"The plain fact is that a man, and his wife,
and with four children that are unable to
work, cannot now, out of his labour,
possibly provide them and himself with the
means for livingǠAnd will anyone say that
this state of things is such as England
ought to witness?"
William Cobbett
My parents live in a little village called Nether Wallop. A generation ago it had two shops, a post office, two pubs, a butcher, a policeman, a doctor and district nurse, and a nearby railway station - connected to a massive local rail network.
And that was in the Austerity years of the 1940s. Now, when we are incomparably 'richer', all that's left is one pub and a very occasional bus. The conventional reasons for this - low taxes, overregulation, fat-cat salaries - don't really explain why it's so hard to afford the simplest public services, health, post and education any more, or basic shops. And when we're so wealthy too.
Policy-makers have their noses glued to the short-term, and they find it hard to ask longterm questions. But an increasingly urgent question is: why can we only afford a creaking postal delivery system that occasionally delivers letters within 24 hours, and barely adequate railways? Or why - for example - do restaurants The problem with modern money have to be almost fully booked just to avoid bankruptcy? Why can't we afford to clean the streets or get the litter out of the parks? Why can we not afford full care for the mentally ill?
