It’s a very British delusion that anything in life is genuinely free
The best things in life are free, they say. Perhaps. But reality dictates that we work to buy the crucial stuff that isn’t free, like wine, saucepans and loo roll. And to bankroll the things that might purport to be free but aren’t, like the NHS, education and lateral flow tests.
Right now some people are kicking up a fuss about the end of free Covid tests. How dare they cost money? In truth, they have always cost money – an eyewatering taxpayer-funded £2billion a month. With hindsight, we should have started paying for them sooner, at a nominal price, just to remind us that these things don’t grow on trees. Cheap maybe, but not free.
In fairness to Boris Johnson, the emphasis back in early 2020 was on saving lives rather than money. But it doesn’t take a Nostradamus to predict what happens when you pretend for years that a “public service” is free. Once reality hits and the question of cost returns, people will go into a tremendous huff.
Because here in Britain, the very word “freebie” has the pleasure centres in our brain lighting up like a pinball machine. The stand-up comedian Jack Whitehall riffs very amusingly that our beloved NHS is predicated on us donating blood in return for a free biscuit, and the words “free bar” prompt even the most respectable of citizens to behave like parched sailors on shore leave.
The American psychologist Professor Dan Ariely approaches the issue from the perspective of behavioural economics in his book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. “We often pay too much when we pay nothing,” he writes. “Most transactions have an upside and a downside, but when something is Free! we forget the downside because Free! gives us such an emotional charge that we perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is.”
This tendency to overload on free things just because they are there, be it pens, mugs, an umbrella stamped with a company logo or lateral flow tests, is something of a national flaw.
I am not immune. Sure, the days when motoring journalists were “gifted” sports cars in return for glowing reviews are long gone, but my cupboards are groaning with rubbish that detracts rather than enhances my life: 16 lanyards, a pond periscope, branded flip-flops, a banner with my face on it (don’t ask). I once tussled with a colleague over a gross, rubberised ball of belly fat sent in by a diet company to illustrate how much weight the average menopausal woman piles on at Christmas. I lost. It still rankles.
By contrast, I recall once attending a conference and observing a soignée French woman inspecting a plate of finger food. I gauchely reassured her that it was free. She tilted her head to one side, glanced down at her exquisitely toned upper arms and responded with withering graciousness. “Ah, but the price would be mine.”
Needless to say, she somehow resisted the curling coronation chicken sandwiches. I wolfed down my body weight. What can I say? They were free.
Thankfully, I am able, just about, to handle the cost to my wardrobe and my health. But a country addicted to taxpayer-funded freebies might have a more difficult time recovering. Soon we will have to accept that two years of record government borrowing and spending will come at a cost to our payslips. It was never free.