Comment by JimDabell
Comment by JimDabell 14 hours ago
This is what I was going to say. Back then, a book like this would have been perceived as the UK making fun of itself. Now it’s perceived as being cruel to those less fortunate.
I think it’s worth putting into context that the economy was doing great in the era this book was first published and huge progress was being made with things like homelessness, inequality, and poverty. It felt like the country had turned a corner from the lows of the 80s.
Since then, we’ve had the global financial crisis, local councils being bankrupted, and a huge rise in homelessness and inequality. The rich have more and the poor have less.
If you published that book today, the contents might be the same, but the story it tells would be quite different.
Good point re: facts versus story.
One problem may be that the UK is very London-centric in a way that is markably different from France being Paris-centric.
Just my perception (and I know London much better than Paris) is that in France, if you are not in Paris you are seen as "living in the 'province'", but politicians still fight for farmers there etc. In contrast, in the UK, on the surface there is the appearance that yes, London is the capital and more important, but that people are trying to do initiatives like moving part of the BBC to Glasgow and Manchester - to decentralize a bit.
Yet the wealth concentrated in Greater London and its commutable satellites - as contrasted with the rest of the country - is many orders of magnitude bigger, also due to the financial industry there.
If you live in Knightsbridge and commute to your trader job in Canary Wharf you will never see how derelict Portsmouth or Blackpool really are (the only time I went to Portsmouth, I recall some people sitting in the street with nothing to do).