Britain's has fallen to 25th position on a list of best places in the world to live. Our poor climate, soaring unemployment and congested roads means we are now ranked behind countries such as the Czech Republic and Lithuania. It means even former Communist countries where unemployment is still rife are considered better places to live. Quality of life in the UK is lower than former communist states The new ranking puts Britain five places lower than a year ago, when we stood in 20th position, according to The Quality of Life Index, produced by International Living Magazine. The index has ranked countries in 10 categories – Cost of Living, Culture and Leisure, Economy, Environment, Freedom, Health, Infrastructure, Safety and Risk, and Climate. For the fifth year in a row France beat 200 countries in the annual three-decades-old International Living magazine Quality of Life Index. – UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: More bad news.

Free-Market Analysis: We've covered this ground before, but here we have more proof of just how its leadership has let Britain down. It seems odd to recall that only two centuries ago Britain was approaching the peak of its power. It ran an empire over half the world and its civil infrastructure was Roman-like in terms of its efficiency and organization. The industrial revolution had galvanized a British middle class and set Britain off on a course that Rome had never achieved.

But even way back then, the pieces of the British puzzle didn't quite add up. Britain's coffers began to engorge not from normal trade but from the drug trade – specifically opium – which was forced on unwilling subjects abroad, especially in China. The drug trade was not only a particularly shameful aspect of the fortune the British royal family and sundry nobility accumulated, there is substantial evidence that one way or another it continues today, and that British royalty and certain sectors of the American sociopolitical elite continue to benefit from the drug trade, all the while decrying its practice. There are plenty of apocryphal reports that a good deal of international banking is drug related and a great business is made in money laundering.

When one examines the character and business practices of the British elite, one comes away unsurprised as to do what this elite has done to its own people in the past century. Frightened of a civil uprising, aware of its own moral turpitude and depravity, the British power elite, along with its larger monied classes, has launched a long-term campaign to dumb down its citizenry and bring them under the control of the undemocratic European Union.

It has stripped them of education, stuck them with a unraveling health care scheme and used socialism as a way to destroy the economy while building up the power of the banking sector. The only part of British geography that has really gained from this past century of disrule is the square-mile "City" – and that ‘s not even British, apparently.

The British media has been culpable in this campaign, which is only now reaching fruition. What the elite did not count on was that much of its latter machinations would be carried out under the glare of the Internet. As knowledge of what exactly has happened to the British middle and lower classes (and much of the upper class as well) in the late 20th century and early 21st century becomes more common knowledge the fissures running through British society should widen and deepen. This sort of convulsion happened long ago as a result of the Gutenberg press and the Protestant Reformation. The upcoming changes might be no less profound.