I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

Twenty years ago, I think there was still a sense that we were collectively laughing with each other about the dullness of small towns. We all had the same shops - Woolworths, Dixons, Our Price, BHS. We all had a leisure centre that looked like everyone else's leisure centre. Some towns were better off than others, some towns had parts that you were better off avoiding after dark, but the majority of towns belonged to the same broad spectrum of bland mediocrity.

Today, I think it's clear who would be being laughed at by whom. The fates of places have so radically diverged that we no longer have a sense of collective identity. All of the places listed in Crap Towns are now unrecognisable, for better or worse. Those familiar shops are now gone; in some places they have been replaced by artisan bakeries and pop-up boutiques, while in others they have been replaced by charity shops or nothing at all. Half the leisure centres have shut and we all know which half.

The upper middle class might have become more humourless and puritanical, but I think that's a subconscious self-defence mechanism, a manifestation of noblesse oblige without real obligation. The working class are too angry to laugh and certainly aren't willing to be laughed at. We all know that we're teetering on the brink of a populist wave, but no-one in a position of power seems willing or able to do anything about it.

This is what I was going to say. Back then, a book like this would have been perceived as the UK making fun of itself. Now it’s perceived as being cruel to those less fortunate.

I think it’s worth putting into context that the economy was doing great in the era this book was first published and huge progress was being made with things like homelessness, inequality, and poverty. It felt like the country had turned a corner from the lows of the 80s.

Since then, we’ve had the global financial crisis, local councils being bankrupted, and a huge rise in homelessness and inequality. The rich have more and the poor have less.

If you published that book today, the contents might be the same, but the story it tells would be quite different.

The Gini coefficient of the UK is about the same now as it was then:

https://equalitytrust.org.uk/how-has-inequality-changed/

What has actually changed? A whole bunch of other economic malaise, but also perceptions, amplified to your personal taste by social media.

Gini coefficient usually only measures income inequality. Wealth inequality is hard to measure for various reasons but…

https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk/

“for the UK as a whole, the WID found that the top 0.1% had share of total wealth double between 1984 and 2013, reaching 9%.”

“If the wealth of the super rich continues to grow at the rate it has been, by 2035, the wealth of the richest 200 families will be larger than the whole UK GDP.”

Etc.