Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[crazy canuck]

Garbon, you went to university and so as one of the lucky few you would have avoided the draft.  Racism, sexism, and homophobia are rampant today.

The benefit the 70s had is there was more economic equality, and certainly more economic mobility.

[garbon]

Garbon, you went to university and so as one of the lucky few you would have avoided the draft.

I'm not sure why we'd assume I would have just as easily gone to university had I been alive back then. It isn't even clear to me that my parents would have been together had everything pushed back into the past given shit they got as an interracial couple in the 70s was already not great.

Racism, sexism, and homophobia are rampant today.

No way!

The benefit the 70s had is there was more economic equality, and certainly more economic mobility.

So two thoughts, 1) I wasn't saying that the 70 were uniquely bad but that I'm glad not to be living then, 2) if we are speaking about me personally, neither of those have been particular issues for me in my life. I've been lucky.

[garbon]

Obviously there were bad things in the 70s. Not just in terms of minority rights, even standard comforts we are used to today were lacking- double glazing and central heating for instance.

I think the thing is with saying this period in the past was better in some ways though is not that its bad we've progressed. But that somewhere along the line aspects of this progression went seriously off the path.

If we could have the LGBT, racial minority, and womens rights of 10 years ago, but without losing the economic equality of 50 years ago... the world would be a significantly better place.

And this goes even if your concerns are for these minority rights- its the fucked economic inequality which is helping the snake oil salesmen sell hate to the desperate.

There's no reason that improved rights for minorities had to be intrinsically tied to our fucked up economic situation. This could have worked perfectly fine, better even, in a world where people on minimum wage (not that there was one in the 70s but...yeah) weren't struggling to survive.

Maybe but minorities being scapegoats and persecuted has been a theme in both of our countries before the 70s. It has been convenient to attack them even when thinks were more economically equal for the majority of the populace.

[Barrister]

• Smoking

This is an under-rated good point.

Being just a little kid I can't speak about the sexism / homophobia of the era, but dammit the cigarette smoke was everywhere wasn't it!

[HVC]

• Smoking

This is an under-rated good point.

Being just a little kid I can't speak about the sexism / homophobia of the era, but dammit the cigarette smoke was everywhere wasn't it!

Glorious days

[Valmy]

CC's question about why I was glad I was not around:

• Had I been old enough at the start of the 70s, I could have got caughten up in the waste of life that was the US draft
• Racism
• Sexism
• Homophobia
• Attitudes towards interracial relationships/marriage - legalization in America in the 60s was just the first step
• Smoking

Look I wasn't being entirely literal, but having affordable housing, services, high paying jobs, and a thriving middle class are missed. Don't worry, no time machines exist to literally send you back there.

[Barrister]

Look I wasn't being entirely literal, but having affordable housing, services, high paying jobs, and a thriving middle class are missed. Don't worry, no time machines exist to literally send you back there.

Lets go through your list though:

Affordable housing?  Partly because land was cheaper, but also because they build much smaller.  Mostly just 2-3 bedroom bungalows.  No garages.  Built more cheaply.

Not sure what you mean by "services".  As in - easier to find a doctor?

High paying jobs?  Not really.  Your family probably only had one car.  Nobody was going on fancy vacations.  No fancy electronics / computers.

"thriving middle class" - only by virtue of being much poorer.

[Valmy]

Look I wasn't being entirely literal, but having affordable housing, services, high paying jobs, and a thriving middle class are missed. Don't worry, no time machines exist to literally send you back there.

Lets go through your list though:

Affordable housing?  Partly because land was cheaper, but also because they build much smaller.  Mostly just 2-3 bedroom bungalows.  No garages.  Built more cheaply.

Not sure what you mean by "services".  As in - easier to find a doctor?

High paying jobs?  Not really.  Your family probably only had one car.  Nobody was going on fancy vacations.  No fancy electronics / computers.

"thriving middle class" - only by virtue of being much poorer.

We also took seriously, and were implementing, reforms to government transparency. We also had basically no national debt.

And I could go through and challenge all these assertions of yours but...this is stupid. It was just a throw away joke. I didn't mean to start a big pedantic debate about the 1970s. If you think the 1970s were terrible fine. Whatever. If it ever becomes some kind of serious national debate to try to recreate 1970s conditions we can take this up again.

[Barrister]

We also took seriously, and were implementing, reforms to government transparency. We also had basically no national debt.

And I could go through and challenge all these assertions of yours but...this is stupid. It was just a throw away joke. I didn't mean to start a big pedantic debate about the 1970s. If you think the 1970s were terrible fine. Whatever. If it ever becomes some kind of serious national debate to try to recreate 1970s conditions we can take this up again.

