The Social Distance Between Us: How Remote Politics Wrecked Britain

I wanted to read this book in order to widen my knowledge and challenge my own middle class perceptions.

I’d already read this book and bought this one as a gift. Good quality hard back. Super prompt and free delivery

How the separation of people has alienated those whole rule Britain from those who live here.

Excellent book. I wish his editor knew the difference between a finite and a non-finite clause and had brought this to his attention though. “Never walked alongside those who frequently find themselves within reach of the long arm of the law” is not a complete sentence.Get a better editor dude.

The book is at its best as a piece of reportage; powerful stories of individuals told with empathy.It is poor though in its analysis of the problems and issues. These are simplistic, selective and self serving.

Here is an erudite argument on what has torn us apart and what we can do to bring us back together. Deep soul searching and a little sacrifice may yet make poverty a thing of the past. Darren puts forth the case for reforms needed to heal the social distance between us. My only criticism is that maybe rein in the academic language, plain speech makes your argument more accessible to everyone.

Darren McGarvey looks at the many reasons why those who make decisions that affect disadvantaged people don't understand their lives and their difficulties. Borrowing from the language of covid, he refers to this as the social distance that exists between us. Because of lockdown restrictions, most of his research took place in Scotland, but everything can be applied equally to post-industrial and other deprived communities in the rest of the UK.He describes how inequalities in education, housing, jobs - in fact just about everything - make it extremely difficult for those born into poverty to escape. Because the majority of people in local and national government, the criminal justice system, social services, and all the others who make decisions about the lives of poor people haven't experienced the same problems, their "solutions" often only make things worse. He also examines different political positions - literally left, right and centre - and how they have all failed the poorest and most vulnerable. He is fair in his assessment of how some actions have been well meaning but have not achieved their aims, while others may have been based on inflexible and outdated beliefs.At the end of the book, he makes a number of quite radical recommendations as to how we could close the distance between us. I learnt a lot from many of the stories that he told throughout the book,and agreed with much of what he said. However there are many questions that I would love to ask him, and things about which I'm sure we would disagree. I'd certainly recommend this book to anyone who truly wants a deeper understanding of how we got to the situation we're in now, and who wishes that we could make society in the UK more equal.

A very incisive set of analyses. The overall thesis that it is social distance that creates, or allows, injustice is brilliantly argued. The chapter on the far left is especially good. And props to the author for not mentioning The People's Front of Judea at this point. Seriously, this is a great book- McGarvey is even-handed, magnanimous and precise. His prose is lovely, too. Strongly recommended from me.