Saturday, February 14th, 2009
Paul Mason’s road that is. This is the blog that goes with the Newsnight report and is worth reading. It contrasts well with the previous blog about work. Paul traces George Orwell’s journey from Coventry, to Birmingham to Stoke to Wigan to look at the state of unemployment and the mood generally of the population. What he finds is resignation, rather than despair, and a catalogue of minimum wage jobs and casual work for a large slice of the population. It is grim reading as the economy bottoms out. Orwell claims:
To study unemployment and its effects you have got to go to the
industrial areas. In the South unemployment exists, but it is scattered and
queerly unobtrusive.
I wonder if his words still ring true?