US debt doubled between 1960 and 1970.

I just thought it was an interesting diversion.  If you don't think so that's fine.

Theres's always a temptation to look at the past through rose-coloured glasses.  After all we were younger, probably thinner, had the whole world open before us.  So it's interesting to think back on what it really did look like.  Like I appreciated Garbon's comments about racism / homophobia, as that's not where I'd immediately have gone.

There is also a whole debate about the environment.  It was in 1969, but the Cuyahoga River did catch fire.

But it had positives too.  Politically we were dominated by the Greatest Generation and their memories of sacrifice in WWII (and the Depression) so it seemed like there was more "seriousness" in our politics (except for Pierre Trudeau).

It was a much less settled country.  Land was cheaper, commutes smaller.  Maybe you had a crappy bungalow, but it was probably on a huge yard.  It's funny to look at some of the acreages from that era - now million dollar pieces of land with little more than a tear-down home.

[Valmy]

Theres's always a temptation to look at the past through rose-coloured glasses.

Well the joke was that this was supposed to be the lowest and worst time in American History, the time Reagan saved us all from and I was trained my whole life to look back on this era with horror.

But shit now it looks pretty good because things kind of suck now.

That was the joke. I don't honestly want to go back to using rotary phones and typewriters and only being able to hear music from record players and have gay people being attacked by the cops.

[crazy canuck]

BB you have definitely drunk all the cool aid on this one.  Real wages were definitely higher in the 70s.

Give this a read

https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

[Duque de Bragança]

Interesting how the Tories are quietly creeping towards to a full on MAGA platform for the UK.

Because they are afraid of...erm...Make Britain Great Again? Elon Musk and the US MAGA people have enormous resources and control of a vast propaganda media apparatus. They are working very hard to spread their ideas to the UK and there is an audience there for it. The Tories I guess want to ride that tiger.

Make Britain great again? 
Make Great Britain great again does not sound good.
For the acronym, Make England great again (MEGA) looks nice but leaves Great Britain and the United Kingdom in the cold.   

That would certainly grate. 

Great pun! Probably grating to the ears of the anti-pun brigade. 

[Barrister]

Interesting how the Tories are quietly creeping towards to a full on MAGA platform for the UK.

Because they are afraid of...erm...Make Britain Great Again? Elon Musk and the US MAGA people have enormous resources and control of a vast propaganda media apparatus. They are working very hard to spread their ideas to the UK and there is an audience there for it. The Tories I guess want to ride that tiger.

Make Britain great again? 
Make Great Britain great again does not sound good.
For the acronym, Make England great again (MEGA) looks nice but leaves Great Britain and the United Kingdom in the cold.   

That would certainly grate. 

Great pun! Probably grating to the ears of the anti-pun brigade. 

I've suggested something similar in the Canadian politics thread.

There is a segment of Canadian voters that is attracted to Trump.  They like MAGA.  I think the same is in the UK - due to social media we're much more internationalized in our politics than ever before.

That MAGA-adjacent vote is not close to enough to be a majority - but losing it is enough to cost you a majority.

So Poilievre / Badenoch have to play a certain footsy with it.

It's easy for those on the left to say "well just ignore them!".  But then those votes just go to the PPC / Reform UK.

[crazy canuck]

And if you play footsie with them you get fascism.  Not worth it in my view.

[crazy canuck]

Garbon, you went to university and so as one of the lucky few you would have avoided the draft.

I'm not sure why we'd assume I would have just as easily gone to university had I been alive back then. It isn't even clear to me that my parents would have been together had everything pushed back into the past given shit they got as an interracial couple in the 70s was already not great.

Racism, sexism, and homophobia are rampant today.

No way!

The benefit the 70s had is there was more economic equality, and certainly more economic mobility.

So two thoughts, 1) I wasn't saying that the 70 were uniquely bad but that I'm glad not to be living then, 2) if we are speaking about me personally, neither of those have been particular issues for me in my life. I've been lucky.

You assumed a world in which you did not have your current privileges to make the point that you could have been drafted, then you assume you do have your current privileges to make the point that the economic mobility of the 70s would not have mattered to you, because you would have made it anyway. There is some inconsistency occuring.

I too have been very lucky. I did not benefit from the social mobility of the 70s because I was too young.  But in the 80s I was still able to make it out of poverty, really only due to a bunch of luck, and being 6'7'' with an ability to play with a round ball.  Even though things have worked out quite well for me individually, I can still appreciate the fact that the 70s were much better economically for the vast majority of the population than afterward.