According to George Osborne, positively vibrating with satisfaction this week, we should all take delight in the economic news. Apparently, the recent growth figures have “decisively ended” the debate about his policies. Really? Well that depends who’s debating.

If you’re renting in Mile End, another surge in house prices is likely to fill you with despair, not elation. A teenager on a zero-hours contract in Enfield may wonder what he’s supposed to do with a 0.7 per cent rise in GDP, just as an unemployed history graduate in Woolwich will struggle to see how a new car plant in Solihull will help her job prospects. Meanwhile, a retiree in Richmond whose experiment with the buy-to-let market is paying off very nicely, thank you, may wonder what all this recession business is about.

To put it another way, any economic forecast is a generalisation that conceals huge inequalities and inequities. Generation Y (those born 1980-2000) have very good reason to feel that Osborne is describing a country to which they don’t belong.

After all, it is Britain’s young who are most likely to be trapped in the over-heated rental market, most likely to be on a zero-hours contract, most likely to use payday loan companies, most likely to have slaved under an unlawful “Workfare” scheme, and most likely to be unemployed even now.

According to the most recent statistics, there are 973,000 young people (16-24) still out of work. The figure rose by 15,000 in the last quarter, even as Osborne talks of a “game-changing” year for employment. And let’s not forget that four out of five jobs created during the Great Recession are in the lowest pay bracket. As the economy returns to “normal”, normal for this generation has shifted to something very different from their parents’ definition of the word.

The most striking shifts, however, are in attitudes. Iain Duncan Smith has persistently argued that this is an

“X Factor generation” of “job-snobs” who believe that “success is not related to effort or work”. As Ed Howker and Shiv Malik note in their new edition of their book, The Jilted Generation, it seems that the young believe him. Surveys published this week show that Generation Y are more suspicious of welfare claimants than their parents — even though they are the most likely to be welfare claimants themselves. They are also more sympathetic to pensioners than to jobseekers — despite the fact that today’s pensioners are the richest ever to have lived.

The lessons Generation Y have drawn from the recession is that they are on their own. Their failures are their fault. Their successes need not be shared. Is this what Osborne had in mind all along?



Breaking Bad brings echoes of Othello

Earlier this week, we hurried back from the National Theatre, where we had watched Adrian Lester’s imperious Othello undone by Rory Kinnear’s distinctly EDL-ish Iago, so as to catch up with the latest episode of Breaking Bad on Netflix.

End to end, the two tragedies provided an interesting series of parallels. Othello is a play of open-ended questions. What is Iago’s motivation for destroying Othello? And why does Othello fall so readily into his trap? Breaking Bad too: what is it that turns Walter White from meek chemistry teacher into criminal overlord?

In all instances, it is a version of male pride. Both, in their ways, are undone by their own wounded image of themselves: Othello as soldier and husband; White as scientist and provider. As the crystal meth saga nears the end, I fear the body count will put Shakespeare to shame.



Skaters say no to new skate parks

Who'd have thought a bunch of skaters would be so hard to move? Ever since the Southbank Centre revealed plans to demolish the iconic Thames-side skate park as part of a £120 million expansion, they have shown remarkable fortitude, gaining 50,000 signatures for their petition and delaying planning application.

The Southbank Centre has now commissioned three different architects to design alternative skate parks not far away — but skaters are having none of it. “Creating this fake, sanitised version of an urban environment is just another way of getting rid of us,” complains one.

It’s a lesson for any community threatened by developers. Perhaps the skaters could hire themselves out at the end of the campaign?



Alexa’s novel creative process

Alexa Chung, the well-known good-looking person, has been talking about her creative process. She has just written a book called It.

“The text isn’t complicated or dense,” she reassured Vogue. “It’s almost a stream of consciousness about several topics. I composed it all in emails to my editor because I don’t have Microsoft Word.”

Picture the scene at Penguin. “Hi Alexa, I know you’re, like, well busy and everything, but do you think you might see your way to sending over a draft chapter of that book we just paid you a hefty advance to write?” “Oh, well, the thing is, I don’t have Microsoft Word? I know, cra-zee.”

Can you imagine that washing in any other professional context?

A restaurant: “Yeah, sorry, chef couldn’t make your starter ’cos he doesn’t have an oven. He can flob in a saucer for you, if you like?” A hospital: “I’m afraid I don’t have the equipment, let alone the concentration span, to amputate your leg in one go, so what I’ll do is hack at it with a butter knife whenever I can be arsed.”

Fortunately, this is celebrity publishing, and they’re a little more forgiving. “Oh, fine,” the editor must have said. “Just DM me some random toss about eyeliner and we’ll still outsell the Booker shortlist.”

Twitter: @richardjgodwin