Good evening! This week's edition of the In Common newsletter comes from Nicola Biggerstaff, policy coordinator. To receive the newsletter direct to your inbox every week click here.

THIS week will be my last working as policy coordinator for Common Weal, and for the first time in my career I am devastated to be leaving my position. Over the last two years, Common Weal has been a place where I truly felt we were making a difference in the Scottish policy arena, but the time has come for me to move on to new challenges.

When family and friends ask me what I did at Common Weal, I can’t help but feel a bit smug. I tell them about our work in monetary and financial policy, in environment and land reform, in health and social care, in education.

But no matter what we said or did, the world hasn’t changed. Our solutions were going ignored in the fields that mattered, and the situation is only getting worse for everyone on a personal, local, and global level.

Shouting from the rafters became yelling into the void as civic pride disintegrated and standards of governance went to pot. Issues affecting our future, the climate emergency, global conflict and poverty, are being skirted around while we wait on the next election.

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People are crying out for changes in leadership everywhere and don’t know where to turn, who to vote for out of the sea of privileged in-groups, whose only differentials are the colour of their ties. “Where are the young people?” they ask.

I’ll tell you where the young people are: they’re being increasingly locked out of these opportunities by systems designed to work against us, to fail us, to keep our heads down and shut us up.

When we speak out at protests, they threaten to arrest us. When we speak out through social media, or on the rare chance one of us gets a column in a national newspaper, they tell us to sit down, we don’t know what we’re talking about.

They tell us we’re too young to get elected, too young to know what hard work feels like, too young to know the real world. They forget just how much of a mental slog it is to be young, even more so nowadays.

Establish careers, relationships, a sense of self. Do it all now to get ahead, but don’t, you’re still so young. Find a hobby, but nothing too expensive. Start a family if you want, but can you really afford it? Buy a house? Good luck with that one.

We want things to change just as much as you do, but we need your help to get there. We need a non-judgmental system of support from older generations that gives young people the time and energy to participate in civic society, and not just the ones that can afford to do it.

Even taking housing as an example, why aren’t older generations more concerned we’ve been priced out of the market? We deserve a safe place to go home to after struggling through the same system you have to every day, yet few of us can afford this privilege.

Generally, we are overworked and undervalued. We hear it over and over. Paid opportunities which satisfy our morals are on the decrease, and unpaid opportunities will only ever go to those who can afford to take them. Many are railroaded into careers dictated to them by circumstance for the sake of survival.

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When we do find some precious downtime, we spend it preserving our energy like animals in hibernation. We go out to eat so we don’t have to cook, we spend time with our loved ones so we don’t fall into pits of despair, we go out drinking so we can laugh and dance more than we ever would sober.

Politics right now only reminds us of this.

Any talk of current affairs outside of work hours is met by a long groan from me, personally. I can’t bear to watch the news, and the breaking notifications on my phone are now switched off.

We’re told of the ample opportunities for young people out there, Youth Parliaments and junior research positions and internships with great causes. But the reality is, a large majority of us just can’t afford it, financially or emotionally. We cannot be expected to change the world under these conditions, even if we wanted to.

But Common Weal’s All of Us First message has always included young people, and so I will always look back on my time working here with pride.