The report also showed that the 7 percent of the population who go to private schools (oddly called public schools) not only still dominate British society, but their dominance is increasing. They produce 75 percent of the country's judges, 70 percent of finance directors, 45 percent of top civil servants and 32 percent of MPs. Commented The Guardian newspaper: "Behind its modern veneer, British society is determined by who you know, and who your parents are."
In Britain today, there are 70 applicants for every vacancy. In a country where connections matter, it is the kids who are not well connected who hurt must. Upper class parents, with their alma mater contacts, can more easily get jobs and internships for their children.
Needed: New work culture
Instead of playing sports the British need to get back to work. Their work culture, or rather the lack of it, has been parodied in the comic book "Asterix in Britain" in which Julius Caesar conquers the country by attacking only at tea-time and on weekends.
The comic's creators were not far off the mark. Ratan Tata, the head of India's Tata Group, has slammed Corporate Britain where the weekend starts after lunch on Friday. Tata acquired and turned round Britain's Corus Steel, Land Rover and Jaguar, and it's safe to assume that his British employees aren't allowed to go home until they have earned their keep. The rest of Britain needs to keep in step.
Scotland wants a divorce
Another looming threat is balkanisation. A poll held earlier this year says half of Britons believe the United Kingdom will cease to exist by 2032. Many feel it is not a question of if but when Scottish independence will happen. The 18 th century shotgun wedding has endured rather nicely and both nations have shared the spoils of colonisation. However, that partnership seems to have outlived its usefulness. If anything, the Scots now accuse Britain of ripping them off. "England takes all our North Sea oil," says a Scottish immigrant, who runs a coffee shop in Auckland, New Zealand. "The oil and gas belong to us and we must become independent to fully get the benefits of our natural resources."
The rising Scottish movement is giving a boost to English identity, and nationalists have started rallying under the St George cross. It doesn't take a sociologist to predict that the rise of the far right means trouble for the country's large immigrant population.
Some gains, yes
The London Games were not a total failure. The construction of the Olympic village transformed a few of the down market areas of London, leading to new shopping malls, high-rise apartments and extension of the underground metro to these parts.
However, even this little uptick in good news comes with a catch. This development has not changed the lives of the poor; rather the ghetto just got pushed further away from the glitz and glamour of the Games. The high-rise flats were beyond the budget of these unfortunate residents anyway, and it was the upper class that moved in and displaced them.
Endgame
Two days before Christmas 2009, Anglican priest Tim Jones, the vicar of London's St James Anglican Church, spoke thus to his congregation: "My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift. I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither. I would ask that they do not steal from small family businesses but from large national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices. I would ask them not to take any more than they need. I offer the advice with a heavy heart. Let my words not be misrepresented as a simplistic call for people to shoplift."
No, Jones is not a liberal or an anarchist by any means. He's a staunch pillar of Britain's establishment who once launched a tirade against yoga, calling it a Hindu contrivance and therefore, ungodly.
So what made this most English of subjects, a representative of the national church no less, offer an exception to the 8th Commandment? Simple: desperation. As Jones noted, "The life of the poor in modern Britain is a constant struggle....a constant effort to achieve the impossible. For many at the bottom of our social ladder, lawful, honest life can sometimes seem to be an apparent impossibility."
Britain 's descent into chaos serves as a warning to people in other Western countries: if their governments strip down the welfare state that sustained two generations of prosperity, a similar fate awaits them.
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