NOW the Chinese state government has dropped a metaphorical neutron bomb on the world’s economies causing untold fear, instability and misery, it might be presumed, although unlikely, that we will no longer be expected to continue funding China with our taxes through Dfid, and our contributions through the UN et al.

Ever since the cultural revolution of the 1960s and the beginning of a Brave New World order, our politicians have led the people of this country down a road that is a dead end.

The proposition is that, as a ‘rich’ country, we can buy everything we need from the rest of the world, and we needn’t bother teaching young people how to make anything or develop any practical skills.

So when the chips are down, our politicians prostrate themselves before the Chinese leaders begging them to build HS2 (and supply the steel for the rails), power stations and manufacture the paracetamol, masks, gowns and antiviral drugs we so desperately need.

This country invents astonishing and clever applications and then just gives them away with the government’s connivance.

For all their talk, politicians don’t support or have any faith in the younger generation or the future of this country.

As a result many people are under-employed, economically poor and totally demotivated. And yet there is so much that needs doing.

The general lack of industry in this country is an embarrassment and it’s heartbreaking to witness the utter hopeless helplessness of its people. Just look at the sad decaying state of our towns and cities.

Another example of this country’s fall from grace has been in the news lately. If you enter St Andrew’s churchyard and stand by the porch, you can hear a strange whirring noise.

That noise is William Cobbett spinning in his grave because his fellow countrymen and countrywomen are too bone idle to pick their own vegetables.

Cobbett would, however, have admired the old Eastenders for their thrift and the work ethic they displayed when they decamped to Kent during the harvest season and lived and worked in pretty basic conditions.

He would have admired too the Land Army girls, who were generally conscientious, hard working and more energetic than a great swathe of today’s working population.

So spineless have we become as a country that we have to fly in people from a poorer country, where their life chances are zero and who are willing to risk contracting coronavirus, to do OUR work that is essential, dignified and the least arduous it has ever been and pays reasonably well.

Too shaming. Perhaps we should all be clapping them, too.

* By Stephen Wingent, of Boundstone Road, Farnham