Let us know our limitations...

Something of an obsession creeping into the British psyche at the moment - actually, I suspect it's the English psyche, as the Welsh and Scots seem intent on backing away from us at every opportunity and the Irish are busily pulling suspiciously metallic sounding oilskin packages from wells and fresh-dug holes again. Anyway, there's an obsession growing with World War 2, with the 1940s, with all things blitz and Blighty-ful.

We are not the generation who beat Hitler. We are not the generation that dug for victory and piled pans for Spitfires. We are not the generation who pulled together and sang rude songs in dark shelters while the Luftwaffe reigned death and fire a few earthy feet above our heads.

We are the generation that runs out weeping with a handful of Texaco's finest floral displays whenever the cameras gather at the scene of another outburst of passionless self absorption; another sex-killing, another pathetic territorial gang-fight; another bus-stop of pedestrians under another stolen car.

We are the generation that hides away with pornography and plastic music videos and computer car crime. Feeding absurd borrowed, bought fantasies; fuelling our addiction to the odd synaptic spark that now replaces critical thought or positive action. We choose to isolate ourselves behind walls of fear; to emerge to spite some weaker creature we can overpower, however briefly, then retreat back behind our walls.

We are not the generation that stood alone against a crumbling world, and no Vera Lynn mp3, no fake-fur stole and no jitterbug revival is going to make it so.

We are not a generation of heroes; we are the degeneration of the heroes' children. We are the crumbling world and we have forgotten how to stand.