Columnist Ruth Wishart writes of her respect for today's young people in Helensburgh and beyond.

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One of the most pervasive divides these days seems to be about age rather than class.

Part of that is down to the realisation that the "Millennials" – folks born in the early eighties – are the first generation with little guarantee of doing better than their parents.

They have a massive task trying to get on to the housing ladder. If they went to university in England, they have a whopping great student debt to service when they start earning decent money. And the spiralling cost of rented properties mkes it difficult to plan futures.

The young are over-represented in a world of zero-hour contracts, whilst seniors, regardless of personal circumstances, have enjoyed a measure of income protection.

(Although I’m well aware there’s no shortage of pensioner poverty.)

But there are also huge attitudinal divides. Young Scots voted overwhelmingly Yes in 2014, whilst the 60 plusses voted No in roughly the same percentages. Young people voted in massive numbers to stay in Europe and, while Scotland as a whole voted Remain in each of our 32 local authorities, a majority of older Scots voted Leave.

I find this quite disturbing. Boiled down it means the people who will live longest with the consequences of major referendum decisions are those whose wishes were effectively cancelled out by electors with far fewer years left to contemplate the fallout.

This especially matters as the Brexit negotiations stumble on and the UK parliament starts to debate the consequences of a decision in June 2016 taken by just 26 per cent of the population as a whole, and just 37 per cent of a restricted electorate (no UK dwelling Europeans had a vote, no 16 or 17 year olds.) Not quite the majority “will of the British people” parroted by the Brexiteers.

EU membership gave our young people a passport to go and work anywhere in Europe, it gave them a chance of an Erasmus scholarship to study in another country, it gave them freedom to travel unfettered by suddenly becoming a foreigner at borders they could once cross effortlessly. They stand to be deprived of all that in direct defiance of their own stated wishes.

I am in awe of this generation. They are brave, ambitious, curious about their world and usually passionate about the environment. And, as our report in this week's Advertiser makes clear, there are far more caring, sharing young folks around than there are kids making a serial nuisance of themselves.