BACK in the day, DIY meant nailing a picture frame to a wall, bleeding a radiator or painting the bedroom wall.
Today, to Gen Z and millennials, it means handyman website Task Rabbit, or a Rampant Rabbit.
GettyBack in the day, DIY used to mean putting up a shelf[/caption]
GettyResearch has shown young Britons are increasingly outsourcing the most basic of tasks – pictured here a man changes a smoke alarm battery[/caption]
Research has shown young Britons are increasingly outsourcing the most basic of tasks, so afraid of hard moderate work are they — or clueless.
Nearly a quarter of those surveyed aged 28-43 admitted they could not change a ceiling lightbulb.
Of those, 20 per cent said going up a ladder would be “too dangerous”.
As a geriatric millennial, I’m ashamed to admit, I am absolutely, categorically, 100 per cent one of these useless waste of spaces, AKA a “GOTDIT”: Get Others To Do It.
I could no sooner put a shelf up than translate Sophocles’ Antigone from its original form, or bash out Bach’s Schubler Chorales on the organ.
Only 70 per cent of those polled could identify a flathead screwdriver. I am one of the 30 per cent.
Fifty-seven per cent of Gen Zs said they knew how to add air to a car tyre, fewer said they could fit a windscreen wiper blade, a task that can take less than a minute. A task I wouldn’t know where to start on.
My poor dad, who is 76 and battling various health conditions, regularly drives down to my house in London to repair things.
He once flogged over to change the batteries in my bleeping smoke alarm.
No job too small for my septuagenarian father who, presumably, hoped he’d enjoy a life of leisure once I turned 18/he retired.
But no. Here we are.
And if my dad is inconveniently in hospital, or selfishly at the doctor’s, or even more selfishly visiting a friend, I, like my pathetic generation and the one below it, turn to my phone.
Apps like Task Rabbit and Wecasa provide handymen and women at the touch of a button.
Our practical financial nous fares little better.
A quarter of young people leave secondary school without basic personal finance knowledge.
Increasingly, they get their life lessons from TikTok.
Despite financial education having become a part of the National Curriculum for secondary schools since 2014, academies, free schools and private schools are not required to do so.
Certainly, I left school with absolutely no comprehension of a mortgage.
Ditto an ISA or a bond, or, indeed, the very concept of budgeting.
Instead, I finished sixth form with a comprehensive understanding of cos, sin and tan, and a encyclopaedic knowledge of the periodic table.
Pythagoras’s theorem? Nailed it, mate.
With the advent of smartphones, kids now have ready-made calculators in their back pockets.
AI means that intimate understanding of an isosceles triangle is no longer necessary. (Was it ever?)
Outsourcing basic of tasks
Instead, schools should be teaching kids practical lessons.
DIY, money, resilience, AI, proper sex education.
In the age of grubby online porn, the latter is more important than ever.
Mental health matters, but children should also be taught that they will face stress in their lives: Exams, money worries, illness. Which is very different to “anxiety”.
While hopeless cretins like me may be boosting the economy every time we hit “order” on Task Rabbit, really we are glorifying laziness.
It will prove a very false economy.
“PREGNANT smokers twice as likely to quit if offered cash,” claimed a report yesterday.
The Government is rolling out a scheme to offer pregnant smokers financial incentives to stop.
Erm. If a woman gets pregnant and is unwilling to kick the habit for the sake of her unborn baby, then she really shouldn’t be allowed a child in the first place.
End of.
LINDA’S FAKE GONG FITS THE BILL
PROOF that not all heroes wear capes.
A giant billboard displayed in Leicester Square – home of Hollywood movie premieres – was circulating on social media over the weekend, showing Linda-from-The-Traitors holding a mock awards gong.
Louis Wood News Group Newspapers LtdA giant billboard displayed in Leicester Square showing Linda-from-The-Traitors holding a mock awards gong[/caption]
BBCThe Traitors host Claudia Winkleman[/caption]
Ingenious marketing from studio makers, there.
EYEING UP NEW PARTY
DOMINIC CUMMINGS and Keir Starmer: Two men, both of whom should have gone to Specsavers.
Now the pair are on a collision course.
EPADominic Cummings is reportedly advising Elon Musk on how to attack Keir Starmer online[/caption]
Myopic Cummings, a man whose ailing eyesight forced him to drive a 30-mile round trip, he claimed, to Barnard Castle during lockdown, is gunning for the PM – a man whose own eyesight required lucrative freebies c/o Labour donor Lord Alli.
Boris Johnson’s Machiavellian former adviser is hoping to disrupt our stale two-party political system (because, let’s face it, the Lib Dems aren’t going anywhere fast) with his own Start-Up party.
He is reportedly advising his unlikely billionaire ally, Elon Musk, helping him attack the wobbling, designer spectacle-wearing PM using his influential platform, X.
Interesting times.
UNION SLIP SO STUPID
I WAS but a distant twinkle in my father’s eye when the Winter of Discontent struck.
But my parents, and A-Level politics, taught me that it was an absolute s***show, largely caused by Labour’s seismic capitulation to the unions.
GettyWorkers strike during the Winter of Discontent in 1978-79[/caption]
Forty-six years on, here we are again.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that if you give in to strikes, you set a dangerous precedent.
With Keir, Ange and Rachel-from-Accounts once again pandering to union leaders, sixth form tutors are the latest group to down tools.
Where will it end?
END ON A SOUR NOTE
HOUSE plants are considered “family members” by one in seven people, a study has found.
Many claim to feel “highly connected” to their peace lilies, and have a “deep love” for their photosynthesising ones.
AlamyHouse plants are considered ‘family members’ by one in seven people, a study has found[/caption]
Try telling that to my lemon tree, RIP.
After excitedly buying the £60 thing last year, I posted a photo of it in all its glory on Instagram.
Within minutes I was deluged by friends messaging to say it would be dead within the month.
They were wrong.
It lasted 18 days.
OUTRAGE in yesterday’s Daily Mail – that BBC news stars’ make-up bill totals around £1million a year.
The sense being, then, Sophie Raworth and co. should go on air with little more than a lick of Oil Of Olay on their cheeks.
Trust me, the first to complain if presenters went on telly looking as nature intended would be Daily Mail readers.
DENT IN THE CUP
NOW, I write this as a Spurs fan.
But Tottenham Hotspur absolutely do not deserve to be in the FA Cup fourth round.
Minnows Tamworth were cruelly denied a replay at White Hart Lane after holding Spurs to a 0-0 draw after 90 minutes – and an £800,000 payday.
The decision by football fat cats and Premier League chiefs to protect their own and scrap fixture-busting replays in all rounds threatens to erode the very magic of the FA Cup.
I don’t care if Spurs players are knackered for failing to put out a team ranked 330,000 places below them – that’s the price they should pay for mediocrity.
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