ABSTRACT
Whereas the Sunday Times’s list offers a snapshot of a segment of British society whose primary motivation and identity is fiscal, The Observer’s ‘Britain Uncovered’ supplement takes a ‘sociological’ approach to contemporary culture and covers a broader spectrum. It contains a survey of public attitudes (69 per cent are against same-sex marriage; the most popular European country is Spain; only 19 per cent of people would not take out private healthcare or educate their children privately, if they had plenty of money) and behaviour (37 per cent would keep a wallet they found with £200 in it). It also looks at people’s activities across the age range from deprived teenagers to pensioners; attitudes to work; drug culture; education and finally eccentricity. Two sections deal with the spiritual state of the nation – broadly speaking, the decline of institutional religion in favour of ‘house churches’ and the appeal to young Muslims of traditional Islam.
