A Changing World

I was reading with interest, as I often do, the writings on Entangled States. A blog on the interface of religion and quantum physics is always good by me. But on this occasion what took my eye was this article on the collapse of the suburbs in the US.

And I read it with interest, wondering how British society would change as the world turns, IT becomes more pervasive and petrol ("gasoline" to our non-UK readers ("essence" to our Francophone readers)) becomes more expensive.

We're already seeing the results of the combination of superstores, high duty and the smoking ban on our pubs, as they close in droves. In towns that's not so disastrous but in the villages it's a nightmare - with the post office gone, the pub closed and no shops left in ages, there's just the church. And that may only be open once a month. Or, as in Farndish, even the church is redundant.

What's going to happen when we can no longer afford to drive to the shops whenever we realise we need to? The petrol price is already far higher than in the States. The day will come when the people of Farndish will decide they can't afford to drive across the county border to Irchester for their convenience shopping and a quick pint - or to Wellingborough or Rushden for their weekly shop. And what will the successors of Messrs Waite, Rose, Stockwell and Cohen do then?

Send their delivery drivers out to respond to Internet orders, probably. But no longer zig-zagging across the country - the price of diesel will be too high. They'll have to give villages weekly dates. But who will live in those villages? Presumably most will be working on the farm - as the cost of fuel goes up and makes the use of manual labour and horses more competitive again. Those that work in London and the other cities will move into the big towns and cluster round the railway stations again. The price of property in the new suburbs - car-friendly, inaccessible to trains, tubes and trams - will crash, as the sources of accessible work dry up. the middle-class will head into the towns while the poor - those whose time is less valuable so can spend more time working - will relocate on the fringes.  As cars abandon the roads, the cycles will inherit the earth, picking through the pot-holes that the council won't be bothered to fix.

Maybe they'll start to re-open the old railways stations - at least on lines that still exist. Roade, Husborne Crawley - too late for Dunstable, of course. But at least that may offer some lifelines to villages that would otherwise die without transport.

Just a thought, of course. Who knows, some of the renewable energy pipe-dreams may come to fruition, giving us all infinite mobility at cheap prices. Maybe. But at the moment, I can't see it.