David Shrigley

Visual artist

If you take the weather out of the equation, Glasgow is a really good place to live. I lived there until last month and I’ve just moved to Devon. Glasgow was, and probably still is, a really good place to be a young artist because it’s cheap enough to live, so you can get things done. It felt as if Glasgow was a significant place in the art world in a way that other provincial cities in Britain aren’t.

Glasgow doesn’t have the problems of London – having to commute and spend all your money on rent. Culturally, it’s an interesting place and it has all those Victorian tenements which are really nice spaces to live in – big windows, big doors, albeit a bit chilly. I grew up in the Midlands which could be anywhere in the UK but Glasgow has a distinctive style about it in its residential architecture.

Sometimes you just don’t get a summer in Glasgow. Now we live in East Devon and they moan about the weather here but me and my wife laugh because it’s so much warmer – particularly in the summer.

We used to watch River Cottage on the telly and thought: “Wow, where’s that? Why don’t we go there?!” We paid off the mortgage on our flat in Glasgow and, as we don’t have any kids, we have a few more financial options. We found a place that’s rural, near the sea and has a dog-friendly beach for our dog. There are 200 people in our village, all of whom we know now.

We’re all getting a lot older as a population and that makes a huge difference to the economy of the country and to the way that social services and the NHS function. Ukip would have us believe it’s all down to immigrants but obviously it isn’t, because most of those people are of working age and are going to pay tax for a long time. I suffer from chronic anxiety about quite irrational things but the real thing that’s most likely to have an impact on my life in the near future is having to look after my parents and thinking about what care I’ll need to provide.

Having been a very political year for those of us in Scotland, you have cause to consider what politics is. That was the first time in my life where it really felt like it made a difference, at least since maybe 1997. It made me think about the nature of politics and politicians and how everybody is arguing a corner and suggesting policy, but they’d all be a lot better off if there were no political parties and they were all independents, because then they could at least be honest about things that they agree upon. But I think it’s very important still to vote. I don’t agree with someone like Russell Brand who advocates not voting – it’s pure nihilism, it’s not going to do any good.

My choice is to be optimistic about what lies ahead for Britain. It’s not really based on anything, but then again, why be pessimistic if you have the choice?
Interview by Corinne Jones

Deborah Meaden

Businesswoman and Dragons’ Den star

I live between Somerset and London, but call Somerset home – I love the open spaces and how I can disappear there. But the thing I love about it is also the thing I like least: it can get too lonely for me. I’m a social person – I love work and interacting with other people, which is why I’m glad to have London – I enjoy its vibrancy.

Something rather ugly boiling in Britain is this widening gap between the rich and poor and the accompanying dialogue – there’s a lot of rhetoric widening the gulf. Sometimes when I try to voice an opinion, the response is: “What would you know – you’re wealthy?” But I live in the world; I care about society. I think it’s a dangerous road because everybody ends up resenting everybody else – that’s not a great place for a country to be in.

The impact we’re having on the environment makes me shudder; I’m really worried about how we’re burdening our next generation. We’re spending their money, charging them to be educated and burning their fuels without any thought of how they’re going to deal with it all. We have to show the next generation more respect and help them to get out of the hole we’ve got them into.

I’ve met some very good politicians and it must be awful being in an environment where there’s a presumption that you’re dishonest and ripping people off. I find if you don’t trust somebody, they live up to that expectation. We should trust that they’re actually working on our side – and they should earn that trust.

The institutions we most trust are the ones we’re always having a pop at – we’re always complaining about the NHS, yet we maintain the belief that it will be there for us. In my experience, they are there for us. In the times I’ve been in an emergency, they’ve been there and they’ve been phenomenal.

What happens in Britain’s future is entirely up to us. Flexibility will be one of the most important things for individuals and countries to survive and in Britain we’re flexible: we’re great innovators. We have to get away from this almost colonial opinion that “we’re a big part of the world” – we’re really quite tiny. You aren’t respected for your size, you’re respected for what you say and do – we should use our voice well.
Igrain Roberts

Gemma Cairney

Radio 1 presenter

I’ve lived in east London for the last 10 years and I love that the city is such a big mishmash of addictive yet exhausting experiences. But sometimes I feel as though all these incredible things are dangled in your face like a distant carrot, but getting anywhere is insane: getting from east to west can take up to three hours.

The rise in property prices has added a twinge of gloom and desperation that doesn’t match the energy and vibrancy of what London should be.

I think the biggest issue in politics is that people feel despondent and let down, everything feels tough. We’re bombarded with stats and figures and doom-mongering from people on the telly who we can’t connect with, but the decisions made by the people in charge affect our day-to-day wellbeing. I think the language and presence of politicians could be mixed up a little bit. It would be really good to see people like me or the people I know reflected. I think that would make me naturally more inclined to trust politicians.

