ONE of the saddest things about becoming an oldster, and I’ve had my bus pass for getting on for a year now, is that you realise what a bunch of miserable old gits many of your fellow seniors are.

And that’s before you take into account oldsters-before-their-time like some newspaper readers who positively seethe and bristle as they succumb to youth hatred.

This is probably an enduring historical phenomenon, as ageing misery-guts down the ages spent their dotage lamenting the youth of the day, measuring out the youngsters’ supposed shortcomings in small, bitter, envious measures.

Well, sod that, I say, and I have the evidence to prove it. Scotland today is a measurably more civilised, less violent place than it was a generation or two ago when previous cohorts of young men were flashing a razor blade, battling on terracings or generally stabbing people and kicking their heads in.

It’s long past time that our younger fellow citizens were given a bit of credit for being more civilised, more broad-minded, less violent and less bigoted than their parents and grandparents.

They are also better educated, although of course the familiar oldster narrative is to deny any credit for better pass rates and insist, without evidence but with a shed-load of prejudice, that the exams must have been made easier. Folk who have to ask their grandchildren to help set their alarm clocks should give up on being moral arbiters.

A couple of statistics this week back up the view that young Scots deserve credit. The latest crime statistics indicated recorded crime had fallen to a 41-year low, with knife crime or other crimes involving the handling of a deadly weapons at historically low levels.

The SNP would like to put this in the context of “1000 more police officers”, which strikes me as nuclear-grade tosh, or the Scottish Government’s No Knives, Better Lives campaign, which strikes me as low-grade tosh from which they can take only some limited credit.

But if Scots teenagers are carrying or using fewer blades that has to be a matter of celebration, and now that has been cross-referenced to a fall in hospital admissions for victims of serious assaults.

The recorded crime stats are down, the hospital admission stats are down. Instead of quibbling over the data, why don’t oldsters simply admit the truth, which is that we have grandchildren who are wildly better behaved than we were at their age, and by the way better at exams?

The anecdotal evidence is also there, to be honest. The Glasgow razor gangs were before my time but generalised thuggery and gang violence was prevalent in my own youth. Church hall discos regularly turned to carnage during gigs by East West or the the Bay City Rollers, Hogmanay at the Tron in Edinburgh meant avoiding being glassed at The Bells, and football matches turned into equestrian events. I recall one encounter when Hearts visited Motherwell where a mass brawl saw someone wielding a crutch laying about those around him. Happy days? Hmm.

Much of Scottish life is more civilised than in previous decades but we go out of our way to deny credit to the young people involved. The truth is that oldsters are products of their experience and so are youngsters. Good and bad times have delayed reactions on the conduct of the succeeding generations for which those involved are not entirely to be blamed or handed plaudits.

The nihilism which marked the depths of the Thatcher days may return in the Osborne era. Let’s chillax about that, as someone in power might say, but let’s be ready for the swings and changes, and be prepared to avoid being judgmental.

For now, we have a generation of Scots who are choosing to conform and get on, admirable young men and women, just as past generations chose to fight the system or be the awkward squad. That too, was, in its way, admirable.

Remember what you were like when you were young and try to fit that into the worldview of today. It’s not cosy or comfortable.

The succeeding generations strike me as wholly admirable, just trying to make their way in a world we created. And when I go to see bands like the Temperance Movement or Rival Sons many are there sharing their new experience with my generation. It’s a grand thing. The young are facing hard times and the old are too. An attitude war between the generations is neither necessary nor inevitable. Avoid generational divide and rule.