How England Sees Itself
- Thread starter zhao
- Start date
blacktulip
Pregnant with mandrakes
Sounds fair enough.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Alison Nimmo sounds like one of the sickest people alive. I use 'alive' in the broadest sense.
Patrick Swayze
I'm trying to shut up
young british electronic hiphop producer i met at a festival recently:
"i think the royal family is a good thing and the jubilee is a brilliant idea"
me:
"um... why...?"
dude:
"it gives us a sense of pride and national identity"
me:
not sure about the pride but I think the queen does encapsulate a certain apathetic, grim faced britishness.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Reminds me of something that occurred to me when I was in London during the jubilee weekend, and it totally pissed it down for the whole of Sunday - that a lot of people attending the parade would not be dismayed by the rain but delighted by it, I mean it's just so British, isn't it? Pulling together, muddling along in the face of adversity - it's like the Blitz spirit!
Patrick Swayze
I'm trying to shut up
true patriots would have welcomed an islamic terrorist incident
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Coinciding with an invasion by Germany. Or France, whatever.
Patrick Swayze
I'm trying to shut up
hopefully the French kidnap Wayne Rooney and force him to endure a diet of Foie Gras and Moliere for 6 months before the EDL and The Sun stage a disastrous Bay of Pigs style rescue mission called operation Dunkirk
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
...led by Jeremy Clarkson...
Patrick Swayze
I'm trying to shut up
yh clarkson would fucking love that. I bet he'd wear a proper army helmet and everything. richard hammond could come along and it'd be like melchett and darling minus the humanistic, nuanced perspective on modern warfare.
craner
Beast of Burden
Well, there was a clear attack on or critque of Vimothy's supposed world-view here, but not mine. Is it worth reviving the debate on English and/or British society now that:
1) The SNP are planning a referendum on independence and Leanne Wood (who I personally know and like, but therefore also know is a renegade Laborite riding Plaid for her own ambitions) is planning on taking Plaid in the same Left-populist direction, and Jersey is throwing a tantrum?
2) Cameron has openly declared war on the welfare state, established by Lloyd George, Churchill, Attlee, Bevan, and yet attacked by Thatcher, all of those British Parliamentarian icons?
3) The EU is in meltdown, as its Trojan Horse for political integration, the Euro, collapses, and yet so many of our laws are governed by the European courts -- that is, even if they actually are? (As it is so complex and controversial, hardly anybody knows. For example, can prisoners vote yet, even if the Euro courts have deemed that they can? Can, or has or will, this be enforced? And how?)
4) After England have been ejected from Euro 2012 to the indifference of North Wales and Ireland and the Channel Islands, the mirth of working class Scotland and South Wales, and grief of middle class South Wales and England, what the fuck does it all mean?
5) Are people who vote Tory just scared, evil or stupid, and do the Tories exploit what Polly Toynbee describes as the resentment of low earners for the very low earners, to deflect their own dominance? Or did Hayek have a point?
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
definitely. they're creating conditions that means people can give voice to their very basest prejudices - can see this in the deteriorating attitudes towards disabled people, for example. But then feeling (mostly irrational) resentment towards others less powerful than themselves is a convenient way people use to stop them having to make the necessary changes in their own lives (deflecting inner resentment onto outer objects, so to speak), so it's self-perpetuating. In a sense the Tories are giving people precisely what they want, but it's an ugly, stagnant desire.
jubilee weekend was the best lesson in how totalitarianism would function though. collective zombie madness. tell us what to think, so that we don't have to let our real thoughts in!
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Slothrop
Tight but Polite
At the moment they're also trading on the (also very british) tendancy to revel in cynicism and pessimism - people telling each other, with barely concealed glee, that it's time to take some harsh medicine and accept that we're not living in some sort of cloud cuckoo land where one of the richest nations on earth can afford some sort of basic social safety net...
Dusty
Tone deaf
I think we have yet to see the full extent of enforced-patriotism. There's still the Olympics to go. Any whiff of a non-conformist lack of orgasmic joy at the coming events will result in an ASBO. It will be interesting to see how the world views us after this, and the riots it will hopefully spawn.
And remember, you cannot say 'London' or '2012' in any advertising, because they are owned by LOCOG.
And remember, you cannot say 'London' or '2012' in any advertising, because they are owned by LOCOG.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Not so much "very low earners" as "non-earners", I would say*. Resentment seems to be becoming oddly polarized: on the one hand, there's the ever-increasing demonization of "scroungers", which the government both responds to and encourages with increasingly punitive policy towards people who are dependent on benefits; on the other, even the Daily Mail is joining in the popular sport of banker-bashing.
Thing is, though, most ordinary working-class and lower-middle-class people don't actually know any senior bankers or hedge fund managers, whereas people queuing up outside the Job Centre and NIEETs hanging around on street corners are a visible reminder of the (undeniably large) number of people living on benefits. The fact that for most unemployed people, worklessness is a result of the scarcity of jobs and the inadequacy of education and training in this country rather than a lifestyle choice, is widely ignored. As is the fact that an unemployed person living on a few grands' worth of benefits a year costs the public purse a tiny fraction of a banker getting a seven-figure bonus after a government bailout.
*though I guess lots of part-time workers still claim housing benefit or whatever
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Slothrop
Tight but Polite
Aargh yes, this. It winds me up so much that tabloid anecdotalism seems to replace any sort of serious discussion as soon as welfare comes up.
Patrick Swayze
I'm trying to shut up
I hope terrorists strap a bomb to Lord Coe and make him run round the cenotaph in his pants and socks.