One Nation?

Particularly in high summer and in deep winter, the weather doesn't really vary all that much around this country. When it is hot, then it is hotter for longer in the South than in the North. But it is still hot in the North. When it snows, then it snows more in the North of Scotland than in the North of England, and more in the North of England than in the South. But it always does snow in the South, at the same time as everywhere else. Yet year on year, the whole thing is regarded as a freak occurrence, both reported by the media and treated by the authorities as if it were a once-in-a-lifetime national emergency. Of course, we just laugh up here. But should we?

The South, especially the South East, has a permanent belief that it is Britain's economic powerhouse, yet in fact almost nothing has been made there for decades. That those with complicated tax avoidance arrangements are able to go into London with ease in order to move money around while stealing great wads of it, is only because Dr Beeching's own caste was exempted from his vandalism and permitted to retain a lavish public transport network at enormous cost to the taxpaying rest of us.

And when their incompetence and criminality create a situation in which they might have to live on their gargantuan independent incomes alone (since these are not people who ever needed jobs, but people whose greed could not be sated by their eye-watering inheritances), or in which they might even become so poor that they may have to pay income tax, then what do they get? Everyone else gets Job Seeker's Allowance because of them. But there is none of that for the people to blame.

As when they want a war, the money that is not available for public services, or for the relief of poverty, or to rescue things of real economic and social value, is suddenly found from somewhere or other, indeed from anywhere at all. Does anyone go into the City on a daily basis these days, other than to the many lovely old churches or to the Smithfield meat market? If so, why? In order to maintain their lifestyle, they no longer have any need to pretend to work. So why bother?

The utter conviction that this is their absolute entitlement is essentially the same as the utter conviction that the South has a tropical climate, any departure from which almost never happens, is wholly unpredictable when it does, and is at least as bad as the Blitz or the Black Death ever was, if not worse. We laugh at them every year. But should we?