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Every unhappy state is unhappy in its own way. Former empires tend to collapse to an unequal core: Russia after the Soviet Union, Turkey after the Ottoman Empire, the UK after the British Empire, and the United States today - all are failing in different ways.

— Shattered Nation by Danny Dorling (57%)

University graduates tend to be socially progressive, but economically regressive. This is not just the case in Britain, but to a lesser extent across Europe and very much more strongly in the United States. The author of the British study that demonstrated this also quoted a European study from 2022 that concluded: 'university education fosters norms of inclusion, while eroding norms of solidarity.

— Shattered Nation by Danny Dorling (46%)

Many arguments can be made as to why the most privileged people in the UK are not a terribly well-educated elite, but perhaps the most compelling evidence comes simply from looking at what it is they have created - the shattered state of the UK. In countries where children are educated together, rather than segregated by school and parents' income, they achieve so much more as adults. A divided education system is one of the best ways to ensure that social divisions are perpetuated, by creating fear, distrust and myths about others.

— Shattered Nation by Danny Dorling (45%)

For Scots, Scotland's university education is free at the point of use. But the direction of travel in the rest of Britain has been largely one way: towards an education system that exploits people while teaching them less that is of practical use or that encourages imagination. Education becomes a programme to train pupils to pass exams. Of all the countries internationally surveyed by the OECD, England's education system encourages the flourishing of students' imagination the least.

— Shattered Nation by Danny Dorling (41%)

The relentless cry of the boss, and of the boss's political party, is that we are not working hard enough - even when it yet again becomes apparent that there is not enough money from work to go round, given the growing share that goes on dividends rather than on workers' salaries.

— Shattered Nation by Danny Dorling (37%)

Most other economic activities have grown, but largely in areas that exploit other people more, and they have grown least where we make things for each other. The industry that has grown the most in terms of employment - up by 209 per cent in the past twenty years, with a threefold rise in its share of the UK economy - is head offices and management consultancy.

— Shattered Nation by Danny Dorling (35%)

When looking at the statistics on what our economy actually does, and how most money is generated, the UK begins to look like a state that is consuming itself. What is more, this trend shows no sign of abating.

— Shattered Nation by Danny Dorling (33%)

The balance between public and private has become so skewed in Britain that we now have the lowest spending on public services of any large country in Europe, and lower per capita than almost all the smaller countries on the continent too. What is being argued here is that the British should become less American: less like the US, the only other rich Western nation to spend so little on the common good and to maintain the ridiculous pretence of competition being beneficial at all levels. The US also has the most roads built with no pavements for pedestrians, or lanes for cyclists, in the world.

— Shattered Nation by Danny Dorling (27%)

Economics in the UK and US has become an academic discipline that both attracts and retains people who tend to be less compassionate than most. It also makes them more callous the longer they stay in it, and it tends to eject those who are not part of this in-group. In the UK, economics is also, incidentally, the social science that most attracts young people from the best-off families. Of all those undergraduates now studying economics at UK universities, nine grew up in the best-off fifth of households for every one student who grew up in the least-advantaged fifth.

— Shattered Nation by Danny Dorling (20%)

The UK became the most unequal country in Western Europe in 2007, after ten years of Labour government.® After nine years of Conservative government, it then became the second most unequal country in the whole of Europe, overtaking Latvia in 2019. When there are such pressing problems at home, it no longer makes sense for charities based in the UK to travel all the way to Eastern Europe to 'do good'. Most people in the UK still imagine that people are, on average, worse off in other parts of Europe, or at least believe that they are better off in an unequal country like the UK than they would be elsewhere. There is a tendency to think this must be the case. But did you ever wonder why today there are ever more pawn shops, charity shops and gambling shops opening up on the UK's high streets?

— Shattered Nation by Danny Dorling (15% - 16%)

I can show students hundreds of statistics from all over the world that suggest we are not travelling towards hell in a handcart. But I can find hardly any social statistics about the UK that are particularly positive, and I spend much more time looking for them than most people do.

— Shattered Nation by Danny Dorling (2%)