End Of An Era . . .

A farm worker's cottage awaits the demolition men. It's not so long ago that families were brought up in houses such as this: small, neat, eat-in-the-kitchen, family room, two bedrooms and the kids slept in the basement. Now, even the smallest family needs four bedrooms, an eat-in kitchen plus a formal dining room, lounge, TV room, four beds, three bathrooms and a fully fitted basement. And a massive mortgage that will suck up all their cash until the day they die.

Ah, the march of civilisation . . . Maggie Thatcher wasn't joking when she said that there'd be no revolution if the plebs all had their mortgage - the badge of capitalism, the millstone of affluence - to keep them awake at nights . . .