What we seem to be thinking

Buried amongst the rest of the news is the latest report on British social attitudes. This is published every year by the National Centre for Social Research and so far there have been twenty eight of them. I won't pretend that I've read them all but I do dip into them whenever they are released. They make fascinating reading for anoraks like me and their availability is made so much easier, and immediate, now that they are free downloads. You can access the latest here What I find interesting about the data is that they reveal a marked shift to the right in public opinion. Here are just a few points.
Most of us, it reports, believe that the unemployed are deterred from looking for jobs by the too-generous benefits they get by remaining on the dole. Child poverty, apparently, is the fault of parental indolence and indifference. And global warming is a myth. The proportion of people willing to pay higher taxes to spend on health and education has fallen in nine years from 63% to 31%. And while most people agree that Britain needs more housing, 45% don't want any new houses built near them (and this percentage is higher – for example, 58% in outer London – in areas where the housing shortage is greatest).
While most of us believe that the gap between rich and poor is too wide, we don't want the government to try to do anything about it. In fact, the less the government does about anything the better. In particular, it shouldn't strive to make society fairer. We seem to be much more relaxed than we used to be about private health and education. Opposition to private health has fallen since the start of the millennium from 37% to 24%. The majority view appears to be that if the rich want to spend their money on these things, this is their business and nobody else's.
So how do we interpret these findings? Some commentators are citing them as being indicative of sturdy self-reliance, Others regard them as signs of increasing selfishness. Me? I accept the point about increasing selfishness (I could go on and rant about this being the inevitable consequence of capitalism - fear not, I won't!) but I also think that they are the natural feeling of individuals facing hard times and being placed in a position where they must temporarily forego altruism and take care of themselves.
Times are going to get harder and it's not unreasonable to assume that this shift in attitudes will continue. I'll confess that the prospect of increasing selfishness across the population fills me with dismay. It will provide fertile ground for the toxic policies of the Tories which will be to the disadvantage of the already disadvantaged. Whatever happened to 'compassionate conservatism'?