"The striking thing about reading the Guardian then and now is how much about the country has improved in the last 50 years, and not just the standard of Test cricket at the Oval. It is worth remembering that things we now think of as modern social ills existed in 1959 too – in Liverpool, the paper reported, "terror children" were hurling rocks at trains and drivers were refusing to work on some routes. Against that, much else has got better; Britain is more tolerant, better educated, healthier, more cultured and richer."Hard to argue with that except there are still pockets of extreme deprivation in one of the wealthiest countries on the planet. It's harder to get out of poverty now than at any time in the last thirty years and we're locking up more and more people with no real idea about how to deal with the underlaying problems. Here's to the next fifty years of the Guardian!
