Bailing out the British way of life?

It seems Alistair Darling is keen to bail out bankers and corporate failures at the expense of hard working business people and the struggling entrepreneur. Even today he blinks like an owl at the thought he was in any way part of the sleazy money washing culture.

So whilst the banks get to board the gravy train leaving Number 11 Downing Street (or should that be the gravy bus?), others can go hang. These include sub-postmasters/mistresses (not PC I know!), village pubs, village schools, rural bus services....the list goes on.

In twenty years time our villages will just be commuting communes with no sense of neighbourhood. The BBC has a depressing report on the dwindling number of village pubs. Soon England will be a place where nobody talks to anybody other than to get something out of them. Paul Shenton, who used to run the Lord Nelson in Holton, Suffolk, puts it down to a cultural and economic shift. He says that villagers are now happy to stay at home watching DVDs and enjoying cheap drink from the supermarket. How sad!

Lord Nelson would have been proud to see so many pubs named after him. But did he fight the Battle of Trafalgar so that we could become a nation of grasping bonus chasers and cheap booze lounge lizards?

Surely not?