A Kind of Progress.

For two hundred years Britain’s economy was based on industry. We lived mostly on and for the making of things. It was a time of energy, sweat and pride in the process of creation. And then Mrs Thatcher came along and swept the majority of it away, converting us instead to a retail based economy. So now we mostly buy things, and load ourselves with debt and stress to feed the addiction.

I took my customary train trip to Derby this morning. For the last two miles before entering the station, the track is lined with the rotting corpses of industrial Britain on whose uncovered graves only nature places the hardiest of her flowers. And then, a mere ten minutes walk from the station, you enter the glitzy but insufferably bland superficiality of the shopping mall. It smells of chemically-induced sweetness, and it makes a poignant contrast.