For me, the most difficult thing is to switch off. I love working on many projects at once, but sometimes it’s a bit of a stretch, particularly as I get up at 3am to do early breakfast on Radio 1. Sometimes you get to the point in the middle of a week and you feel fearful of your mind. I think work pressures are very much attached to health.

Years ago I worked on a documentary about the after-effects of the riots and was troubled by the breakdown of relationships between the police and many young people across the country. I went to a workshop in Tottenham held by someone who had been stopped and searched his whole life and wanted to teach some of the younger people how to act in this situation. When I told them that I’d never been stopped and searched everybody’s jaw dropped – it happens to them so regularly just because of the way they look or carry themselves, even though most of them are totally law-abiding, decent, brilliant people. That was quite upsetting to discover.
Kathryn Bromwich

Gillian Clarke

Writer, broadcaster, lecturer and translator

I have lived in rural Ceredigion, six miles from the sea, for 30 years. It is beautiful, a classless, deeply rooted community proud of its bilingual literary culture. Neighbours here watch out for one another in an old-fashioned way. We pay for the beauty of the landscape by being completely dependent on the car. I was born in Cardiff and we still have family there and a “pad”. I love its friendly, multiracial, talkative people. If I could no longer manage country life I would return to my home city.

Britain is more divided than I ever remember it. It feels less like a country, more like a fractured society. The risk is that racism, religious bigotry, selfishness, class and corporate greed will destroy for ever that old, easy, get-along-with-each-other friendliness, where people’s differences could be battled out on the rugby field or somewhere.

Climate change is the biggest worry in my life – nothing personal compares with it. When I was young it was fear of nuclear war that kept me awake.

No institution is to be trusted. Not the police, not universities. An institution is as good as the people who run it and the way it is governed. At my happy school, we saw no bullying because we had the best head teacher in the world, loving, watchful and organised. Politicians have reduced language to hollow mantra. My favourite institutions are the NHS and the BBC, but I trust only individuals – my postman, the kind policeman, the good nurse.

We have to hope that things will improve because so many good people are angry enough to make things change, and the time has surely come for the young to wake up, stand up, think, argue, wave a banner – and VOTE.

Adio Marchant, AKA Bipolar Sunshine

Musician

Manchester has a real sense of community. It’s always good to knock about there and be with the people you’ve been friends with a long time.

Manchester’s still run by the old guard and by that I mean the people who talk about what was good in the Haçienda days. We don’t live in those days any more – it’s 2015. That can’t be the only story we’re hearing – there are new things going on, new underground raves, but there needs to be more money going into making the arts and culture more prominent, so people can get involved more easily.

People are disillusioned with our leaders. There’s no connection – they’re all Eton choirboys. Homes for people, making sure the elderly are looked after and that we’re looking after anyone who has problems with their health should be at the top of the agenda, but they’re not. I just want people to break down back to the fundamentals. Looking after people should always be No 1, but it seems like that’s just a dream.

There is an issue between the police and young black males in the UK, as much as people would love to say that there isn’t. One time I was walking through Manchester city centre, it was as busy as it gets, and the police came running round the corner and must have thought I’d taken something from a shop because then I had my hands up on the wall and no idea what was going on. Then they just shrugged me off and acted like nothing had happened. I was really young, about 15, and when you have those moments, your trust has gone.

There is something great about Britain, but we need new ideas. The system doesn’t really work. It might be OK for people who are financially all right, but I think about the people on the streets, the average folk scraping money together, the single mother who’s been told that her benefits have been cut.
CJ

AL Kennedy

Writer and comedian

I live in London now. The air quality is very poor and I have allergies for the first time in my life. My specific neighbourhood has a ferocious community spirit and that’s great. Still, I would rather live in Glasgow, or Nairn.

Britain today is afflicted by a kind of perfect storm of problems. Our access to accurate and timely information is poor. This has allowed our political class to degrade almost completely. Pain, hardship and waste are more and more acceptable. Activities that don’t make a profit are presented as laughable indulgences. Caring for the sick, protecting children, ensuring we have breathable air and potable water, carrying out effective work for a fair charge – we are intended to find these things bizarre.

The state of things is worrying, but worry is a waste of my energy. It also allows those inadvertently and deliberately making my country miserable, punitive and ugly to dominate my interior state. I’d rather not give vandals and spivs power over my emotions, so I try to keep my mind clear.

I’m getting older and the savage environment we’ll create in the next decade or two will make that tough. The NHS has, in many areas, passed beyond the point where it can operate effectively. Like all enterprises that made our lives simpler, happier and cheaper, it has suffered from decades of attack. My NHS experiences have either been wonderful or deeply disappointing, depending on whether the individuals treating me were still fighting a broken system or had already burnt out.

I now have private health insurance – it disgusts me that such a thing should be necessary or that I should have sunk so low.

I hope that the energy and ingenuity of our newer and most harshly punished generations can break through and save us. In a way, we don’t deserve saving – we’ve been willing to forget every lesson history could have taught us about maintaining a functional, sustainable civil society. Then again, one of those forgotten lessons is that everyone is worth saving.

