In which the pond does its usual Caterist tour, offering cash in the paw to millennials ...

Whenever the Caterist reveals he lacks imagination, the pond is entranced.

Is there anyone more stolid, dull, tedious and pedantically boring?

Oh okay, there's plenty of competition, but look at the google splash for the latest Caterist piece ...

Yes, it would have been possible to read back in April 2016 in the Graudian some thoughts by someone who actually looks a little young, as opposed to the ossified look of a petrified forest that the Caterist exudes ...

Boomers and millennials: this is not intergenerational warfare, it's class warfare ... it said, and and inter alia it read ...

There is moaning about millennials who waltz into offices and expect to be the boss within six months. This is not about millennials, this is about rich kids. Someone raised by teachers in a country town does not walk into their city job to tell people what to do. 
The rise in internships is unethical and exploitative, no matter what type of family you come from, but the ones who are able to work for months at a time with no pay to secure a real job are the people with financial backing from their family, even if it’s “just” a rent-free room in a house where you don’t have to pay the bills or for food. 
It is an undeniable fact, no matter which way you look at it, that it was easier to get into the property market 30 years ago. But it is rich people who own multiple properties today and it’s their offspring who will reap the benefits of that. There are large swaths of young people who are not locked out of the property market at all but will inherit the spoils their elders have managed to hoard. 
The system has always been stacked in favour of the rich and it is only becoming more so. Thirty years ago it was possible to save a deposit for a property within a few years without any parental help, now that is laughable. The howl of millennials – house prices are now up to nine times average income – is legitimate but there are people who moan they will never be able to afford a house on their own which, while true, discounts the fact they have parents who will guarantee their loan, or even provide the deposit.

And so on, and so to the Caterists allegedly grappling with the issue with accustomed deadly dull pontificating and rigorous lack of imagination ...

What's revealing is that in the end, it becomes clear that the Caterists couldn't really give a toss about millennials or overlooked Gen X or any of the other demographic furphies designed to obfuscate and confuse real structural analysis ... instead it's all about how politicians might pander, score a vote and retain power ... (um, right thinking pollies wanting to keep the lolly for the Caterist kind of course).

The pond has no idea what planet the Caterists live on, or why they're so obsessed with Surry Hills ...

Oh, say no more, just watch out while searching for a barista, or you might trip over a reptile hastily scurrying into the bunker ...

In the pond's experience, de facto relationships aren't much of a guide to anything, interacting as they do with so many other factors ...

It makes sense to enter into a relationship, and live in a suburb where apartments can be found close to work. For tosser reptiles and others, marriage and real estate tend to sort themselves out later on, though the real estate bit gets harder by the year in cities like Sydney.

To generalise about de facto couples living close to town, and derive from it attitudes to family and tradition is beyond stupid and meaningless ...

The pond, for example, is deeply traditional and conservative in the Tamworth manner, and yet started out in a de facto relationship, eventually regularised by marriage and real estate.

Nor does the Caterist piece have much to do with actual pressing issues confronting millennials, of the kind noted by the Graudian's writer...

The knavery, the real intent of the Caterist scribbling, becomes apparent in the next gobbet... it's all about the votes and the next election ...

Uh huh ...well we can take the lack of imagination as read, but back to the Graudian for a possible explanation of what ails young 'uns ...

An analysis of the latest tax figures show the top 1% of Australian earners amassed 9% of Australian income in 2013, the highest proportion since the 1950s. In the US underemployment has risen from 2.5% in 1999 to 4.3% in 2015, while in the UK it is up from 1.2% in 1999 to 7.29% in 2013. In Australia it was 2.7% in the 70s and in 2015 was 8.5%. 
In the UK the alarm for inequality levels reaching Victorian times has been ringing for a few years with the gap between the rich and the poor widening. Analysis by the inequality trust show poorest fifth of society have only 8% of the total income, whereas the top fifth have 40%. 
Globally, the poorest 50% of the Earth’s population owns 1% of the Earth’s wealth while the richest 1% own 46%. 
Boomers have no doubt benefitted from their incredible electoral clout but as the old truism goes, the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting more screwed, no matter what age they are.

Luckily, the pond has worked out a way to solve these perennial millennial problems, and strangely, it's thanks to the Caterists ...

You see millennials, what you need to do is go cap in hand to the Department of Finance. Hold out cap or paw or perhaps billy, and ask for more gruel, and if you ask very nicely, you might score a tidy little earner ...

Do this for a few years, and you'll soon have a deposit on a house, and marriage and respectability and a profound lack of imagination can be all yours.

Of course a few will miss out, but all the pond can say, in company with the Caterists is ... tough titty.

And so to a few relevant memes doing the rounds ...

Yes, millennials, the $4 an hour internships celebrated in May 2016 at news.com.au have really delivered the goods ... as noted by Huff Post here ...

"The Turnbull Government can't explain how the Youth PaTh program won't displace jobs that could go to full-paid employees. The Government has not outlined how its agreement with retailers will stop subsidised workers from being used by some retailers to avoid paying penalty rates -- by engaging subsidised, so-called 'interns' in penalty shifts that would normally be staffed by employees," Husic and O'Connor said. 
On Monday, Minister Cash sought to assure potential interns that they would have a decent chance of getting a job at the end of their placement. "These are new jobs and very much to be part of the program the employer has to certify that there is a job available or a high likelihood of a job available," she said. "We have also been very, very clear, if at the end of the internship a job is not offered, there will be an investigation as to why." Cash talked up the program by saying that, of the 212 internships that had so far been completed, 82 people had gained employment. Her office later told HuffPost Australia that 1235 internship vacancies had been advertised, 620 had commenced, and 408 of those were still ongoing.

Check out Bakers Delight and the Coffee Club in that Huff Post story ... but remember millennials, the Caterists have shown you a genuine career path going forward ...

Trust in the government to steer you right, and all will be well ...