Hey, Boris! Leave those kids alone

I’m heartily fed up with our teenagers being demonised as a bunch of lazy, drunken, drug addled hoodies waiting on street corners to mug old ladies.

Yes there are a small bunch of mindless morons who spend their days in a fog of booze and dope and have no intention of ever contributing anything to society, but they are decidedly in the minority. Most of our young people are hard working and dedicated and just want the chance of a decent job and some sort of future.

This week Boris Johnson was having a go at “lazy” teenagers during a speech at the Tory Party Conference, saying they need to have a work ethic instilled, as though you could somehow inject this into their systems.

He was agreeing with comments made by Jamie Oliver who declared that young people from eastern European countries were more prepared to put in the long hours needed for restaurant work.

To be honest he may have a point, but there are also far too many employers who will take on a non-British worker, not because they happen to be keener and brighter, but simply because they know they can get away with paying them less.

That is scandalous, but it suits their purposes to denigrate our youngsters as being feckless and unwilling to do a hard day’s work if they can cut their wages bill.

It is really tough out there for our children as anyone with a teenager will know. Proper jobs are hard to come by and the competition is fierce.

Having politicians like Boris Johnson taking cheap shots at our kids might be a crowd pleaser but it doesn’t actually do any good. We need decent jobs for our kids and proper apprenticeships so we have more top class plumbers, electricians and joiners.

It would also help if people stopped giving our teens a kicking and instead provided some hope for the future and the promise that if you work hard you’ll actually be rewarded.

After all, it’s not their generation’s fault that the economy is in the toilet, so let’s stop having a go at them.