Are good people made by good surroundings, or the other way round?
How can Britain cut its spiralling benefits budget and the number of alienated youths spending taxpayer-generated monies on frivolous consumer goods, facing off against the police and making life unpleasant for those of us not involved in creating poverty porn documentaries? Traditional answers – such as colonising Africa or declaring war on, let’s say, Russia – are off the table. Drones, AI and our defence budget mean that there is no prospect of a Crimean War II, led by the kind of martial Britons who so frightened the Duke of Wellington on the Peninsular campaign. What then? Britain’s current problem is one that the heroes of Joad Raymond Wren’s scintillating book never had: a complete want of thinking outside the box.
