Easton on equality

The Britain etc. author said we love a scapegoat. “We confine the person who can take the blame for everything that’s wrong in the country…the problem is society.” He said the solution to creating a more understanding, accepting society is to “engage young people to hang out with people of different ages.

 

“British kids spend an inordinate amount of time with other teenagers – which is normal. But the old lady who is scared of the hoodies outside the post office is scared because she doesn’t know them. Thirty years ago she would have known at least one of them…we need to find different ways of getting generations together.”

 

He said the divide and the suspicion of older generations is caused mainly by the “SW1 news agenda…a story about knife crime has to fit into the prime minister’s lack of effort at solving the problem. It’s all political terrain. Crime is actually falling, and has been for several years, but no news desks would ever do a story on that; it doesn’t fit the political narrative.”

 

An audience member asked Easton if his book, which covers an A-Z of all things classically British (beginning with alcohol and ending with zzzz – sleep), would have been different – and more opinionated – had he not worked for the BBC. “I suppose the answer is yes,” Easton replied diplomatically. “But working for the BBC is a good discipline. You don’t go with any particular prejudice and just rant – you’re obliged to look at different angles and objectives, which is a good thing. People have said they don’t know what political objective my book has – and I think it’s more powerful for that.”

 

Easton went to a Jubilee street party at the weekend in London, where he said he met people who lived fifty yards away from him who he’d never even seen before. “That’s where the capital is made,” he said. “I’m as guilty as anyone. It’s particularly true of London, not so much village. But it’s a big challenge to resolve.”

 

The problem with communities nowadays is how they have evolved along with technology, he said; “isolating technologies” such as motorcars and TVs became the norm in the 1960s, but also meant that families spent more time locked in together or traveling outside their neighbourhood in the car. 

 

“The growth of the middle class is a concept that has been key in the development of modern Britain,” he said, citing a recent story that 71 per cent of Brits think they are middle class. To demonstrate his point, he said that Brits love a good lavatory; taking a show of hands for who in the audience said ‘toilet’ and who said ‘loo’. ‘Loo’ won out, with Easton joking that the audience at Hay was “unusually lavatorial” (and undoubtedly largely middle class).