The 2000s

Sam Wollaston provides a pithy summary (from a UK perspective) of the decade I still refuse to call 'the noughties':

It began with an ill-thought-out dome by the Thames that no one wanted to go anywhere near, although, a few years later, middle-aged people were fighting to get in, to feel young again, after it was reborn as a music venue. These people pretty much succeeded in reversing the ageing process, physically, mentally and in their souls. The fact that they had accidentally become wealthy, due to the property they owned, helped.

The youth weren't wealthy, but it didn't matter so much because this was the decade when everything became free. The little money they did have they spent binge-drinking, then they disappeared into their hoods, and then they put a donk on it.

The oldies didn't understand and were afraid. But only for a minute, because they were too busy kite-surfing, and rocking out to Led Zeppelin and Prince. Then suddenly the clock struck 12, their young bodies and young minds turned back into pumpkins and they rushed to Switzerland to have themselves put down. "There is a point when you stop being a kidult and you start being a state-subsidised organic unit rotting in a care home," says Will Self. "And you start trying to reckon whether you're going to be able to cram yourself on an EasyJet to Zurich where a man will give you a beaker of sodium phenobarbital and you'll die."

- Guardian, 6 January 2010