Happy New Year Bermuda.I will stay on the theme of our young people because each week I see or hear something that shocks me even more than what happened the week before.This time I’m going to look at our young people’s lack of respect for authority, for things, for business establishments, their lack of social graces and their simple cluelessness on what decent people should and should not do.Wassup with our young people? So, I’m at a local hotel for New Year’s and I watch how the young people conduct themselves. Well, we already know that women dress in such a manner as to leave nothing to the imagination, but the way these people act in public establishments amazes me.First let’s talk about the fact that many of these people don’t have enough money to afford a hotel room. They stay in a hotel, but don’t have enough money for the extra charges. They stay in a hotel but bring KFC and fast food to the room. Classless? Yes, very.But done by Bermudians and, I guess, tacky people everywhere. There, I said it.If you can’t afford the extra charges that go with staying in a hotel, if you don’t want to tip the bellman for carrying your bags, if you are fighting with the front desk staff over taxes and gratuities; you cannot afford to be staying in a hotel and you really shouldn’t be staying in a hotel.Spend that money on a college education so that you can eventually afford to stay in a hotel and not nickel and dime the establishment.Secondly, our young people don’t know how to act. I watched a young woman eating what looked to be a container of Chinese food, in the lobby of a rather classy hotel, whilst addressing a matter at the front desk. Surely her mother could not have taught her such social graces, or the lack thereof. I imagine that she would consider the hotel staff to be cruel if they called her out on it.Then there’s the smoking of weed in the hotel, on hotel premises and, yes, you guessed it, in the room. Smoking weed is illegal, so why would you do it at a hotel?There is a sense of entitlement in some people. I can hear a young person thinking, ‘hey I’m paying for the room so I can do what I want in it’. Aaah, no, you can’t, that’s not how it works.Then you learn that the people smoking weed are not the ones actually paying for the room or really authorised to stay in it. Staggering, but true. What are these people thinking?This just all speaks to the lack of standards and expected conduct, which we as a society have accepted from our young people. It’s like we’re too lazy to correct them and in doing so standards across the board in so many areas have simply dropped.Well it’s not too late. People rise or fall to the level expected and demanded of them, our forefathers expected more from us, so let’s expect more from successive generations. We can do it, yes we can.Happy New Year to all……DJLT