THE NEW BRITS: SINGLE, STONED AND SELFISH

They are both single. He lives alone, feeding off takeaways between 12-hour
shifts at the office. She is divorced and juggles care for her daughter
with a demanding career. Both have taken drugs, both have jobs in financial
services and neither belongs to a trade union. Welcome to the new British
way of life.

A comprehensive analysis of the state of our society shows that family life
is declining in importance, the growth of communications makes geographical
distances less significant, people are eschewing gender and age stereotypes
- - and cats have overtaken dogs as the modern Briton's pet of choice.

Britain 1999, published by the Office for National Statistics, shows that
the size of the average household is now 2.4, down from 3.1 at the
beginning of the 1960s. The proportion of households made up of single
people has risen from 14 per cent to 27 per cent - with the fastest growth
in single male adult households. Divorce plays a large part: the UK leads
the European league table for marital breakdowns.

Women make up 45 per cent of the workforce, and now return to work more
quickly after having children. But they are still bumping against a glass
ceiling: women make up 5 per cent of company directors, 7 per cent of
university professors and 10 per cent of judges. Trade unions, once the
voice of male manufacturing workers, now attract 30 per cent of the
workforce. Both men and women are marrying later and living longer, with
life expectancy rising by two years for every post-war decade, the Office
for National Statistics found.

Martin Hayward, director of consumer consultancy at the Henley Centre and a
social and economic forecaster, says age and gender are becoming less
important in the way people live their lives. One sign of this is a move to
study later in life - 50 per cent of university students are now over 25.

Hayward says that social, economic and demographic changes have also
downgraded the family. 'In the 1960s, people were married in their early
twenties and had three kids, so a huge chunk of their life was family time.
'Today we are getting married in our late twenties, having one and a bit
kids - reducing the child-focused period - and then living 10 years longer
at the end. We are probably more selfish, with less of our life taken up by
other people.'

Communications technology has revolutionised the home: 35 per cent of
households own an answerphone or subscribe to a voicemail service; 29 per
cent own a computer, 15 per cent are on the Internet and 22 per cent own at
least one mobile phone.

We have become more financially cautious, putting more money into pensions
and life assurance policies - these now account for 36 per cent of our net
personal wealth, up from 24 per cent 10 years ago. But dreams of serious
riches still prompt 75 per cent of households to regularly buy tickets for
the National Lottery draw.

Spending on leisure pursuits has grown by more than 20 per cent this
decade. Eating out, visits to the cinema and fitness pursuits are on the
rise, although one in five men list snooker or pool as their physical
activity in the last month. The same proportion of women list yoga.

At home, television remains the favourite activity: 80 per cent of
teenagers have one in their room and 82 per cent of households own a video
recorder. Two-thirds of us have a CD player, up from 15 per cent at the end
of the 1980s.

But despite the rise of electronic entertainment, libraries remain strong,
with 60 per cent of adults carrying a library card and 500 million books
borrowed a year.

Other traditions are tumbling. One in 10 Britons now attends a religious
service on a weekly basis, while half never, or scarcely ever, do. Even the
bulldog is under threat: the nation's 7 million pet dogs are now
outnumbered by 8 million cats