LONDON -- Is Britain in crisis? Many people think so, after a month in which large swathes of England have been inundated by filthy flood water. Television news showed comic snippets of boats in the streets rescuing old ladies and dogs, snaps of sturdy men and women counting their blessings as the flood water carried away their furniture.

But it's not the floods that have brought the word crisis to people's lips. It's not even the seasonal tales of the National Health Service that never has enough beds, enough nurses, to cope with the winter inundation of the elderly and infirm stricken by cold-weather illnesses. It's not even the local council that has financially collapsed leaving the garbage cans unemptied and overflowing and mounds of garbage in the streets, shoulder-high and being excavated by dogs and rats.

No, the sense of crisis is the collapse of transport, making any journey anywhere and anyhow except on foot, a feat of heroic endurance. Neither the underground system in London, the tube, nor the rail network are working properly or even half-way well enough; so people take to cars and taxis, and these cars and taxis block the roads and slow speeds to under 15 kph to stutter through the city. It feels, as you reach an underground platform (the escalator is broken), stare at a blank display board (broken) then cram yourself into a packed carriage only to find yourself stuck in a tunnel because a signal has broken, or a rail is unsafe, or there is flooding further up the line, that nothing is working. It is bewildering and frightening; a civilized society needs to be able to take for granted its freedom of movement, and British society can't. So it is not civilized.