Thanks to Demos for this issue, the think-tank that brought you Cool Britannia, with a modern look at where Britain is now.

You can’t always get what you want, and today many people are struggling even to get what they need. This is resulting in what politicians like to refer to as a ‘horizon shift’, with people finding meaning in doing things, rather than wanting things. In 1997, we were told that things could only get better. Aspiration was the promise that each political party wanted to own. Wanting something was a good in itself, an inevitable consequence, perhaps, of a late capitalist society. But today’s twentysomethings are about to learn that social mobility goes down – as well as up – the hard way. So enduring is the narrative about aspiration, that even in the face of unemployment, student debt and life of paying rent instead of a mortgage, a Demos young people’s convention found over half of 16-18 year olds still expect to do better than their parents. They are in for a shock. But how does society go through a horizon shift, where we find meaning in doing, rather than desiring? “Aspiration – the politician’s buzz-word of the noughties has finally fallen from grace,” says Beatrice Karol Burks, head of press at Demos. “The challenge, not only for government, but for society over the next decade will be reconciling the expectation that everyone should want something with the evidence that not everyone will get it.”

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Our houses are getting smaller. Unlike in France and Germany, where houses are bigger – and have to be by law – houses in the UK are getting smaller by the square foot and by the room. In 1991, 73% of new builds were houses, to 27% flats. This is now a 50/50 spilt. The number of one- and two-bedroom houses being built is on the rise, while three- and four-bedroom houses are falling rapidly. The average room size in France is a whopping 22.6m2, and in Germany it’s an ample 19.7m2, but we in the UK are crammed into just 16.3m2. And while room sizes are increasing in France and Germany, Britain’s kitchens and dining rooms are headed in the opposite direction. This isn’t just changing the landscape – it’s changing the population too. A huge 2.8m people aged 18-44 are delaying having children because of the lack of affordable housing, says the New Statesman. “The shrinking housing stock – and the fact the baby-boomers have robbed their own children of the chance to be homeowners by embracing buy-to-let and eloping with it – is literally stopping Britain growing,” says Julia Margo, deputy director of Demos. “Young Britons are being squeezed financially and spatially, shut out from mortgages and boxed into conceiving later. We are Generation Crunch.”

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How do you build a modern economy? With creative learning that is about enjoying exploring ideas and negotiating modern day problems, not memorising dates and times tables at desks. Despite our fairly advanced knowledge economy, British schools are still built on an industrial model, with bells for clocking in and out of lessons, desks lined up like factory stations and a focus on the production of grades rather than ideas. They’re built to churn out children with skills for the factory rather than future entrepreneurs. Why do politicians get so much mileage from promising to focus on ‘the three R’s’? An announcement to ‘go back to basics’ is guaranteed to provoke applause from middle England even though no one will be returning to the good old days of finish school and heading down the mine or onto the shop floor any time soon. You can’t measure the success of learning through play with an exam, but it is proven that kids who experienced creative learning do better in their careers than those who didn’t. And they’re more likely to access culture, art and museums when they’re older, passing on these skills and enjoyment. “The forthcoming Government review from Dame Clare Tickell could see a reversal of learning through play,” says Jen Lexmond of the Family and Society Programme at Demos. “Children’s Minister, the Lib Dem Sarah Teather has also promised that the ‘nappy curriculum’ won’t focus on academic learning and we should hold her to that.

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Was it a coincidence that this year’s Victoria Park fireworks were Blitz themed? Or that the muted colours of fashion’s contemporary pallet echo wartime sobriety? Or that the Conservative’s Party Conference slogan was ‘together in the national interest’? Probably not. We Brits slip all too easily into the wartime spirit. Shaped by our grandparents’ experiences, our wartime mentality today rears is head in unexpected places, like battling through the supermarket on Christmas Eve or when it snows. Or during a recession. The French riot and the Greeks strike. The Brits really do seem to keep calm and carry on. Such a large number of bright young things who can’t find jobs are starting up rather than signing on, that Britain is experiencing a start-up boom in the middle of the crunch with the number of new business enterprises more than doubling in the first half of 2010. Over 200,000 kitchen table entrepreneurs set up companies this year, based on lean and adaptive business models that can be nimble in a volatile economy. As a nation we love the sense that we’re all in it together – and we thrive in the face of adversity. “A nation famed for our privacy and reservation, we show a very British unity through hardship,” says Max Wind-Cowie, head of the Progressive Conservatism Project at Demos. “Far from the fad of 90’s Cool Britannia, our modern, quiet patriotism is stronger than anyone cares to admit.”

