If you have time to read only one article today I’d like to draw your attention to this one.
It was written by the ever sensible Stephen Glover and published in the Daily Mail last week.
Glover (who has a similarly nuanced view of smoking) writes:
That there is a very serious cost-of-living crisis coming our way I don't doubt at all. Indeed, I suggested in these pages yesterday that the situation is so dire that we need a functioning Prime Minister in No 10 as soon as possible, thinking of the best ways of mitigating the effects of soaring energy prices.
But it doesn't follow that this crisis is bound to tear the country apart. One gets the impression from listening to the BBC, and reading some newspapers, that somehow Britain is uniquely in trouble. As I shall argue, this is certainly not the case.
Another false assumption in the increasingly hysterical coverage is that we must all depend entirely on the Government for any amelioration of our supposedly pitiable condition. This is also untrue.
He adds:
We are so busy talking ourselves down that pieces of good news which contradict the dominant thesis are virtually ignored.
He’s right about that and much else but what also caught my eye was his reference to the three-day week because I lived through it, albeit as a teenager so it was perhaps more fun for me than my parents:
The phlegmatic British coped all right 50 years ago with three-day weeks, frequent blackouts and reading by candlelight.
Not ideal, I grant, but endurable. Have we become so infantilised by the State, and so dependent on it, that we can't improvise? I was brought up in a large crumbling rectory without central heating. You wear an extra jersey and don't linger in the hall.
Which of us couldn't save on electricity by religiously turning off lights and appliances? Just cutting the duration of a shower by a quarter will save pounds. Is that such a penance? This winter, unless it is literally freezing, we won't have the central heating on at night.
It was midwinter when the Conservative government introduced the three-day (working) week. In those days most of the UK’s electricity was supplied by coal-burning power stations so the aim was to conserve electricity following strikes by coal miners.
In the Eighties Mrs Thatcher recognised the threat and surreptitiously ordered large stocks of coal to be built up that allowed the country, and her government, to survive a year-long miners’ strike. Unfortunately many of the lessons of that period appear to have been forgotten by today’s politicians.
But a decade earlier, as Stephen Glover reminds us, blackouts and reading by candlelight were still common even during the three day week.
If I remember we would leave school earlier than usual in order to get home before dark which is when the power cuts usually took place. As a child it was actually quite fun, a mini adventure.
I certainly don’t remember anyone complaining. Everyone just got on with it even though, during a blackout that might last several hours, we couldn’t watch television or do anything really. (I’m not sure if reading by candlelight was a serious option.)
Today of course a power cut would see all internet connections go down so goodness knows how people would cope with the trauma.
I had to look it up but the three-day week lasted from December 31, 1973, to March 8, 1974. In the middle of it the Conservative Government called a General Election and lost office after naively asking the country ‘Who governs Britain?’.
The Conservatives won more votes but Labour won more seats and although the party didn’t have a working majority Harold Wilson was able to form a minority government and immediately gave the miners what they wanted - a 35 per cent pay increase.
A year later, after winning another General Election (in October 1974) with a majority (this time) of three seats, Labour gave the miners a further 35 per cent rise. Happy days!
But back to the present. Glover concedes the current outlook isn’t great but if you need a little bit of cheering up I nevertheless recommend you read his article in full.
See - I don't doubt we're facing a serious crisis. But do the BBC and its favourite prophet of doom Martin Lewis have to be so apocalyptic? (Daily Mail)