Shami Chakrabarti

Director of the British civil liberties advocacy organisation Liberty and chancellor of Oxford Brookes University

I love London because it is so diverse and busy and so many cities in one – you can meet people from all over the world. I think it’s a great advert for how people could live together all over the world. Where I live in Lambeth is a mixed area so you see lots of different aspects of life there and you don’t get too cocooned, which I think it’s very easy to do when you are a privileged professional.

The inequality of London is something that I like least, because you’ve got some of the wealthiest people in the world, but that extreme inequality between the City of London and some of the other people making their money there is something that’s quite difficult to stomach sometimes. I hate the fact that for the first time in my life I see the necessity for a food bank across the road from me in Lambeth.

One of the great things about my job is that it gets me up and down and left and right around the country. Manchester is a city I’ve got to know a bit recently. There’s a youthful optimism, a radicalism about it. And let’s be honest, there is a particular warmth in the north. Americans will talk to you about their perceptions of the British and that stiff-upper-lip stereotype, but that isn’t Britain or even England – it’s class-ridden, old-fashioned.

Can Britain wake up to the fact that this is a shrinking, interconnected planet and that the answer to the world’s challenges and opportunities is more interconnectedness, not less? The rise of xenophobia, parochialism, Little England – it comes from fear, but it also probably comes from a great country that never quite got over the end of empire.

I have a son who’s nearly 13, so when I’m worried about the future of Britain, I’m thinking about the kind of society that he’s going to inherit. What will it be like for kids coming out of college in 10 years’ time? Will there be work? And will there be work for people who don’t just want to make money in the City but want to teach, or study, or do caring professions, or do art? I worry about that. I’m not naive, I do worry about security too. I just see the answers as different to politicians who think clamping down on civil liberties is the way to make a safer society.

I have met decent politicians in all the main parties who are prepared to stand on principle and to take unpopular positions and defend the vulnerable. We do have some great institutions but we need to cherish and scrutinise them a bit more – we need the kinds of checks and balances that some members of those elites don’t like very much.
CJ

The Rev Richard Coles

Musician, journalist and Church of England parish priest

I live in Finedon – it’s either a big village or a small town, no one’s ever sure. It’s a very distinctive place with a very idiosyncratic character. It’s big enough for there to be a lot going on and small enough for everyone to know everybody, and it retains the virtues of an old-fashioned community – built around the church, cricket club, the school – that make it a very good place to be.

I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. There’s a place my partner David and I go every year in Scotland on the Kintyre peninsula, which is about as remote as you can get without leaving Earth’s orbit. I would like to spend more time there because it’s very quiet, it’s very beautiful, you’re surrounded by nature, and as you look out across Kilbrannan Sound you can see schools of porpoises go past. There are deer, too. Up there, you have no sense of there really being anything going on at all apart from a distant light chucking up from Glasgow. It’s beautiful.

Spiritual hunger is the single biggest issue affecting Britain today. I think we know very well the effect of being deprived of love, food, shelter. I think we sometimes forget that we are also spiritual creatures and if we are deprived of a spirituality then the important parts of us can start to wither.

The nature of my job is to spend a lot of time around people who are in health crises of one kind or another, and it has taught me to be highly conscious of the blessings of reasonable health. I’ve got a bicycle and sometimes cycle around the parish, a bit like Miss Marple. But I hate that when I get up in the morning about a second later my paunch follows.

We’ve got very hardworking constituency MPs and I wish people would see more of that. I can quite understand how your view of politics might be soured when you see the way political leaders behave, particularly when they’re having to interact with the media, but I’m very impressed on the whole by local politicians.

I love our great public sector institutions and hate seeing them buckle, which they’re doing a lot of.
CJ

Martin Parr

Documentary photographer, photojournalist and photobook collector

I live in Bristol; what a great city. Near to London, good connections, good countryside nearby, with a thriving arts and restaurant scene. Perhaps the only drawback is that the city knows it is good and therefore a bit smug.

Sustainability does worry me: we are all living beyond our means. Contrary to the propaganda put about, Observer readers are as guilty of this as anyone else.

I’m getting to the age (62) where things start to go wrong on the health front. So far reasonably well staved off, but sooner or later it will catch up with me. That’s one reason why I’m a workaholic; do it while you can, kind of thinking.

I am very proud of the NHS and it is comforting that all parties support this great British organisation. My biggest concern is the creeping privatisation and hope this can be curtailed after the election.

I have nothing inherently against politicians; I believe many have great aspirations and integrity, but once in office the inevitable reality takes over. Obama is a shining example of this, he was defeated more by circumstances than anything else and ended up being a disappointment.

It is always comforting to return to the UK. I couldn’t really live anywhere else. I do believe our ability to integrate is a real triumph and feel depressed by Ukip propaganda telling us otherwise. However some things are getting worrying, such as the rents getting so high that smaller shops are forced out of bigger cities, but I hope a sense of decency can still prevail.