Great Britain likes to sell itself an unrealistic dream of universal opportunity, though the reality is strictly local. Coined the ‘postcode lottery’, it ensures a child’s fate is decided via a map rather than a mind, entrenching a geographical inequality that defies our meritocratic myths. The youth services infrastructure we once viewed as a social bedrock has been systematically dismantled, evaporating under a 73% real-terms funding cut since 2010. We call it fiscal respon