Not quite so Broken Britain

Plissken

Plissken

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Very long and very good article in the Economist

http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15452867

Basically, it shows that what we perceive to be the state of the country is wrong - indeed massively, massively wrong.

Some selected quotes

Opinion pollsters around the world find that people are usually gloomy about the future, perhaps because it is inherently more uncertain than the past. But Britons are getting even more downbeat. When Labour came to power in 1997, 40% of the population thought the country was becoming a worse place to live in. By 2007 that had risen to 60%. A year on, and a year into Gordon Brown?s spell as prime minister, the malcontents numbered 71%?and that was before the financial crash. There has been a ?surge of nostalgia? for the good old days, says Ben Page, head of Ipsos-Mori, a polling firm.


Chief among people?s worries is their security. Under Labour, fear of crime climbed until by 2007 it had become the issue that pollsters identified as the main complaint among voters. (Since then worries about the economy have eclipsed all else.) The heightened fears are a puzzle to criminologists, who point out that over the past 15 years Britain has experienced a steady, deep fall in crime. The statistics are notoriously hard to interpret, but according to the British Crime Survey, the Home Office?s most reliable measure though still far from perfect, crime overall has dropped by 45% since its peak in 1995. A big chunk of that fall is owing to reductions in vehicle theft and domestic burglary, for which alarm manufacturers and increased householder vigilance probably deserve as much credit as the police. But violent crime has fallen too. It is now almost half what it was in 1995, and no higher than in 1981 (see chart 1).

Looking more carefully, the big fall in brutality has been in domestic violence, which has dropped by a staggering 70%. (No one is sure why; the best guess is that an improving economy has kept men out of the house and given women enough money to escape if they need to.) Violence at the hands of strangers?the prospect that probably drives fear of crime more than anything else?has fallen by far less, and in fact rose in the most recent reporting period. Robbery has not gone down as much as burglary, perhaps because personal security has not improved in line with domestic security. But it too has been falling.

This sort of upbeat, wonkish analysis enrages those who insist that, for ordinary people, Britain is a more frightening place than it once was, whatever official statistics might say. In parts of the country, and some of the time, that is bound to be true. Until recently the Home Office crime survey did not interview under-16s. Nor does it weight serious crimes more heavily than mild ones, which means that a drop in bicycle theft could cancel out an increase in assaults. The Conservatives say that this has masked a rise in rare but serious crimes?particularly gun and knife crime.

The evidence is mixed. Gun crime has in fact been pretty flat nationwide. Data on knife crime are poor, but some doctors say that they are dealing with more stabbings, and the number of murders involving ?sharp instruments? (bottles as well as knives) has risen slightly. Murders using guns increased alarmingly during the first few years of Labour?s time in office, but have since dropped back down. Indeed, the day before Mr Cameron made his ?broken society? pitch it was announced that the total number of homicides recorded by the police was at its lowest in 19 years.
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One of the clearest long-term trends relates directly to the Edlington question. Parents have probably never been more worried about their offspring, but the truth is that children seem to be less at risk now than in the past. The number of killings of under-15s has ?collapsed? since the 1970s, according to Colin Pritchard of Bournemouth University. Professor Pritchard calculates that in 1974 Britain was the third-biggest killer of children in the rich world. By his reckoning it is now 17th, following a 70% drop in child homicides. To be on the safe side, he did the analysis again, including cases where the cause of death was undetermined; even then the number of cases had halved. He credits closer co-operation between police and social services, which kicked off in a big way in 1979.

Children also seem to be committing fewer serious offences themselves. Martin Narey, a former Home Office big cheese who now runs Barnardo?s, a venerable children?s charity, points out that the number of under-16s being convicted of the gravest offences is at least a third lower than it was in the early 1990s. There are fewer Mary Bells about, not more.
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The real eye-opener is a long-term series including older teenagers. Conception among 15- to 19-year-olds has dropped by nearly a sixth since 1969 though there are more girls of that age (oddly, the number of pregnancies has started to rise again since 2003). And fewer still are becoming mothers, owing to a steep increase in abortions after they were made legal in 1967. Today, only half as many girls between 15 and 19 bear a child in their teens as when their grandmothers were that age (see chart 2).
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At the root of it all is an education system that has long failed to educate the great mass of children usefully. It is showing its limitations more than ever now that manufacturing jobs for the unskilled are vanishing. For all the government fanfare about better-than-ever national exam results (partly achieved by grading fluffier subjects more sympathetically), in international tests the trend is downward. Data collected for the OECD?s PISA study in 2000 ranked British 15-year-olds eighth among member countries in maths, with a total point score, 529, that was well above the average. In 2006, with a below-average score of 495, they came joint 18th. So too with reading: British pupils were seventh in 2000 with 523 points but joint 13th in 2006 with 495. The 2009 data are unlikely to show a radical improvement. The most sobering aspect is the persistent gap in achievement between the very best and the very worst. Despite that, in 2007 Britain was educating a smaller proportion of its 15- to 19-year-olds than it did in 1995, on OECD figures. Of other member countries, only Portugal recorded a drop.
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The better people have it the more they whine about their trivial problems.
 
