Paranoid UK ‘must learn from Dickens’, says Archbishop of Canterbury

From London-

The Archbishop of Canterbury has launched an attack on the growing inequality and fear gripping a “paranoid Britain”.

Dr Rowan Williams, who steps down as head of the Anglican church in December, said the yawning gap between rich and poor had brought “hopelessness” for those at the bottom and “anxiety” for those higher up the ladder. He said the lack of social cohesion in 21st-century Britain had been heightened by a sense of “corporate paranoia” after terrorist attacks and many people had “put up the shutters”.

In an interview with BBC’s Newsnight programme being broadcast tonight, the country’s most senior religious leader criticised a culture where people are becoming “fist-clenching, anxious, not generous”.

He said: “The gulf between the top and the bottom of the economic ladder has grown and is growing, that’s not something we really tackled.”

He said Britain should take inspiration from the works of Charles Dickens.

The central message of Dickens, he said, was that people must let go of the anxiety that comes from the acquisition of wealth.

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http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/uk/paranoid-uk-must-learn-from-dickens-says-archbishop-of-canterbury-7800168.html