Tickling the English

It’s as much a constant as the fact that, while Britain is a country that gets a lot done, the national debate will always be dominated by that minority of the population who are Romantic, and perennially disappointed, rather than the majority, who are Pragmatic and therefore off actually doing stuff. And that smaller group has made up its mind on certain things and will not be shifted. The NHS is a disaster, Terminal Five doesn’t work, all MPs are corrupt, the Olympics will make the place a laughing stock. The BBC, the school system, public order, the multicultural experiment, country life. Everything is in terminal decline, and it doesn’t matter how much contradictory evidence you present. Even if a global survey places the country in the top ten places to live worldwide, you’re not having any of it.

Great crowd in Wolverhampton, but can’t keep a secret to save their lives. Not a very forgiving town either. We dug out a copy of the local paper, the Express and Star, and found, thrillingly, an editorial calling for witches not to be pardoned. This is particularly ironic in a town whose coal and iron industries caused so much local pollution that it is generally thought that J. R. R. Tolkien used it as the model for Mordor in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Orcs, yes; witches no, in the Black Country.