It is all so very simple; all that is required to turn a country from a shit-hole into something close to Utopia is to ensure that even the poorest, lowest paid workers have enough money to live decently and with dignity along with providing free or very low cost universal healthcare! Combine that with top quality, completely free, well funded education up to and including university level along with generous student grants for those in further education of all kinds so that those studying for a qualification don’t end up burdened with overwhelming student debt and can enjoy a decent lifestyle whilst they are studying and you have a formula for a happy peaceful and democratic society. The other thing to which governments need to apply their minds is ensuring that everyone has a decent and easily affordable place to live.

That is perfection UNLESS you have built a society that thrives on people enjoying seeing other people much worse off than themselves, that enjoys seeing the homeless and starving as it makes them feel smug that they are not ‘down there’, a society in which hearing of an insulin dependent diabetic dying because they couldn’t afford their indispensable medication prompts not shame that such a tragedy should happen in a rich society, but simply a completely heartless comment like ‘should have got a better paid job’