Third World London, Third World Britain

The buses ran normally, the bins were emptied, and the schools stayed open here in County Durham yesterday. But not everywhere, I understand.

Part of the blame must attach to the use of metric measurements. People heard the large number of centimetres and thought of them as much like inches. So they stayed in the house rather than dare venture out.

But there is the bigger story that London is leading the way in the descent of Britain into the status of a Third World country, capable of being paralysed by severe but fully predicted and entirely seasonal weather conditions, having a tiny but very visible class of the eye-poppingly super-rich within easy shooting distance of the most extreme poverty and violence, run by a colourful buffoon and his court of crooks, and so many other ways besides.

Contrary to what is usually assumed in London, Britain rarely follows where what is in many ways a foreign country leads. Culturally, that is remaining, and will remain, the case. It might very well become even more so. But economically, socially and politically we are to have, and we are already having, no such luck.