Editorial February 6th 2015

A while back an article in Vice came to my attention that basically called on our generation to give up. It was pretty familiar rhetoric, we’ve been shafted by previous generations, dealt a bad hand. It’ll be too hard to change, we’ll never do it, we’re done for. This is the dangerous, creeping mindset that grips people of our age who lack the privilege to avoid the worries of a seemingly forever extending retirement age, and a depleting stack of world resources. I hate this thinking. Would you pick up Super Mario Bros. 2 and complain because there was no opportunity to kill King Koopa? In new games there are new objectives. In new lives, generations and worlds we must strive to find new measures of success in life. Your existence is deeply alien to so many human experiences that have occurred over centuries and it will not be the best or the worst of those. The world will change, so will you but there will always be worthwhile goals and people and if you are willing to meet those goals you can still find happiness or at the least a way to accept yourself and your position in the world. I will never have the life my father had, but he will never have mine.

Also, there is a proposed counter-terrorism bill that you can read about on page 2. Blatantly, it’s proposals threaten to undermine some of the rights supposedly guaranteed by the United Nations of Human Rights. Those rights being freedom of speech and freedom of religion.  Even beyond the more obvious human rights failures, I doubt many academics want to report students in the ways it appears the bill proposes, so even if it passes I don’t think many of them will begin seeing themselves as the front-line defence of beautiful Blighty. Nonsense, reactionary, populist legislation at it’s finest. In the immortal words of Father Ted, ‘Down with this sort of thing.’

Finally, should you wish to have some involvement in the paper in your hand, or just have any questions, do not hesitate to attend our meetings on Tuesday 5.30pm in Room 208 of the John McIntyre or contact us through the information on our website. You don’t need any experience, just the desire to give it a go.