IT'S ALL THEIR FAULTa manifesto by Neil Boorman

53% of students in the UK have to go begging for handouts from the Bank Of Mum & Dad, according to a new report. And it doesn’t get much better when they leave Uni; 17.5% of young adults are currently unemployed.

Of course, life wouldn’t be so tough if our parent’s generation hadn’t ruined everything – expensive education, overpriced housing, massive national debt and a bankrupt economy – it’s all their fault. And that’s why we should never feel guilty taking money from the Bank Of Mum & Dad – they owe it to us in the first place.

I’m publishing a book about all this, and I need you to help me write it. If you’ve got a story about being forced to borrow money from your parents, or having to move back in to their house, or struggling with bills while your folks live the good life, I’d love to hear from you.  Please mail me your stories here.

I heard an incredible statistic on the radio yesterday: this year, some bankers will make bonuses worth more than the average worker will earn in a lifetime. These are the same bankers that work for the institutions we, the general public, bailed out last year, and sunk the nation into debt as a result. How do we pay off this debt? By slashing spending budgets and sending ‘average workers’ off to the dole queue. How exactly did it come to this?

The brunt of this debt and unemployment is being piled on young people. It’s us who’ll be paying off the nation’s debts after the middle-aged bankers have retired. And right now, it’s us who are joining the dole queue. In some parts of the UK, 19% of young people are on the dole. And that’s just the ones that are eligible to sign on.

No wonder they’re calling us the ‘lost generation’.

Boomer premiers Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling are talking tough this week about setting limits on city bonuses. How about we introduce a tax on those bonuses. We could use the money to bail out the lost generation from years of debt to come?