1.
CHAPTER 15
THE ECONOMY AND EVERYDAY LIFE

2.
Earning money: working life
 There is a certain lack of enthusiasm for work in general.
 Leisure has always been the main outward sign of aristocracy. If you
have to work, then the less it looks like work the better.
 A major sign o f being middle class (as opposed to working class) has
been that you do non-manual work.
 The effect o f the ‘anti-work’ outlook among the working class has
been, traditionally, a relative lack of ambition or enthusiasm, in which
pay is more important than job satisfaction

3.
 These attitudes are slowly changing. For example, at least half of the
workforce now does non-manual work, and yet a majority describe
themselves as working class.
 It would therefore seem that the connection between being middle
class and doing non-manual work is growing weaker. Nevertheless,
remnants of the connection between class distinctions and types o f
work live on.
 Perhaps the traditional lack of enthusiasm for work is the reason why
the working day, in comparison to most European countries, starts
rather late (usually at 8 o’clock for manual workers and around 9
o’clock for non-manual workers).
 The British reputation for not working hard enough appears to be
false.
Prove?

4.
 There are three main ways in which people look for work in Britain.
What are they?
 The level of unemployment has gradually risen and most new job
opportunities are in the service section.
 This trend has led to a period of readjustment with regard to work a the
two sexes. The decline o f heavy industry has meant fewer jobs in
stereotypical ‘men’s work’, while the rise in service occupations has
meant an increase in vacancies for stereotypical ‘women's work’.
 Since the early 1990s the numbers of men and women in the workforce
have been more or less the same.
 There were still more unemployed men in Britain than unemployed
women.
Why?

5.
Work organizations
 The organization which represents employers in private industry is
called the Confederation o f British Industry (CBI). Most employers
belong to it and so it is quite influential in the advice which it gives to
trade unions and the government.
 The main organization for groups of employees is the Trades Union
Congress (TUC). This is a voluntary association of the country’s various
trade unions. There are more than a hundred of these, some big,
some small, representing employees in all kinds of work.
 Most British unions are connected with particular occupations.
 Unions have local branches, some of which are called ‘chapels’,
reflecting a historical link to Non-conformism.


6.
 Union membership has declined since 1979. Until then, the leader of
the TUC (its General Secretary) was one o f the most powerful people
in the country and was regularly consulted by the Prime Minister and
other important government figures. At that time, the members of
unions belonging to the TUC made up more than half o f all employed
people in the country.
 One other work organization needs special mention. This is the
National Farmers’ Union (NFU). It does not belong to the TUC, being
made up mostly of agricultural employers and independent farmers.
Considering the small number o f people involved in agriculture in
Britain (the smallest proportion in the whole of the
EU), it has a remarkably large influence.

7.
Public and private industry
 The ‘modernization’ of business and industry happened later in Britain
than it did in other western European countries. It was not until the
1960s that large corporations started to dominate and that a
‘management class5, trained at business school, arose.
 British industry performed poorly during the decades following the
Second World War. In contrast, British agriculture was very successful.
In this field o f activity, large scale organization (i.e. big farms) has
been more common in Britain than in other European countries for
quite a long time.
 As in all European countries, the economic system in Britain is a
mixture o f private and public enterprise.

8.
 From 1945 until 1980, the general trend was for the state to have
more and more control. Various industries became nationalize (owned
by the government), especially those concerned with the production
and distribution of energy. So too did the various form: of transport
and communication services.
 From 1980, the trend started going in the other direction. A major
part of the philosophy of the Conservative government o f the 1980s
was to let ‘market forces5 rule and to turn state-owned companies
into companies owned by individual members of the public instead
 The British economy has performed rather well in the last two
decades and it is possible that this great shift in structure has
contributed to this turnaround. However, it has also had negative effects.
 What are they?

9.
The distribution of wealth
 In the early 1970s, Britain had one of the most equitable distributions
of wealth in western Europe. By the early 1990s, it had one of the
least equitable. The rich had got richer but the poor had not.
 The picture has not changed much since then, except that perhaps
the difference between rich and poor has become starker.
 Class and wealth do not run parallel in Britain, so it is not a country
where people are especially keen to flaunt their wealth. Similarly,
people are not generally ashamed to be poor. Of course, they don’t
like being poor, but they do not feel obliged to hide the fact.
However, this same characteristic can sometimes lead to an
acceptance of relative poverty which is surprising for an ‘advanced’
country.

