GarethRDR Posted January 2, 2013 Share Posted January 2, 2013 Personally I'm quite indifferent to national pride or any British sense of identity, but being a RAF brat that's hardly surprising (or rare). Of the places I've been, I've always felt most 'at home' in Germany. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lapal_fan Posted January 2, 2013 Share Posted January 2, 2013 How are we not on that list? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ozvillafan Posted January 2, 2013 VT Supporter Share Posted January 2, 2013 How are we not on that list? Because you are a miserable bunch of whingers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JooJar Posted January 2, 2013 Share Posted January 2, 2013 O'Leary 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted January 2, 2013 Moderator Share Posted January 2, 2013 One is talking about Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland etc. I think there is a correlation. Top 10 highly developed countries in 2012 From 1-10: Norway Australia Netherlands USA New Zealand Canada Ireland Liechtenstein Germany Sweden 7 out of 10 are Constitutional Monarchies. 10 out of 10 are parliamentary representational democracies Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tinker Posted January 2, 2013 VT Supporter Share Posted January 2, 2013 O'Leary Na, Ellis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted January 2, 2013 Share Posted January 2, 2013 Not sure there ever was a truly golden age. We had periods where we were the superior military power, or lead the industrial revolution etc., and in the grand scheme of things that is what it is. But that was always a version of events. Kids had rickets, polio, tb. Soldiers had to experience the trenches. Little women were chattels and got syphilis from their opium smoking husbands. You knew your place. We are probably currently in the 'good times' broadly speaking. If you get injured, an ambulance comes. If your house burns, a fire engine turns up. Ordinary people can choose to travel, be that up a motorway in a car, or to the sun on a cheap flight. Rivers are cleaner than they've been in over a hundred years. We, the plebs, have social lives outside of work. I'm sat here, well fed, coffee and chocolates off to the side, using the internet listening to music. I'm off to London for a trip out tomorrow, I'm popping over to Holland for a day at the end of the month, I've just booked a trip to Paris. That's not a blinkered self centred view of the universe. There are people in a bad way out there. But as a proportion of 'us' and our pleb lives through history, I think maybe we've never had it so good. In general. We can quibble over individual's impact and tweeks of direction. But we should be grateful, for the majority of us in the UK, these are the good times. That they'd be even better in the chrisp65 people's jamaliah benign socialist dictatorship is a given. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
legov Posted January 2, 2013 Share Posted January 2, 2013 Not sure there ever was a truly golden age. We had periods where we were the superior military power, or lead the industrial revolution etc., and in the grand scheme of things that is what it is. But that was always a version of events. Kids had rickets, polio, tb. Soldiers had to experience the trenches. Little women were chattels and got syphilis from their opium smoking husbands. You knew your place. We are probably currently in the 'good times' broadly speaking. If you get injured, an ambulance comes. If your house burns, a fire engine turns up. Ordinary people can choose to travel, be that up a motorway in a car, or to the sun on a cheap flight. Rivers are cleaner than they've been in over a hundred years. We, the plebs, have social lives outside of work. I'm sat here, well fed, coffee and chocolates off to the side, using the internet listening to music. I'm off to London for a trip out tomorrow, I'm popping over to Holland for a day at the end of the month, I've just booked a trip to Paris. That's not a blinkered self centred view of the universe. There are people in a bad way out there. But as a proportion of 'us' and our pleb lives through history, I think maybe we've never had it so good. In general. We can quibble over individual's impact and tweeks of direction. But we should be grateful, for the majority of us in the UK, these are the good times. That they'd be even better in the chrisp65 people's jamaliah benign socialist dictatorship is a given. A thousand times this. I personally see the welfare of the general populace as a far better gauge of whether a country is in "decline" than military, industrial or cultural power - (although no doubt all markers of prosperity are linked to each other) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NurembergVillan Posted January 2, 2013 Moderator Share Posted January 2, 2013 Of the places I've been, I've always felt most 'at home' in Germany. I didn't realise it when I lived there but I look back with a dewy-eyed nostalgia and actually feel perhaps more shaped by my time there than here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
islingtonclaret Posted January 2, 2013 Share Posted January 2, 2013 I'm going to blame Gordon Brown for everything from now on. I don't have any academic qualifications in economics, and even I could see that selling all of your nation's gold when the price of gold was at an all time low in order to 'diversify' the UK economy was the move of a spakker of the highest order. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa4europe Posted January 2, 2013 Share Posted January 2, 2013 labour's invention of the non working class Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted January 2, 2013 VT Supporter Share Posted January 2, 2013 This is certainly a good time to live if you have money and security. But then that was always true (give or take the odd antibiotic). It was always shit to be poor, and for most of the world, it still is. But the poor of today have the affluence of the minority (that's us, folks) rammed in their faces on a daily basis as never before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meregreen Posted January 2, 2013 Share Posted January 2, 2013 Capitalism. If the capitalist money men think they can exploit workers in a different part of the world in order to make even more money,then any sense of patriotism or decency is simply thrown aside. Capitalism ultimately makes some people very rich indeed, the rest of us are expendable. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PompeyVillan Posted January 2, 2013 Share Posted January 2, 2013 We're in decline? I feel quite privileged personally. I wouldn't say I was proud of being British in a nationalistic way, but I do take some pride in British things that I can identify with and feel a part of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rendelc Posted January 2, 2013 Share Posted January 2, 2013 Tony Blair. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ponky Posted January 2, 2013 Share Posted January 2, 2013 Just from an outsider's point of view, England seemed to start sliding downhill around the time Madonna moved there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimmythomas Posted January 2, 2013 Share Posted January 2, 2013 I didn't realise we were in decline in the first place. Living standards are as good as they've ever been. Personally, I don't feel very patriotic about living in the UK, just thankful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blandy Posted January 2, 2013 Moderator Share Posted January 2, 2013 We're in decline? I feel quite privileged personally. I wouldn't say I was proud of being British in a nationalistic way, but I do take some pride in British things that I can identify with and feel a part of. Yep, that's it for me, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RunRickyRun Posted January 2, 2013 Share Posted January 2, 2013 The anti-technological bias of the Victorian education system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drat01 Posted January 2, 2013 Share Posted January 2, 2013 Socialism. :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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