Inflation in Britain is currently going at 4.4 per cent and although that might be chicken-feed by Pakistani standards, here the pinch is being felt and in the words of Queen Victoria, 'we are not amused'. Food and fuel prices have rocketed, and weakening consumer spending as well as rising house repossessions as people fail to keep up with their mortgages, have all combined to raise fears that the economy may be on the brink of its first recession since the early 1990s. One uses the phrase 'on the brink' after giving the economy the benefit of a grave doubt.
The chief culprit for the inflation spike was soaring food prices, up a record 13.7 per cent as the cost of meat has surged. Bread and cereal prices also shot up, and higher petrol prices played their part as the figures were collected before much of the sharp slide of more than $30 a barrel in crude oil prices from their peak above $147 in mid-July. Clothing and household goods prices also did not fall as much as they usually do in the summer sales, probably because retailers had resorted to early discounting in June. Worse still, the inflation rate is expected to shoot higher in the next two months due to planned hikes of more than 30 per cent in household energy costs.
Perhaps in keeping with the general doom and gloom scenario, a recent study has shown that the quality of life in UK is among the lowest in Europe - higher only than Ireland - even though average family earnings in the UK are the highest.
Although British families earn more than £10,000 which is higher than the European average, they pay the highest prices for diesel, 18 per cent above the average, and the second highest price for unleaded petrol, 6 per cent more than average. They also pay 49 per cent more for gas and 54 per cent more for electricity - the third highest prices in Europe.
UK spending on healthcare and education is below the European average while life expectancy is the third lowest at 78.9 years, compared to 80.9 in France or 80.7 in Sweden. Workers have the third highest retirement age and suffer the shortest holiday entitlement - a week below average, according to the study.
The weather adds to the grim tally, with Britain receiving 80 per cent less sunshine than Spain and 17 per cent less than the European average. The atrocious damp and chilly weather experienced thus far in the month of August has left many wondering where exactly is this global warming thing everyone is talking about. A little bit of it in England would not go entirely amiss!
Spain offers the best quality of life in Europe, despite families earning an annual net income of just £16,789 - £8,500 below the average and less than half that of the UK. The country enjoys low taxation, cheaper essential goods, higher than average life expectancy and a generous holiday allowance. France comes second, boasting the second highest spending on healthcare and the highest holiday allowance at 40 days.
With a Spanish daughter-in-law, one can see why the quality of life in Spain is higher in spite of a much lower average family eamings. Financial reasons apart, perhaps the near total demise of the family structure in Britain is another cause of this, while Spain still maintains the old values to a great extent. Relaxation and time out are still family oriented concepts in Spain while in England they are largely club (read night club) or individual interest oriented things. It is still par for the course in Spain to have a distant relative, like a second cousin, land up from the village and spend the better part of six months with you while he is setting himself up. In England, a relative trying any such thing would probably be evicted with police help if necessary.
Every day one is confronted with growing evidence of this gradual breaking up of the family as the unit of society without anything really taking its place. The latest piece of information to hit the headlines confirming this unfortunate trend has been the shocking revelation that the number of children (under 16) taken to hospital because of drug abuse has doubled over the past decade while hospital admissions to treat drug abuse or drug-related mental problems among under-16s has gone up by 43 per cent. The number of deaths from drug abuse has gone up by more than a third during this period while more than six per cent of young people between the ages of 16 and 24 - which works out to about 373,000 youngsters - have taken a drug during the past year. Just under a quarter of all people in that age group, about 1.6 million in all, admit taking illegal drugs at some point in time during the last year. Among fifteen year-old boys, as many as 42 per cent have, by their own admission, taken illegal drugs.
It is as if the entire value system has been turned on its head, with drugs and violence being the “in things” which “squares” shy away from and which you have to take part in if you at all aspire to have the “cool” image. One incident that happened in front of me as I travelled on a commuter train to work one morning perhaps epitomises this. A young man and woman, both perhaps in their late teens, were sitting in the seats opposite to me. The young man was scruffily dressed - always a huge plus point - but that alone was not helping him in his very visible efforts to chat up the young girl. After about a quarter of an hour's efforts to impress the girl which had met with practically no success, he happened to mention that he was on a day's remand from prison. Bingo! It was as if he had hit on the magic formula, for the girl was all eyes and ears from that point onwards while I quickly made my way to another compartment. Ten minutes later, I saw them got off the train together - from a safe distance!
On a somewhat lighter note, a government survey has highlighted the fact that in some areas of Britain, more than 70 per cent of pupils arriving at the school gates do not speak English as their mother tongue. Some do not speak English at all. The highest number of such pupils are Punjabi speakers (102,570 or 1.6 per cent) followed by Urdu (85,250 or 1.3 per cent) and Bengali (70,320 or 1.1 per cent) speakers. The list includes speakers of such exotic languages as Tamil, Somali, Yoruba and Chinese. The surprising part is that as primary immigration from the subcontinent has virtually gone down to a trickle, some of these kids are not children of parents who have just arrived. Quite a few of the children are themselves second generation immigrants but the home environment is such that they speak little or no English. Indeed, if you are a Punjabi speaker and live and work in or around Southall, a suburb of western London populated mainly by Punjabis, it is quite possible for you to get by for years on end without having to speak a word of English!
And finally, since Britain must follow the United States in every way to show just how close it is to the world's one superpower, Brits here are following their cousins across the pond in the obesity stakes. In fact, a government adviser has said that obesity poses as grave a threat to Britain as terrorism for if present trends continue, half the population will be obese within 25 years causing the life expectancy to fall for the first time in two centuries. Currently, about 25 per cent of people in England are classified as obese - so overweight that their health is threatened - while the figure in 1980 was only eight per cent. Overall obesity is said to reduce life span by nine years.n
