I’m a 31 year old sparky and I would consider myself a pretty simple man. I want to just have a family home, raise some rugrats, work till I’m 60 and hopefully see through a retirement.

I have no vices, don’t drink, don’t smoke and don’t gamble and don’t have any expensive hobbies. Despite all this, the basics of life have become so expensive to the point that I don’t think I’ll genuinely ever own a home. The clocks ticking and I’ll never be able to have kids because of a lack of financial security due to housing.

I just don’t understand how our society ended up like this. Some of the older sparkies in my crew (50 ) have multiple houses, spend and drink like drunken sailors and have a more spendy lifestyle. For the exact same job they live like kings while I’m stuck forever as a pauper.

It feels to me what I imagine fuedalism was like and I’m just a serf. This whole situation is rotten to the core. I just wanna live a simple life and be a good dad but I feel I was robbed of the opportunity because of greed and speculation.

It feels like the only way to make it in my generation is if you have wealthy parents or earn money that most of us will never see. How did we as a society make it so essential workers can’t afford the simple things in life like housing? Not all of us can be lawyers or doctors, society couldn’t function that way! And I’m sure we need sparkies around.

It certainly feels like a lucky country, for some but not all of us.