10.
 Although most people believe that the gap between rich and poor too
wide, only a few of them think that steps should be taken (for
example through the tax system) to narrow it.
 It seems that people like to grumble about the rich but don’t want to
do anything about it. And sometimes the lavish spending of the rich
even gets advertised as a social service.
 One reason for the increasing disparity of wealth in Britain is that
rates of income tax have changed. People in different situations are
allowed to earn varying amounts before tax is deducted. People
earning twice the average have about 25% of their gross incomes
deducted. Somebody earning less than the average pays very little
tax.

11.
Using money: finance and investment
 Wealth (and poverty) are relative concepts. Britain is still, along with
its neighbours in western Europe, one of the wealthiest places in the
world. The empire has gone, the great manufacturing industries have
gone, but London is still one of the centres of the financial world.
 When people want to invest a lot of money what matters to them is an
atmosphere of stability and a feeling of personal trust.
- As regards stability, many of the city’s financial institutions can point
to a long and uninterrupted history. Some of them have directors from
the same family which started them.
- As regards trust, the city has a reputation for habits of secrecy that
might be thought undesirable in other aspects of public life but which
in financial dealings become an advantage. In this context, ‘secrecy’ is
translated into ‘discretion’.

12.
 Although half of the British population has money invested in the city
indirectly, most people are unaware of what goes on in the world of high
finance. To most people money is just a matter of a cash in their pockets and
in their account with one of the high street banks.

13.
Spending money: shopping
 The British are not very adventurous shoppers. They like reliability and
buy brand-name goods wherever possible - preferably with the price
clearly marked, that’s why a very high proportion of the country’s
shops are branches of chain stores.
 Visitors from northern European countries are sometimes surprised
by the shabbiness o f shop-window displays, even in prosperous areas.
This is not necessarily a sign o f economic depression. It is just that
the British do not demand art in their shop windows.
 In general, the British have been rather slow to take on the idea that
shopping might actually be fun.

14.
 Supermarkets and hypermarkets in Britain are flourishing In these
places you can get everything in one place in as short as possible a
time. It may also explain the boom in online shopping – you don't have
to bother 'going shopping’ at all.
 All supermarkets now sell alcohol (which previously could only be
bough at a special shop called an off-licence) and many other items
traditionally found in chemists and newsagents. Many also (the big
ones are called hypermarkets) sell clothes, shoes, kitchen utensils and
electrical goods.
 The area in town where the local shops are concentrated is known as
the high street. British high streets have felt the effects of the move
towards out-of-town shopping. In the worst-affected towns, as many
as a quarter of the shops are vacant. But high streets have often
survived by adapting.

15.
 The survival of the high street has been helped by the fact that
department stores have been comparatively slow to move out of
town. Almost every large town or suburb has at least one of these.
They are usually not chain stores, each company running a maximum
of a few branches in the same region.
 There is one other popular shopping location in Britain. This is a shop
by itself in a residential area, normally referred to as ‘the corner
shop’. These often sell various kinds o f food, but they are not always
general grocers. Their main business is newspapers, magazines,
sweets and tobacco products.

16.
Shop opening hours
 The normal time for shops to open is 9 a.m. Large supermarkets stay
open all day until about 8 p.m. (and some stay open 24 hours). Most
small shops stay open all day and then close at 5.30 p.m. or a bit
later.
 There used to be a tradition of an ‘early closing day1, when the shops
shut at midday and did not open again, but this has now disappeared.
 In fact, shop opening hours have become more varied than they
used to be. Regulations have been relaxed. It is now much easier to
find shops open after six. In some areas, the local authorities are
encouraging high street shops to stay open very late on some evenings
as a way o f injecting new life into their ‘dead’ town centres.

17.
 But the most significant change in recent years has been in regard to
Sundays. By the early 1990s, many shops, including chain stores, were
opening on some Sundays, especially in the period before Christmas.
In doing this, they were taking a risk with the law. Sometimes they
were taken to court, sometimes they weren’t.
 The rules were so old and confused that nobody really knew what was
and what wasn’t legal. It was agreed that something had to be done.
What things?
Most shops now open on Sundays. But there are still a few restrictions.