There has been a ?surge of nostalgia? for the good old days, says Ben Page
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To quote Dara O'Briain "Nostalgia is just heroin for old people! You couldn't turn on a light without the Luftwaffe bombing the shit out of you in the 40's, just because you were younger and getting laid more doesn't mean the place was better off"

My father maintains the 70's in Briton was a wonderful place, back when everyone was friendly and decimal currency hadn't been introduced...
 
Very interesting read, thanks for sharing. Must spread rep around, etc etc. Unfortunately I think that most of us will someday be the same old nostalgic bastards we complain about now. :lol:
 
Walsh_e said:
My father maintains the 70's in Briton was a wonderful place, back when everyone was friendly and decimal currency hadn't been introduced...
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Was everything ?1, 2, 3 etc? Because that sounds expensive.

"How much is the petrol today?"
?2
"Crikey, it was ?1 yesterday!"
We havent invented decimals yet.
"Oh."
 
AiR said:
Was everything ?1, 2, 3 etc? Because that sounds expensive.

"How much is the petrol today?"
?2
"Crikey, it was ?1 yesterday!"
We havent invented decimals yet.
"Oh."
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No, there were 20 shillings to a pound and 12 pence to a shilling, so 240 pence in a pound.
Coin wise, you got a Half Crown which was 2/6, ie 2 shillings and sixpence, so 30p or a 1/6th of a pound.
Next down was a Florin which was 2 shillings or 24p. Essentially the old version of a 10p as it was a 10th of a pound.
Then you had a Shilling (5p is the modern equivalent).
Then a Sixpence (2.5p in modern money)
Then a thurppence (1.25p)
Then a penny (~0.4p)
Then a ha'penny
And finally a farthing which was a quarter penny, or a 1/960th of a pound. This was however withdrawn in the early sixties, with the rest of the currency going to the modern system in the 70's.
I think you will agree that it was a very logical system.

If you go back further, the smallest English coin was a mite, which was a 1/6th farthing. It would be worth less than 0.02p in todays money.

Edit: I forgot the Guinea, which was ?1-1s, or ?1.05 in modern money. There has been no such coin for hundreds of years but the term was still commonly used pre-decimalisation.
 
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Never underestimate the power of nostalgia goggles.
 
AiR said:
The better people have it the more they whine about their trivial problems.
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I think you're right : surveys mentioned in the paper today suggest that just under 70% of people have considered leaving the UK for another country, and just over 70% think the country's become worse since 1997.

Has the country actually become worse? Debatable - the answer is probably in the grey area between 'better' and 'worse'. Has the country become bad enough that almost 3/4 of the population think they should leave? Er, no.
 
Says the Scot living in, erm, France.

Since 97, Better - Health has got more resources.

Worse - untrammelled and controlled immigration, particularly of people who hate the natives and want to turn the place into the hole they just left because it was shit.

Got ourselves involved in stupid and illegal wars, put up with torture of our opponents - we learned how to interrogate properly without torture and then immediately forgot - grrrrr.

Did not have that referendum that was promised on the EU treaty - because we all know what the result would have been.

The economy is down the toilet. Why are all the jobs going abroad FCS? No one is paying any attention to this problem at all.

Banks are still taking the piss and no one is stopping them.

The education system is shagged and no one is doing diddly squat about it - comparative league tables show UK performance is getting worse and worse no matter that the "results" are better and better.

Too much crap TV.

Its freezing - thats you global warming!!!!

Oh we are going to run out of salt, water, electricity and gas.
 
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Cobol74 said:
Says the Scot living in, erm, France.

Since 97, Better - Health has got more resources.

Worse - untrammelled and controlled immigration, particularly of people who hate the natives and want to turn the place into the hole they just left because it was shit.

Got ourselves involved in stupid and illegal wars, put up with torture of our opponents - we learned how to interrogate properly without torture and then immediately forgot - grrrrr.

Did not have that referendum that was promised on the EU treaty - because we all know what the result would have been.

The economy is down the toilet. Why are all the jobs going abroad FCS? No one is paying any attention to this problem at all.

Banks are still taking the piss and no one is stopping them.

The education system is shagged and no one is doing diddly squat about it - comparative league tables show UK performance is getting worse and worse no matter that the "results" are better and better.

Too much crap TV.

Its freezing - thats you global warming!!!!

