Quote Originally Posted by ShadesWolf
The article covers my feeling on what is going wrong with Britain.
Interesting pamphlet. It reminds me of Theodore Dalrymple's books about the British underclass and I believe it has the same merits and flaws as his writings. Excellent diagnosis on the micro level, but a dismal grasp of the larger issues.

Many problems described above are the result of free-market policies and concomitant nonsense about consumer choice, materialistic lifestyles, celeb culture, the abominable role models presented by commercial tv, etcetera. Dalrymple actually makes this point in his latest book (Our Culture) but fails to elaborate on it. Instead he blames the British 'progressive elite' for all the woes of the underclass, as if capitalism had no role to play in it at all. Most astonishing is his claim that this elite has somehow created the underclass in the course of the past one hundred years. Dalrymple writes beautifully about Shakespeare and Zweig -- but has he never read Engels or Dickens?

Also I don't subscribe to the notion that loss of religion is a real loss to society or the individual. The problems start only if and when old-fashioned religion is lost and not replaced by other standards of behaviour and values (which are basically the same for all major religious and non-religious schools of thought).

Finally the author is not pleading against state intervention, he is pleading for a different kind of intervention. That is familiar ground for a Socialist.