Peter Hitchens, How long can we afford to plunder the world for our doctors?
I think we are currently living in the afterglow of past economic success. I cannot see any real reason why this country is rich, why the pound sterling is such a valuable currency. What do we make that the world wants to buy? What are we good at, that we can sell abroad or even at home? Our boom is based, it seems, on property bought on loans, and then used to raise more loans, and on mass immigration keeping down the wages of the service sector.
Economists keep telling me that all is well, that we provide 'services' to the world, that manufacturing industry is not important, that poor countries can produce steel and other strategic goods. But what are these 'services' and who is providing them? Can they really sustain, in affluence, a population this big? Brought up as I was in the days when we all thought everything British was the best in the world, I've been cruelly disillusioned by travelling abroad and finding that this simply isn't so. In many economic areas, British goods don't even exist any more.
Meanwhile our dreadful state schools leave millions ill-equipped to face the astute, literate, disciplined hardworking competition of Eastern Europeans and others, and our welfare system discourages work. I do not think this can go on much longer. But is the 'Centre Ground' worried? I don't get any sense that it is.
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