Paul Kirkley: Bare Minimum Britain is falling asunder
I was arguing with someone on Twitter about Brexit recently – yeah, we’re still partying like it’s 2016 on that hellsite – when they happened to spot I live in Cambridge. Which, in their eyes, immediately invalidated anything I could possibly have to say about people in Britain’s left-behind communities. Because obviously, in this city, we all dress like Harry Potter and sit down every night to eat roast swan at ‘high table’. (Whatever that is. A table with really long legs, presumably?)
Anyway, I tried to point out that there are working-class people in Cambridge, too (and that I might even be one of them, though I do work part-time for Waitrose, so the jury’s still out on that). But, despite my flat-capped northern credentials, I had to concede it’s really quite nice here.
For how long, though? Because even in “prosperous” Cambridge there are troubling signs of the rot that’s taken root in the public realm across #Broken Britain.
On a thoroughly depressing Christmas shopping trip to the Grafton end of town in December, I couldn’t help but be struck by how different it all seemed, compared to a decade ago. It’s there in the endless parade of grubby vape shops and empty units; the streets filled with rough sleepers and the visible increase in people with mental health problems. Meanwhile, on another recent city centre visit, I saw two separate fights break out in broad daylight. Which might just be coincidence, or me being overly jumpy because I had my kids with me. But, for the first time in 20 years of living here, I didn’t feel entirely safe.
Meanwhile, brand new houses being demolished at Darwin Green because they’ve not been built properly, and the new Histon Road surface already disintegrating, and the Milton Road revamp being re-revamped because of a “design error”, and all the potholes filled in so sloppily they just turn into craters, and an inability to even bus kids into school on time, feel like microcosmic examples of a wider malaise. A malaise that runs the gamut from crumbling classrooms to high-profile infrastructure fiascos like HS2 and the botched roll-out of everything from Universal Credit to smart meters.
There is a sense, effectively, that Britain – once the industrial furnace of the world – has lost the ability to build or make or deploy or even manage anything competently. And it may well be that this is a product of chronic under-investment, or staff shortages, or lack of training. But the middle-aged grouch in me can’t help but think a lot of a lot of it is also down to people simply not caring; to clock-watchers spending more time checking Facebook than doing their jobs. Bare Minimum Britain, I call it. I realise that’s more of an emotional response, than a statistical one, which is not very Cambridge. But it’s just how feel. And I wonder if maybe you feel it, too.
Post-script: In the two days since I wrote the above, I’ve seen another scuffle break out – this time an assault by would-be thieves on staff in Sainsbury’s – and a woman brazenly walk out of the Co-op with arms full of food, at which the young female member of staff, who was alone in the shop, could only shrug helplessly. Again, it’s hardly scientific, but just adds to that vague feeling of things beginning to fray at the edges.
Speaking of Bare Minimum Britain, I see South Cambs District Council is ploughing ahead with its four-day week ‘trial’, despite having only made a pittance of savings from its budget.
I was particularly amused by comments from Jeff Membury, the council’s head of transformation, that a four-day week could become “the standard way of working as people take advantage of AI”. I don’t know whether that means we’ll eventually have robots collecting our bins, or just that we’ll be expected to do everything for ourselves on an app. Either way, I’m still waiting for that 20 per cent reduction in my council tax.
I understand from my breakfast newspaper that 20mph speed limits are a new front in Britain’s never-ending culture war. According to The Times, such restrictions, which “no-one has voted for” are being “imposed” on residents by “faceless town hall officials” as a form of “petty oppression”. Which is news to us here in Histon and Impington, where we literally have just voted for a 20mph limit – by a margin of 71 per cent to 21 per cent.
That’s good news for those of us, like me, who are prepared to put up with the mild inconvenience of a few extra seconds on our journey, for the benefit of our children not being dead. Although, I’ll admit, I didn’t expect the 20mph road markings to be quite as big as they are. I reckon I could comfortably go from 0-20 within the sign itself. Surely the idea is to slow down drivers who are already in the village? We don’t need to be able to see them from space.
Readers with long memories and even longer evenings may recall that last month I tried keeping a record of all the most deranged nonsense to emerge from what we are still insisting, against all the evidence, on calling ‘the government’. But then I basically got too exhausted and gave up.
Anyway, turns out I peaked too soon, as since then we’ve had:
- Rishi Sunak and Piers Morgan having a £1,000 bet on the lives of desperate migrants, for LOLs.
- Rishi Sunak making a joke about trans people in Parliament, knowing that the mother of a murdered trans teenager was in the House, for LOLs.
- Rishi Sunak doing a Q&A on GB News, which was then analysed by the channel’s team of political experts, who also happen to be fellow Tory MPs, and that’s fine, apparently.
- Home Secretary James Cleverly boasting about new legislation to stop care workers from bringing dependents into the country, because it’s fine for them to feed us, bathe us, comfort us and literally wipe our bottoms, but god forbid they should expect a family life of their own.
- Lee Anderson suggesting that London was now some sort of Islamist caliphate, albeit one with lots of pubs and discos and gay bars and shops where you can get your own face printed on an M&M, which I’m pretty sure they don’t have in Jalalabad.
- Liz Truss going full-on MAGA mental in America, blaming the “deep state” for bringing down her government, rather than just doing the decent thing and never speaking again for the rest of her natural life.
At which point, I gave up again.
Read more from Paul every month in the Cambridge Independent.