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Young people take the Internet for granted but most don’t understand how it works. It’s the primary place where young people form beliefs about the world and gives them unprecedented access to learning, knowledge and information. But it also bombards them with equally large amounts of propaganda, user-generated nonsense, conspiracy theories and misinformation. Separating the wheat from the chaff is difficult – new survey data shows just how bad young people in the UK are at doing this. More 16-24 year olds trust the net than newspapers; 43% of them base their trust in web content on ‘how the site looks’, while 32% of 12-15 year olds believe that Google search results are listed in order of accuracy. “Online, image really is everything. Young people are swimming in a sea of information and misinformation but they don’t make the same judgment calls that older generations do,” says Jamie Bartlett, head of the violence and extremism programme at Demos. “It’s hard to claim there is such a thing as ‘informed choice’ anymore as there’s just too much information. In a world where conspiracy theories are as trusted national newspapers, building a narrative that can claim to be the ‘truth’ will be the ultimate goal.”

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Thanks to Sara Tate for this issue.

No matter how bright our star shines we are all worm food in the end, as we were reminded last week when a memorial headstone was unveiled for Anthony H Wilson who died in August 2007. The tribute to the legendry Factory Records founder was designed by colleagues Peter Saville and Ben Kelly and bears a quote from The Manchester Man: “Mutability is the epitaph of worlds, Change alone is changeless, People drop out of the history of a life as of a land, Though their work and influence remains”. Whilst the passing of the man who brought us Joy Division, New Order and the Happy Mondays was a huge loss to the cultural landscape, I think the rest of us mere mortals can take some comfort here. Firstly, no matter how rich and famous you are, we all go the same way in the end. (Yes Bon Jovi. Even you.) Secondly, if we find ourselves with a glut of X Factor has-beens on our hands, society can always re-direct their skills as gravestone designers.

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Once again I find myself not agreeing with the Daily Mail. An article earlier this year painted a bleak picture of today’s youths brought up believing they could have it all come crashing down to earth when faced with the harsh realities of recessionary Britain. TV shows are blamed for “Rigid goals, an idealised trajectory and a world-owes-me-something attitude”. However, the smart people at Demos have uncovered a different picture. The Wishful Thinking study asked Britons ranging from pensioners to teenage mums to academics, about their hopes and dreams. Perhaps surprisingly, their dreams were not dissimilar. What was most interesting of all was that not a single respondent cited celebrity or fame. The few dreams about careers (less than 5 per cent of dreams) centred on job stability. Rather than set us up for disappointment, psychology and happiness research points to the fact that individuals are somehow hardwired to hope for a better outcome. And if people were encouraged to do more to fulfill their dreams and to imagine possible futures, society would certainly be healthier, happier, and more resilient. Perhaps there is a role for shows like X Factor to support and mobilise people to achieve their goals. Be more active and lucid in the dreaming process.

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Whilst the rest of society wastes away its days staring at the idiot’s lantern, rock and pop stars continue their march towards world domination. It would appear that banging out pop songs for the hit parade qualifies you to do…well, pretty much anything. As Jon Bon Jovi so humbly and helpfully explained in his rockumentary When We Were Beautiful’, he isn’t just a soft rock front man but “CEO of a major corporation whose been running a brand for 25 years”. The latest popular brand extension for musical types is film score composing. Hot on the heels of Nine Inch Nailer Trent Reznor scoring Social Network, comes Daft Punk and the Tron remake. The electro robots didn’t just contribute individual tracks, but worked with the studio from the planning stages to score the whole movie, even down to sound effects. The results are well worth the wait. Not all brand extensions are a success however, as demonstrated by Kanye West’s crushingly awful ‘hip-hopera’ Runaway. However, thank God someone is cranking out operas because the rest of us are too busy watching TV.

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