I have recently had cause to to be in three British town or cities recently for shopping purposes ... one was quite small, one medium sized, and the last was a major city. One thing struck me about all of them.
The high streets were all squalid depressing affairs. I don't mean so much the architecture, although they all looked a bit run down. Many of the shops in the smallest high street were closed, or charity shops, but it wasn't that which struck me the most.
No, it was the numbers of apparently aimless, and I assume unemployed, younger men and women to be seen in every one of them.
We seem to have a whole class of people who seem to be:
I might be exaggerating, but not by as much as I wish was the case, because once you start looking it seems to be a fairly obvious phenomena ... but even if its far less of an issue than I have stated here, I still can't help thinking, is this what the welfare state was supposed to produce?
I know that the "land fit for heroes" quote was from the end of the first world war .... but it was surely the sentiment that drove the formation of the welfare state at the end of the second world war.
We seem to have failed in that aim, and are now watching our high streets crumble under the twin pressures of Internet shopping, and the social malaise of an underclass, that apparently has nothing to do but swarm about our high streets making it look like a unemployment office queue.
Forty years of the welfare state and cradle to grave not working, nurtured in Labour run council estates, seems only have to proved that its possible breed a new type of human being in just four generations. It was all in all a depressing few visits.
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| Empty Shops ... A Feature Of Many High Street These Days. |
The high streets were all squalid depressing affairs. I don't mean so much the architecture, although they all looked a bit run down. Many of the shops in the smallest high street were closed, or charity shops, but it wasn't that which struck me the most.
No, it was the numbers of apparently aimless, and I assume unemployed, younger men and women to be seen in every one of them.
We seem to have a whole class of people who seem to be:
- All under the age of thirty.
- All wearing cheap clothing or tracksuits, but with the men wearing hoodies and with the females pushing prams.
- All obviously not working as the visits were mid morning.
- Many of them apparently just looking for something to steal from a shop, or a passer by.
I might be exaggerating, but not by as much as I wish was the case, because once you start looking it seems to be a fairly obvious phenomena ... but even if its far less of an issue than I have stated here, I still can't help thinking, is this what the welfare state was supposed to produce?
I know that the "land fit for heroes" quote was from the end of the first world war .... but it was surely the sentiment that drove the formation of the welfare state at the end of the second world war.
 |
| Feral Street Gangs On Many Of Our High Streets - A Common Sight These Days. |
We seem to have failed in that aim, and are now watching our high streets crumble under the twin pressures of Internet shopping, and the social malaise of an underclass, that apparently has nothing to do but swarm about our high streets making it look like a unemployment office queue.
Forty years of the welfare state and cradle to grave not working, nurtured in Labour run council estates, seems only have to proved that its possible breed a new type of human being in just four generations. It was all in all a depressing few visits.
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