The young

The young have all been home for Christmas - young adults now, working in London mostly or desperately looking for jobs which make some sort of use of their hard-won degrees. One, a trained, experienced, skilled and talented film-maker is working in the fund-raising office of the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, not, sadly making films for them, but running mailshots. Another, with a degree in politics and a burning desire to make some sort difference to the third world, has been writing vapid 'news' articles for an online info-agency, mostly hating it for its shallow uselessness. Another has done four years training as a sound techncian and feels lucky to have a job as a barman. Here's another, with a good history degree and a year's experience in the upmarket restaurant trade, is deeply disillusioned with the cons and scams of the dining-out business and has decided to change his chosen career away from restaurants to something with more morality. They have all spent hours, weeks, months, looking for decent jobs. They have been offered shelf-filling, cold-calling, telesales, crap work. Graduate entry schemes for big companies with household names ask unanswerable questions based on the lowest possible expectations. These young are, to put it mildly, deeply disillusioned. Was it worth it, all the slogging for those degrees? Who seems to care? We parents do, but who else? Most if not all of them have a wide range of talents in music or sport or theatre. They have creativity and know about team-work, and indepdendent thought.
But to me, as something of an old hippy, or at least someone who knew about 'Peace, man' and went on lots and lots of demos and protests, what is very striking is the passivity and acquiescence of the young generation.
Why are they not up in arms about things? They need work, proper work. They need to be able to afford somewhere to live. They face truly calamitous and potentially overwhelming problems like global warming and climate change, possible economic recession, housing shortages, pollution, religious wars, terrorism - god, what a legacy we created for them. But where is the protest? Are they all just doing an ostrich job and spending their time on Facebook? Are they so blinded by consumerism that they haven't noticed all this going on? Where is their sense of being a generation who could make a difference?
Answers on a hand-made banner please.

Small Cities

How is that Siena, a city of some 15,000 people in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, could create so many outstanding, dazzling, inspiring works of devotional art and beautiful buildings (as seen in the amazing exhibition at the National Gallery in London till January 13th), when Faversham struggles to create a single coherent design anywhere for its streets, pavements, buildings, park or houses? We have 20,000 people - most of whom are reasonably well educated and with access to enough money live on, one way or another. We have civic pride and a sense of community, more than many other small towns. We have artists and even patrons. We have churches and confraternities (let's say 'groups who come together for mutual interest, including charitable works). We have some new art in the Roman Catholic church in Tanner Street - a mural on the altar wall painted by the late, great Edward Ardizzone, and other interesting pieces in the Shrine of St Jude under the main church. But what else? Very little. And why not?
Go and see the art works of Siena while you can, in London.
Astonishing.