephants roam the land?
And whilst we are now in this polluted mess with no money Nanna, I'm just wondering what you did to prevent it?
Come on Nanna, you must have driven a bit less or something to help us? You did, didn't you Nanna"?

Grandmother:
"Well Darling, I did try. I mean, the BMW 4X4, I simply couldn't have got rid of that. You have no idea how awful it was to get around the streets of Jesmond without one. The one mile trip to the private gym was simply too dangerous to walk.

But I did my bit Dear, oh yes, the fake Champagne made by chained-up 5 year olds that we had shipped over from China, I always recycled the bottles".