The British countryside is painted either as a rustic idyll or a boring surrogate for the excitement of city life, depending on your taste. For me it was always the latter. I was born and brought up in Somerset, and from about as early as I can remember I wanted to get away.
I was of course informed by older friends and family members that, as age took its toll, I would soon want to move back. This was usually relayed to me in terms of having children: “you won’t want to bring children up in the city…”.
And overall, economic outcomes do tend to be better for those living in rural areas than for those living in cities. 15% of households in rural areas live in relative poverty, for example, compared to 22% in urban areas. And over three quarters (77%) of working-age people in rural areas are in employment, compared to 73 per cent in urban areas.
Yet one of the lessons from the Brexit referendum was the extent to which statistics can belie reality. The pre-referendum period now feels like ancient history, but Britain in the first half of 2016 was said to be on the ‘road to recovery’ after a long recession. News broadcasts were filled with good cheer about the ‘record number of people’ in work, and so on. But one did not have to look very far to see a very different reality.
Indeed, a striking spectacle in the aftermath of the referendum was the wave of liberal journalists voyaging to the north of England – in a way reminiscent of 1930s depression-era writing – discovering, in fact, that many of their fellow countrymen were leading unhappy and unfulfilling lives. If anyone had bothered to look, they would have seen this had been true all along.
Something similar might be said of Britain’s rural areas, where statistics such as those I have quoted – together with television property shows and an outdated view of ‘grim’ inner cities – help to fortify a vision of rural life as an unchanging nirvana of long walks, hearty meals and log fires in cosy pubs.
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