John Harris: A cloistered metropolitan elite is in denial about Britain
Here, it seems, is more proof that the supposed arrival of the classless society is less a matter of conditions on the ground than a culture that blithely ignores them. Just before this year’s local elections, I spent time in Stoke-on-Trent – omitted from Phil and Sofie’s top 10, but probably bubbling under – where the BNP were snapping at the heels of a broken-down Labour party, sending round leaflets that read less like the Potteries’ take on Mein Kampf than something put out by the Socialist Workers’ party (“Labour betray the working man and woman – potteries, mining steel … all destroyed”). The regenerated urban wonders of Manchester were less than an hour away, yet here were scenes that are actually more common than some people would like to believe: walled-up factories, Poundstretcher shops, low-paid service-sector jobs, and the abiding sense that the good life was happening somewhere else. A couple of days later I ended up discussing all this with a former editor of a tabloid newspaper, who looked at me as if I was slightly mad. His counterargument was based on the usual mirage of limitless affluence and what used to be known as embourgeoisement: “Britain is booming,” he snapped back.
Posted on October 24th, 2006 at 8:40am under Chicken Nuggets, Evil of banality, UK politics
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“Britain is Booming” was a popular line of the Wilson Gubment which was wondeffully lampooned by (a then very young)Michael Frayn in the observer with an essay with that title…”Britain is Booming! …at least you a can hear a dull rumble in the Midlands ” it started I remember.
For the Metropilitan money jugglers it certainly is as the FTSE soars.
” …a third of all working households containing people under 40 “cannot afford to buy even at the low end of local housing markets”…. or as someone remarked to me, 50% of people could not afford to buy the house they live in. A sobering thought.
Brilliant article, isn’t it. So brilliant I also felt inclined to mention it in my (admittedly vastly inferior) blog, plus my own thoughts on this – this isn’t a shameless excercise in self-promotion, I hasten to add, my way of saying “I’ve got an opinion, but why don’t you visit my blog to find out”. I did write a comment here but it became so lengthy and long-winded as this is precisely the sort of issue that makes me go off on one, that I decided to post it there instead as an addendum of sorts. (Well, admittedly it’s not so much an addendum as a mindless angry rant, but it’s hard to keep your head when you’re being relentlessly fucked by the system for merely wanting to live in a fairly comfortable flat – nothing major, nothing fancy, just a kitchen that isn’t rat-infested and a bathroom that actually has, like, y’know, hot water and a working lightswitch and stuff – and not be forced to live on chickpeas as a consequence.)
Anyway, one of the best things I’ve read in the Guardian in a very long time. The fact that it has attracted so many comments in a relatively short space of time also speaks volumes.
I too found the piece struck a chord but there’s an interesting comment responding to Harris’s claim that “it’s worth repeating some statistics: not just the fact that 12 million Britons live on or below the poverty line, defined in the case of a two-adult household at £180 per week.”
The dissident says: “Hmm. I’d like to see where that number came from actually. 60% of median income adjusted for household size and after housing costs is I think the actual definition. It also makes a great difference whether that is before or after the impact of the tax and benefit system. If before then it’s meaningless, as it ignores what is already done to help those in poverty.”
No, not Gordon Brown. Tim Worstall.
But not so long ago, Manchester was Poundstretcher land as well- parts still are.
Surely the claims are quantifiable – if Britain is booming are living standards, for the majority of people, rising each year.
But if that’s the measure then still both can be true.
You may be slightly better off, there may be
a little more to do, but Barrow In Furness, Bridlington , wherever you live are still grim, isolated and poverty stricken