Oh we are going to run out of salt, water, electricity and gas.
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Chavs

Expensive fuel

Expensive food

Lloyds Banking Group

BNP


Few more to add to the list
 
I'm nowhere near to be an expert in British mentality and this is only my opinion but my perception always was, that nostalgia and clinging to the glory of the past is an essential part of the collective consciousness of the British people.

In fact I always had the impression, that Britain is somehow mentally trapped in the past, defining itself by making references to historic events (like the war), bemoaning what has once been and is lost (the Empire) and how the hell it all could happen, constantly reminding themselves that they are actually a great nation (see Jeremy Clarkson and James May as references), glorifying past achievements over and over again, always making references to earlier times, when things were better (but really weren't).

Sometimes it becomes pathological, for example when the British yellow press comments the new black jerseys of the German national football team with "The SS is back", acting surprised when people here didn't find that funny at all...
Such "jokes" seem to me like signs of a deeply rooted inferiority complex, compensating the feeling of humiliation, that the former enemy overtook them economically after the war, despite having lost it badly.

Again, I am no expert but that is what I (and I believe a lot more people) perceive, when they think about the British mentality. In essence I think they love to be miserable, blaming others to be responsible for it ;)

There is the will to seriously and critically cope with the situation but there is also still a great arrogance involved, which sometimes makes it difficult to sympathise with the Brits.

There's a great satirical song by former Supertramp frontman Roger Hodgson, which sums it up nicely:

I wish I was in London
Walkin' in the rain
I wish I was in London
I really miss the rain
Oh just take me home again

I wish I was in England
I really miss the Queen
I wish I was in England
I really miss the Queen
Oh but is she missing me

What happened to the Empire?
There's nothing in the Bank
They gave away the empire
Without a word of thanks
Oh let's blame it on the Yanks

So give me rule Britannia
Britannia rules the waves
I live in California
But it's really not the same
Oh so take me home again
Please take me home again...
 
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Can't argue with a lot of that. I can highly recommend Jeremy Paxmans book "The English" which is a wonderful dissection of the national psyche.

As a nation, we've always harked on at how good the past was. Paxman opens by quoting a passage that effective states that young people today have no respect for their elders, think they have it easy and spend all their time being drunk and then pulls back to reveal that it was said in the 17th Century.

On the other hand, shouting about our success is something We Just Don't Do. A little over a century ago, this tiny island ruled half of the world - we look on it as a source of embarrassment. You look at the industrial revolution and the Empire and you can still see the (mainly) positive effect on the globe. Yes there is harping on about the war, but that really was the best and worst of times. Perhaps it is instructive that for us, we remember Dunkirk, surviving the Blitz and the Battle of Britain and not D-Day. We concentrate on surviving and beating the odds, not glorifying triumph. (Again, people who harp on about WWII and 1966 are generally considered cringeworthy and embarrassing.)

In essence I think they love to be miserable, blaming others to be responsible for it
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No, we don't love to be miserable and we tend to blame ourselves first rather than foreigners. We just don't do optimism. I think we have a perspective. We've been there, we've seen it, we've done it. Empires, wars, whatever. We just get trained not to make a fuss and we don't like those who do. Other countries have ticker tape parades, we prefer to wait for a quiet knock on the door and to put the kettle on for a nice cup of tea.

There is the will to seriously and critically cope with the situation but there is also still a great arrogance involved, which sometimes makes it difficult to sympathise with the Brits.
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I'm not sure I agree with "great arrogance", but I know where you are coming from. I think it comes down to "experience". I can think of no other country in the world that will have a guy set off halfway around the world, capture a tiny island from the French just to annoy them and when he returns in triumph we say "You bloody idiot, we didn't want it in the first place, now you go back there and make them a free people."

The national motto should "Ah well, mustn't grumble I suppose. Could I possibly have a biscuit with that?"
 
I always hear a lot about opinion polls but have to my knowledge never met someone that has taken part in one. I'm going to guess that they are rather tedious to fill out and the sort of people that are most likely to take part are going to be people with far too much time on their hands. I'd also suggest that the sorts of people that actively want to fill out such forms probably aren't going to be the most upbeat and content people, preferring to use it as a way of venting personal frustrations.

I'm very fond of our little island, most people probably can't understand the way we are, but that's fine I'm sure I could say exactly the same thing about their country using personally experiences and generalisations.
 
What does a greek earn?

Well, obviously, not quite enough to deserve Euros as a currency.

Soooo Angela Merkel's and Nicolas Sarkozy will be stumping up the Euros for a mate in trouble then? Puts me in mind of when we fell out of the Euro Basket, Germany helps us then - er NOT. Only cost us 13 Billion GBP. Drop in the Ocean compared to our current debt.
 
Well, Greece is in the Euro zone -- although it seems like they faked their way in.

But Britain is not. It's the currency, that's the main concern at the moment. If Greece still had their drachma, nobody would care what happens to the country.

P.S.: And stop complaining :p
 
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