Britain: Out of Order!

My career, over the last 27 or so years, has been in the field of disability healthcare and leisure provision. This sometimes involves taking people with severe physical difficulties out on activities and visits for the day. On Tuesday (w/c 19/08/2024), I booked a slot for a wheelchair user at the National Railway Museum in York. Despite the booking being for midday, upon arrival I was informed there were no spaces left in the car park due to construction works going on in the immediate environment. Much of that part of central York looks like a giant building site at the moment, and has done so for some considerable time. Consequently, we had to wait in a queue of cars for 40 minutes until a parking space became available. Obviously, this meant the visit could not last as long as originally anticipated. The following day, I took another wheelchair user to the Leeds Industrial Museum. Again, disappointment was the order of the day as the museum could only be accessed by a lift, which had been ‘OUT OF ORDER’ for over two weeks as they awaited the delivery of a part. By Friday, the same client who had been let down at the NRM, was booked on a nearby heritage steam railway. There, we were unable to drive to the car park as it had been commandeered by a charity organisation who were putting on a kids’ summer fayre. So, on three occasions in one week, the plans of my severely disabled clients had been cancelled or curtailed due to a lack or efficiency or organisational common sense. By Wednesday of the week just gone, I assisted another client to a disabled toilet at Blackpool Zoo. A malodorous whiff emanated from the disabled cubicle and permeated parts of the entrance hall. The culprit? A broken cistern in the toilet, meaning it hadn’t been flushed for some considerable time.

As I drove away from the Leeds Industrial Museum last week with an extremely disappointed individual, the words ‘out of order’ pinned to that lift door began to reverberate in my mind. For it seems these days as if the entire country is out of order. Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just me? From painted road markings that are so faded you wonder if they were originally put there by the Romans, to kerbsides where 2ft weeds protrude through cracks. From broken windows on shop fronts that take an age to be replaced, to restaurants where half the menu is unavailable due to the sickness leave of their principal delivery driver. The other day, a friend of mine travelling on the Trans Pennine Express (there’s a misnomer if ever I’ve seen one!) from Manchester to Leeds listened to an announcement from the train guard, who informed all passengers the train would be making a five-minute stop at Huddersfield. Why? Because half the onboard toilets were…..yes, that’s right…..out of order. Thus, if passengers wanted to relieve themselves, they could do so at the facilities in the railway station. You drive on Britain’s roads and you see that half the signage is damaged to such an extent, it is unreadable. If the average Joe were to add up all the times he comes across something in the UK of 2024 that doesn’t work properly, I’d bet he’d start to see the serious and worrying emergence of a country that is fundamentally incapable of running in anything resembling an orderly fashion.

Reasons? They’re plenty. The fact that, unlike most other advanced economies, Britain’s workforce has stubbornly failed to return to pre-pandemic levels is one. For example, had the proportion of the UK workforce kept pace with that of the United States, there would be an additional 700,000 in the jobs market by this year. Instead, we have millions of people who happily resign themselves to being economically inactive, relying on an army of immigrants to do their jobs for them. There’s no good excuse as to why they can’t work. Even the old chestnut of ‘mental health issues’ isn’t a prohibition except in the most extreme cases. The fact is we live in a society where a massive proportion of people have given up on a principled work ethic; have given up on community pride; have given up on self-responsibility; have given up on the desire to complete tasks quickly and efficiently; and have immersed themselves in a proverbial vat of gross entitlement. Add to that a British state whose institutions and processes were based on the needs of decades ago when they were first introduced. Our NHS, our taxation system, our public services, our law enforcement, our voting system, our government…the list is enormous. Unfortunately, unless you evolve systems over years to keep up with changing circumstances, you end up with bureaucratic monsters that don’t really work. Unfortunately, we are so dependent on these systems, we can’t switch them off to start again and we will keep flirting with the problem until is is too broke to fix. Obviously there are parts of the UK where this malaise is much more pronounced than the general picture. Scotland, that consumer of public spending largesse courtesy of mostly southern English taxpayers, has a population where 41% of adults pay no tax whatsoever (it averages 36% in the remainder of the Kingdom) (https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-income-tax-distributional-analysis-2022-2023/)! An abomination that is simply unsustainable.

What a scenario we are creating: A state weighed down by the might of the bureaucratic, irreformable bubble; and a population where millions have given up caring for the importance of the job they do, and/or the service they provide to others. This toxic mixture has led to situations where millions of customers across the land are encumbered, frustrated or downright inconvenienced by a daily picture of failure, broken promises and delays. Meanwhile, in parts of the developing world where diligence is still paramount, things are very different. I was reading about two roads in India constructed within a 24-hour period (https://dst.news/news/india-now-holds-world-record-for-fastest-road-construction-nitin-gadkari/) By contrast, the A629 Calder and Hebble scheme here in Halifax (https://www.calderdalenextchapter.co.uk/projects/a629-calder-and-hebble-junction) is a year behind schedule, was supposed to be finished by this summer (there is less than 1 day left to make that deadline come true), and is still some distance from completion. I pass that construction site every morning and evening, have yet to see more than ten men working at any one time, and am amazed at how a group of human beings can move at such a slow pace! I sure giant tortoises could move with more haste.

Britain’s industrial beginnings and subsequent growth have their genesis in something called ‘the Protestant work ethic’. These days, its stagnation is significantly rooted in a ‘me first, couldn’t give a toss’ ethic. Until attitudes fundamentally change, we’re condemned to move ever further down the world rankings.

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