Public robbery and the NHS

I have noticed that only a minority of people who make marks in books seem to get beyond the first chapter, at least if their markings are anything to go by. And quite often one can tell by similar means how far the original reader got in an old book whose pages were uncut at the time of purchase. For example, in my copy of William Cobbett’s Twelve Sermons of 1828, the purchaser made it only as far as the second sermon, “The Sin of Drunkenness in Kings, Priests and People.” The pages of the next sermon, “The Fall of Judas; or God’s Vengeance against Bribery,” and all the subsequent ones, …