Leisure & the young:

Wish you were younger?

• Yes, but…what about car insurance, student loans, house prices, later retirement, worse pensions and less job security?
• What about zero hour contracts, a clogged health service, higher taxes, the environment & the wrinklies’ last bequest, Brexit?
• Deloitte today tells us that, whilst spending across older age groups has held up, younger consumers are cutting back
• It’s perhaps a wonder that they aren’t throwing themselves from bridges

A virtue or a necessity?

• So, are they Instagramming a picture of a meal, a club or a holiday because they want to? Or is it because they can’t afford to eat, visit or take the product itself?
• Are they in their bedsits because they like the wallpaper? Or can’t they afford to go out?
• Are they pirating films, music & books because of some innate criminality? Or are they truly stretched? Is ‘experiential leisure’ real or is it a placebic illusion?
• Similarly why aren’t they drinking? Why are they on Tinder and do they have ‘maximum stuff’ or are they kidding themselves that they’re happier with less?

It was harder in my day…

• Well, actually, it wasn’t
• Jobs fell from trees, you had a car when you were 18, a house at 23 and you retired, student loan and mortgage-free, at 55 on an index-linked, final salary pension
• But get real. Money’s a token, a confidence trick. It doesn’t really – get this – even exist
• There needs to be a redistribution and there probably will be. Either via death duties or in vivo. But back in the here and now, what does the above mean?
• We deal with symptoms, not causes, so affordable, experiential leisure is the way to go.
• Not many Millennials are paying £40 per head plus for lobster, try a Franco Manca pizza and have fun while you eat.