Building a new Briton - how will Britain look in 2020?
The piece looks back to 1988 to highlight the changes that 16 years bring.
In the early 80s there were various predictions about life at the turn of the century. Few have come to pass - space travel as a norm, increased leisure, and replacing food with chemical powder are three I remember the most.
In my view there has been three major changes in society and my life since 1988 (apart from the maturing and ageing process).
The most significant is technology. I am sitting here surrounded by all sorts of technology that i never dreamed off in 1988. Or did I? I am at the computer - yet I used a friend's home PC at University (88 or 89). I'm now using the internet. But my Stats course in 87/8 depended upon Janet (Joint Academic Network). I have a mobile phone - but in the 1987 Election Campaign, Nottingham South CLP had use of two mobile bricks phones. I have an answerphone, which I didn't then. I have caller-display and ring backs, but the telephone hasn't really changed that much.
I am listening to music on a CD player. I didn't have a CD player in 1988, but a few friends did. Ironically, I am listening to a CD recorded in 1953 of music premiered in 1900 to a play written in the 1880s and set in 1800. Even the packaging of this 2002 remastering is designed to evoke the 78s of the mid-20th century.
In the next room is a TV, video, DVD. In 1988 I owned none, but had access to a TV, and by 1989 to a video. DVD is just a refinement of video. The range of TV channels is greater than I would have expected in 1988, but not shockingly so.
The role of women has changed significantly, but quite subtly, and not enough. There are current media frenzies about binge drinking and casual promiscuous sex, but I have memories of such activities being the norm in 1988. (Not sex, not me).
Women are still under-represented in the workplace, but a high-flying successful woman is no longer automatically newsworthy. In my organisation, we have a majority of ministers as women, a broad equality of gender at Director level. (The problems lie at middle management and sub-Director senior manager level). Women are far more likely to be householders; being single and/or childless is no longer a matter of surprise. Even my mother never blinked an eyelid when my partner moved in with me. In the early 80s people were still hesitant about mixed-gender platonic house-sharing.
The role of ethnic minorities has changed dramatically, too, although not far enough, and attitudes amongst many people remain ante-diluvian. I actually don't know how many ethnic minority MPs there are. The best England football defence is black; we have black goalkeepers not so long after it was decreed that black men could only be midfielders or strikers. We have black newsreaders and reporters who go almost without comment, except when they happen to have enormous sex appeal. But we don't have any black editors of major newspapers or magazines to my knowledge. Last week, Newsroom South East fhad an Asian woman reporting from Highbury on the build up to Arsenal's European campaign. Okay, this was Arsenal, not Millwall or West Ham - but an Asian woman?
I suspect, and alluding to my previous post, the greatest social change we will see in 2020 will be an increasing cleavage between those who seek and use knowledge and diversity of interests and those who are increasingly brainwashed and controlled by the forces of capitallism. What that will mean is anybody's guess.
