Graeme Whitfield
IHAVE recently returned from a little trip to France – hark at me! – during which I took a number of train and tram journeys.
And in news that will probably confuse anyone who has tried to use public transport pretty much anywhere in the UK in recent years, every single service arrived on time, there were seats available and the trains involved were clean (plus some were double deckers, which is always a little thrill).
My experience of getting round the Nice area is pretty limited, and I’m not going to fall into the trap of extrapolating a few short train journeys into saying that France is great and the UK is terrible. (The amount of dog poo on the streets of
Nice was a real minus, for what it’s worth).
But it’s not hard to wonder why public transport can seem so easy and efficient in the nearest country to us and such a basket case back home.
Indeed you only have to be vaguely awake these days to be tempted by the depressing thought that nothing much works any more in this country. Getting from A to B – if A and B are any more than six or seven yards apart – is only the half of it. Securing a GP appointment while you’re actually ill, being able to afford a house, getting a minor crime investigated: such things that were a given a generation ago now seem like a fever dream.
Of course, we are not powerless to do anything about this. At some point this year we will get to elect the next Government and we have a choice over who we think is best placed to address some of these problems.
But I can’t imagine too many people think that a change of Government (or giving this lot one more go) is going to solve all of these issues overnight.
Apart from anything else, successive crises in society have left the public finances in such a position that significant change is going to be hard for any of the main political parties to deliver at any great speed.
What is needed is some sort of societal commitment to real change, a sense of common purpose that would make us more productive at work so that we can fund better public services and improve lives.
But for that to happen, we’d have to agree on something and find a way overcome all the differences that exist between left and right, young and old – and any of the many other issues that divide us. It doesn’t seem likely.
There are societies have done this – in different times and in different parts of the world – but generally after a major crisis, when collective sacrifice was unavoidable. As long as our issues are just a series of annoyances, and even as they mount up one-by-one, it’s difficult to see much changing.
■ Graeme Whitfield is editor of The Journal.