Chipping away

摘要

Seven decades ago Britain's welfare state arrived, with trumpet accompaniment. William Beveridge, whose 1942 report laid its foundations, pledged a war on the "giant evils" of squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease. The National Health Service that sprang up a few years later is still reflexively praised. But few people feel warmly about much of the remainder of the welfare edifice.