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• Wednesday, May 7, 2008 10:52 PM

  @ baldie again

  well, we do have it, but it isn't seen as something spiritual, just as an ultra-free-market economic doctrine : Thatcherism, asset-stripping, privatisation, rolling back the "welfare state," etc. This last point about the "welfare state" is extremely imnportant, I think for this reason : immediately after WW2 a "Labour" government came to power, which promised to provide cradle-to-grave basic services for all, without means testing. This was to include : comprehensive unemployment benefits to a modest but tolerable standard of living, including rent ; "council housing," i.e. publicly subsidised housing administered through local councils, which are what we call our borough administrations ; a "national health service," i.e. 100% subsidised basic health care ; and subsidised primary and secondary education, including 100% grants for both tuition and maintenance expenses for those who passed fairly basic entrance exams qualifying them for further education. Of these currently only the "national health service" remains. The roll-back of all these things and the re-privatisation of "the commanding heights of the economy" such as power and telecoms has been accompanied by a strident Hayek-style rhetoric under the "Conservative" governments and a more shamefaced version of the same doctrine under "Labour" ones, but grandiose claims of spiritual superiority have not been so common, and I really think this is because, at least in south-east England, the dominant area in mass media terms, Calvinism is not and has never been fashionable.

  —Rowan Berkeley Read Rowan Berkeley's other letters
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