Today’s generation continues to play fiddlesticks while Rome burns

AS I’ve said before, the greatest ‘gift’ my self-indulgent generation gave to the world is the celebrity chef.

It’s a far cry from my father’s ‘Greatest Generation’, which survived a world war, a great depression, the Cold War and threats of Mutually Assured Destruction.

But even the hedonistic Celebrity Chef Generation seems to have marginally more backbone than the current crop known as Generation Snowflake.

Obviously I’m generalising, especially as my kids - thankfully are anything but snowflakes.

Both work harder than I did at their age, both studied more, and both had to take university holiday jobs for pocket money, whereas my solution to a student cash crisis was to telegram my dad.

Anyway, it’s safe to say my generation didn’t cover itself with glory. Much of the crippling guilt complex in the West today is a result of sappy hippie ideology that we thought was cool back in the day.

However, Generation Celebrity Chef somehow got a free pass. The world survived them. But all bets are off on the world surviving Generation Snowflake.

The hand wringing hipsters and Social Justice Warriors who dictate the narrative and think it’s their messianic mission to show us the error of our ways will soon have to face up to reality.

For contrary to their version of utopia, crisis management is not about transgender toilets, Gaia, or #metoo Hollywood stars claiming casting couch abuse. Instead, it can be encapsulated in one word: refugees.

There’s a tidal wave of them out there about to crash on the shores of the industrialised world. The potential for a global disaster is massive.

Consider this: according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, a whopping 68-million people are - or are at risk of becoming - refugees.

That means there are more displaced people than the populations of South Africa, Namibia and Botswana combined.

The biggest paradox facing the planet today is that populations are exploding in countries unable to accommodate them, but declining in those that can.

Every year millions more are born in the least-educated, worst-governed parts of the world than anywhere else. And it’s multiplying exponentially.

According to the UN, the number of people aged 20 to 30 will surge from 1.2-billion to 4-billion this century.

And all of that growth will be in Africa and South Asia. For example, Pakistan’s birth rate is 3.6 children per woman, compared to 2.4 in India.

However, Africa will be the epicentre with an average of five children per female.

Fleeing to the West

The stark reality is that most of Africa can’t absorb more people. It simply does not have the infrastructure, education, money, or administration to do so. According to the World Bank, 64% of sub-Saharan Africans live on $1.90 per day or less. It is simply unsustainable.

So where will they go? Will they just starve to death? Will we see a never ending parade of pop stars singing ‘We are the World’?

There are no easy solutions. In fact, there may not be solutions as the problems of sub-Saharan Africa - with the exception of South Africa and some neighbouring states - may be too profound for anyone to fix.

By the end of this century, unless the baby-boom volcano is miraculously plugged, the number of people in dire straits will be greater than the combined citizenry of the developed world.

The distressed millions have one goal. To flee to the West. But as we are seeing with Brexit and the recent Italian elections, Europe is already at breaking point with refugees.

Yet what is happening now is a mere fraction of what is coming.

I hope I am wrong, but we could be on the verge of a biblical humanitarian catastrophe that is almost unimaginable.

By the time the tipping point arrives, the bunglers of the Celebrity Chef Generation will be out of office. That’s the good news.

The bad news - on current form anyway - is that this will happen on the Snowflakes’ watch.

At the moment the Snowflakes are more interested in purging thought crime (no conservatives on campuses), cultural approbation (no sombreros unless you’re Mexican), toxic masculinity (all white men), and their favourite, transgender toilets.

Welcome to the real world.