rule britannia
When you’re next filling in a form and you come to the address bit just pause for a second and reflect on which country do you actually live in. Is it going to be England, the United Kingdom, Britain or Great Britain, or even God forbid, Europe? To still be using ‘Great’ before ‘Britain’ can at times appear an outdated anachronism in the extreme. In the days of our gloriously aggressive all-conquering empire past it was undoubtedly deserved and would strike fear into the hearts of the few remaining countries we hadn’t yet invaded. But in this day and age is it deserved or warranted?
Hell yeah! Contrary to how it may feel at certain times, Britain remains a great economic power. The UK can still boast the world’s sixth largest economy, ahead of, perhaps surprisingly, Brazil, Russia and India. Moreover, our financial system is officially ranked as being only second to the United States; though obviously diminished by recent troubles we still possess a formidable financial centre. The issue facing this position is where do we go from here? There is also no denying that, although we remain in such a lofty privileged position, we’re irrefutably on the wane and several emerging economies are obviously in the ascendency and are biting at our heels.
Still, let us acknowledge at least one area in which Great Britain remains an undisputed world leader. We are now officially top of the European rankings for cocaine use. Spain once threatened our supremacy, but no more: such is our per-capita appetite that we now even outstrip that of the US. One in ten of us have tried it and each year, almost a million give it a toot.
Twenty or thirty years ago most of us understood cocaine as a distant, mythical substance – either prohibitively expensive or regulated by your dentist for extreme cases of root canal work. Then something happened. In 1990, the average price of a gram of cocaine was £90; five years closer it could be had for £60; in 2006 Gloucester – Gloucester ferchristsakes! – registered the lowest street price of £30. The shift from Kensington’s top-table to Basildon’s bike shed is complete.
By all accounts cocaine is not a drug to plug you into the collective consciousness but apparently leaves you ship-wrecked on your own island caring little about anyone else or anything else outside scoring more of the evil stuff and laying your hands on enough booze to satisfy your increased capacity to consume it. Cocaine use stops humour, camaraderie, enjoyment and fun, dead in its tracks. Its popularity today speaks volumes, embodying the spirit of our times while also feeding it. As one modern-day philosopher, Robbie Williams, so eloquently put it “cocaine is God’s way of telling you you’re earning too much money.”
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