The pub is shut, closed down, and in its doorway sleeps a man of indeterminate age and health. The building's closure does not look recent.

Further down this road, another pub sits closed, its demise appearing more recent.

Shops have shutters down not for the night, but forever. Two overweight women in their 50s huddle underneath a bus shelter, both smoking.

I continue west, reflecting on how this street used to look. Bustling - the shops were all open, with myriad trades represented, but with the city's fishing heritage proudly represented above all. It now looks heartbreakingly forlorn. It's 10pm - hardly daytime, but we're far from the witching hour, and the only places open are a pizza shop, a Chinese takeaway, a gaming centre and a giant Asda, senselessly spewing neon light into the sky.

I've been cycling around my home city, and I do not like what I see.

Let me explain: I live in a comfortable suburban part of a bitterly deprived northern city, ravaged by industrial decline before I was born. The student area is my residence, and it's not so bad around here. You could nearly call it prosperous. The desperate area I cycled through was a road famous throughout the city just three miles from where I now write, and its death spiral must surely be terminal. The last time I passed through I was accosted by prostitutes, twice - now it seems even they have given up.

To the north lie the estates. No snob am I, for I was born on a notoriously difficult estate at the outset of Thatcherism. Life was hard, and while reciting hardships of the past is a tiresome enterprise, I do indeed know what it's like when you need to choose between food and clothing. Things like that have a way of staying with you.

The estates have changed, while remaining just the same. Outwardly affluent, with council-funded double glazing, large gardens front and rear, but this prosperous veneer fools no-one except those who wish to be fooled. Unemployment is rife, a benefits-sponsored existence a normal way of life. I do not regret coming from such an environment, but I am immeasurably thankful it did not extend beyond the early years of my childhood. Perhaps I am a snob after all. But I also fancy myself a realist.

I didn't visit them tonight. I don't need to, nor did I want to. I just wanted to go home.

There's no real point to this ramble, other than to exclaim dismay at how things are. It really needn't be like this. So much human potential is being wasted - wasted because schools do not teach, parents do not parent, the unimaginable evil that is the welfare state viciously traps and imprisons whole generations at a time, and no-one seems able to do anything about it.

A chill wind is blowing - both as I cycle glumly home, and figuratively as I worry about the years of gloom that await England. The signs of decline are abundant, and growing. None of our politicians have any worthwhile suggestions about how to mend this. Too many think that throwing money at a problem solves it. It doesn't, but they keep right on doing it.

But no - we'll rant about bastard politicians another day. Tonight, I feel only a sense of unease and sadness for things I can barely identify and can't begin to explain. It's not a pleasant feeling.