We’re travelling back to Dickensian times

IT appears to me that we are travelling backwards in time. We now seem to be approaching the height of Dickensian England.

The landed gentry (old and new) feel bold enough to once again make the rules, bend or ignore them, line their and their friends’ pockets with public money, and lavish their working lives with the finest luxuries again paid for by the public purse.

Having been beaten into submission by two World Wars of their making and the unity of the working classes who declared that enough was enough and no longer would we doff our caps to our ‘betters’, the class system survived.

The job was left unfinished in my view and now everything that the working class fought for is being rapidly eroded.

As in Victorian times the ruling elite will inhabit their Mayfair and stately homes. There will be a small but affluent middle class and the rest of us will get what we are given.

Health and housing will deteriorate, crime will rise and few will have stable employment. Poverty will lead to ghettos and those on high will once again point their crooked fingers and blame the poor for all society’s ills.

What would a modern-day

Dickens write about? Similar to back then I guess. Greed, inhumanity, class, gross inequality, snobbery with all aspects of government owned and controlled by themselves and therefore untouchable.

I hear the old chestnut that we need risk takers and entrepreneurs to create wealth and jobs; maybe to some degree but bankers and investors risk no more than humiliation and/or bankruptcy and rarely gamble with their own money.

The real risk takers are those that man the farms, factories, roads, ships, mines, etc, for poor wages and ill-health, or worse.

Another myth is that our ‘betters’ are morally superior. History and the last two years in particular suggest there is more kindness, honesty, generosity and tolerance amongst ordinary folk than the hypocritical posturing of the wealthy. Not to mention the £500 billion plus they so immorally hide in tax havens.

In my view, no one is worth a million a year, let alone a week. All work, however menial, is necessary in this tapestry called life.

Peter Lawrence Dursley, Gloucestershire