Crossing the line

The country has, indeed, "crossed the line", as Barbara Ellen says, when homeless nurses are "among the people who are placed in emergency accommodation", but sadly, that line has been crossed all too frequently in recent years (If our nurses are homeless, we`ve crossed the line, 17.12.17). Evidence for the "troubling societal shift" has been in existence for a while, with libraries and sure start centres closing whilst HMRC was cutting thousands of jobs, and with austerity policies targeting the least fortunate while the rich received tax cuts.

     More immediately, we have seen a Cabinet minister deliberately misleading his fellow parliamentarians over Brexit preparations, and receiving only the mildest of rebukes, and heard of a family having a "lucky" week when invited to a funeral with food provided. In education, not only has it been been admitted that social mobility is clearly not a priority, but also that so-called "top" public schools were able to tell their pupils in the summer their Pre-University examination questions, because they had set them. The head of Eton even owned up to the Commons` select committee that seven of his teachers are involved in writing the questions for their A-level alternatives, something which the education "watchdog", Ofqual, has since deemed perfectly okay.

  The "lines" are being crossed almost every day, and even more worrying is that there may be no change until 2021. Has the UK in modern times ever been in greater need of a general election?