What Jo Grimond wrote about London

Jo Grimond, the former Liberal Party leader who famously promised to lead the party towards the sound of gunfire, wrote the following back in 1979 – yet it echoes many contemporary themes:

Looking around London it is uglier, dirtier, more expensively and more incompetently run than it was ten years ago. Many of the people in the Underground railway look like refugees from a prison camp. The standard of life may be statistically rising but it is difficult to discern greater well-being in either the homes or faces of most people. A certain mulish worry seems a prevalent expression. Yet their avowed inability, in spite of the vast armoury of tools now at their disposal, to conduct affairs economically or competently does not prevent our governors from essaying constant interference in our lives when it suits them. Whilst sane and simple change particularly if it decreases the size of bureaucracy and the waste of resources is vetoed as administratively impossible unwanted upheavals in local government and the tax system are inflicted upon us.