LONDON -- You could take Britain's decaying public services -- despite four years of frantic New Labour ministrations -- as an advanced sign of the new world disorder, a sign of what will befall the homelands of global capitalism; or as a sign of what happens when a nation state signally fails to keep up the necessary relentless pace of repair and renewal demanded by modernity since the middle of the last century.
That Britain's public services are in a sorry state is now disputed by no one. Last week Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown in his "autumn statement" startled everyone by saying the health service was terrible and billions more would have to be spent on it. Why should anyone have been startled?
We who live here know that it's terrible. We simply assume that going for medical treatment means sitting for 1 1/2 hours past your appointment time in a dingy room waiting to be summoned for a cursory test with a doctor who will scribble a note entitling you to go and join another queue to wait for months to see someone more important.