What, as John Cleese might say, has the State ever done for me (apart from an education, saving my life and those of my kids)?

What did the Romans ever do for us? As that key educational text, Life Of Brian, tells us, sod all... apart from giving us the aqueduct, roads, medicine, irrigation, education, sanitation, public order, and - even more importantly - wine.

So what has the welfare state ever done for us? Zilch? As we shred ‘the public sector’ - a phrase no longer written without the word ‘bloated’ in front of it - maybe we are getting a little maudlin or melodramatic about this apparently necessary readjustment.



Just accept you have all been naughty, slothful, greedy children and the Tory Government (does anyone call it the Coalition any more?) is slashing away not because it wants to, though indeed it always has, but for our own good.

Blinkered vision: The attitude that the State is of little use to our lives is reminiscent of the People's Front of Judea in the Life Of Brian

The NHS, which, unlike many of his chums, Cameron has ­personal experience of, will be smelted down.

For all the pained smiles of these caring capitalists, the reality is that the very notion

of a more equitable society is a pipe dream and even the basic idea of the State as safety net is being taken away.



If you can, try not to be a victim of dom­estic violence, a drug addict, a child of the underclass, mentally ill, a carer or even old in the next few years. It is very inconvenient, this kind of thing. We are not made of money, you know.

Real opposition to this Government would be telling us what the alternatives are, instead of sniping and defending the immensely costly mistakes of Labour.



Des­pite Tony Benn’s call for resistance, too many seem strangely resigned to their fate.

Opposition to government: Des­pite Tony Benn¿s call for resistance, too many Labour politicians seem strangely resigned to their fate

So maybe the welfare state has been failing terribly and created cycles of dependency. Maybe State schools only teach crime and universities golf and jogging.



Maybe all ­hospitals are filthy and full of doctors who barely have a clue. Maybe all families are falling apart because of ‘benefits’.

And maybe Britain is broken and the way to mend it is to take away the most from those who have the very least.



But I am not convinced. Because what has the State ever done for me?



This, actually: It gave me an education, albeit one that I hated and rebelled against as soon as sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll kicked in (other­wise known as hormones).

When I left school at 16, having barely bothered with the previous two years, the headmistress said she had me lined up to go to Cambridge.



This was a mysterious statement as I had already been there, to a couple of gigs. Why else would you go? If you don’t grow up in a family where people go to university, you genuinely have no idea about these parallel universes.

So the State gave me the dole and I was able to live a debauched lifestyle till even I got bored and got a job, saved up and went round the world.

For a while, I worked with children in care and I began to appreciate that, however deprived we had been, I had at least been loved.



Damage limitation is the most you can achieve with those so lacking in the basics and the system was then, and is now, monstrously overstretched.



Wanting to do something about this, I decided I would become a psychoanalyst (I had seen Woody Allen films and lived in New York) but that seemed to require years and money.



So I got into college, somehow, unsure as to what I would study. A grant and part-time work meant I was OK.



Annie Hall: A healthy diet of Woody Allen films and a stint living in New York are a perfect education for psychoanalysis

Like most mature students on the course, I worked really hard and, when I found myself pregnant in the second year, had the baby and carried on with the third year, writing while she slept.

A PhD beckoned. In Tory dis­­course, I was the classic feckless single mother. Immoral enough even to get a council flat.



There may have been needles on the doorstep and a local war between white and Asian youths, but it was my flat and I was happy, teaching and ­writing.



When the council offered me £15,000 to leave, this was to me an enormous sum and I took it to use as a deposit on a house in a shared-ownership scheme run by a housing association.

Social mobility, you see, is the result of joined-up living as well as joined-up thinking.



When I had another child, I received a very small subsidy for her nursery care but it made a difference to how long I could work for.



The State, that big impersonal bogeyman, then intersected with my life, as it so often does, when I became ill with an ectopic pregnancy.



It was bad and I didn’t really know how bad until I went back to see the surgeon who had operated on me.



He said nonchalantly: ‘You were lucky. The last two I opened up in your state, I lost on the table. I wasn’t going to lose you.’



My eldest had an extremely serious bike accident, resulting in coma and neural damage.



My youngest had meningitis and was saved by one of the best teams of doctors in Eur­ope. Both received incredible 24-hour care.



I wish I could say that my mother, who was dying of cancer, received the same kind

of treatment. I can’t. It was awful. Resources are not spread evenly. I am not misty-eyed about it.



But apart from my louche teenage years and the student grants, I have paid taxes all my life (that’s a tiny fib as I am finding VAT harder than sub-­particle physics).



Naively, I would like them to go towards a more functional society instead of being used to bomb Iraqi babies or bail out bloated bankers.



Morally and politically, we need to decide as a society (Cam­eron approves of society) who we take care of and who we don’t.



How we do this depends not wholly but largely on the State (the bit Cameron doesn’t like).



You ­cannot kick away the ladder from underneath someone’s legs and then say as they fall: ‘It’s your own fault.’



So what did the State ever do for me? It gave me an education, a home, it saved my life, it saved my children’s lives. And now I am expected to accept that the chances I was given were part of some long-lost past? That ‘we’ are all in it together?

I am not romantic about the failings of over-centralised ­systems and public waste. But I am a fan of a place in which we take care of each other rather than merely take from each other.



That indeed is what a big society is and that is created organically, not ordained by millionaires in Parliament.

My own story is simply theory into practice. And it’s easy. Social mobility depends on access to education and housing, and a level of support for some - not all - of the time.



But such support is now being lacerated. Some will feel mere flesh wounds. But, for others, it means the death of hope.



The State gave me the very possibilities that I am now told are a luxury for those with far, far less than me. If this is not wrong, I don’t know what is.

