Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Richard Hakluyt]

I would like to make England merrie again, too much gloom and despondency these days.

[Valmy]

I would like to make England merrie again, too much gloom and despondency these days.

Yeah England has seemed kind of depressed ever since the 1960s.

It was the Beatles breaking up, wasn't it?

[Richard Hakluyt]

It has been very noticeable in recent trips abroad. In Greece and Italy and even France people just seemed a lot cheerier, rose-tinted glasses on my part perhaps.

[Tamas]

As an experiment in fighting the far-right on their own turf, apparently we'll be doing televised migrant expulsions. Hate to say it but it's probably a good idea.

[mongers]

I would like to make England merrie again, too much gloom and despondency these days.

Yeah England has seemed kind of depressed ever since the 1960s.

It was the Beatles breaking up, wasn't it?

I don't see this, most of the 1970s was fine and fun. Even with the IMF Denis Healy was honest, hardworking and fun at times. Admittedly the end of the Barber years was dodgy if you were a builder like my old man.

Things got a bit grim in the early 80s, but if you were a Yuppie/Tory the rest of the 80s was a boom.

1990s a bit of a flush, a flash in the pan or just went down the pan.

Most of the Blair years, though I hate to say it, were quite positive.

the late 00s onward - politically naff, and the rot showing through a lot.

now it just seems a bit bleak. 

[Valmy]

I guess when I think of Britain in the 1970s, I think of collapse and doom. Winters of discontent and all that.

But I wasn't there.

[crazy canuck]

I would like to make England merrie again, too much gloom and despondency these days.

Yeah England has seemed kind of depressed ever since the 1960s.

It was the Beatles breaking up, wasn't it?

I don't see this, most of the 1970s was fine and fun. Even with the IMF Denis Healy was honest, hardworking and fun at times. Admittedly the end of the Barber years was dodgy if you were a builder like my old man.

Things got a bit grim in the early 80s, but if you were a Yuppie/Tory the rest of the 80s was a boom.

1990s a bit of a flush, a flash in the pan or just went down the pan.

Most of the Blair years, though I hate to say it, were quite positive.

the late 00s onward - politically naff, and the rot showing through a lot.

now it just seems a bit bleak. 

Yeah, the turn happened in the 80s. But, as you say, even then the South of England was still fun.  I noticed quite a difference as I hitchhiked from London to Inverness in 89. Economic pain was setting in from the Midlands North.  All the young folks were fleeing to London for work. People asked me why I was going North - better to go South where all the young people were.

[mongers]

I guess when I think of Britain in the 1970s, I think of collapse and doom. Winters of discontent and all that.

But I wasn't there.

It's a powerful right-wing myth, it was just 2-3 months of the rubbish bin collections being a bit naff, a handful of delayed funerals and an uptick in strike for a bit, that's 2-3 out of a 120 month decade.

Many European countries have had far worse periods of industrial unrest over the last 50 years and those episodes aren't referenced. 

[mongers]

Yeah, the turn happened in the 80s. But, as you say, even then the South of England was still fun.  I noticed quite a difference as I hitchhiked from London to Inverness in 89. Economic pain was setting in from the Midlands North.  All the young folks were fleeing to London for work. People asked me why I was going North - better to go South where all the young people were.

Nice anecdote CC, what was I doing in 89?  Thinks .... draws a blank.

Uh vaguely remember working a bit in London and likely 89 I also hitchhiked a few places! 

[Richard Hakluyt]

I was young and broke in the 1970s but still think that decade is unfairly highlighted as being uniquely awful. The truth is that while it was very difficult to get rich the basics were readily available. So we had free healthcare, free university tuition and maintenance grants, low unemployment, low rents and inexpensive housing...it was very easy to get these basics and people felt secure. The 1980s opened up opportunities to make big money but the proportion of people excluded from the comfortable zone has just got larger and larger every year since then.

[HVC]

I would like to make England merrie again, too much gloom and despondency these days.

Yeah England has seemed kind of depressed ever since the 1960s.

It was the Beatles breaking up, wasn't it?

It's all the rain

[mongers]

I was young and broke in the 1970s but still think that decade is unfairly highlighted as being uniquely awful. The truth is that while it was very difficult to get rich the basics were readily available. So we had free healthcare, free university tuition and maintenance grants, low unemployment, low rents and inexpensive housing...it was very easy to get these basics and people felt secure. The 1980s opened up opportunities to make big money but the proportion of people excluded from the comfortable zone has just got larger and larger every year since then.

Tricky, that's a very good summation, I was probably a bit too young to appreciate that; my year left school in June 1980, the first year of the Thatcher recession, so for many of us the only escape was further/higher education. 

[Valmy]

I was young and broke in the 1970s but still think that decade is unfairly highlighted as being uniquely awful. The truth is that while it was very difficult to get rich the basics were readily available. So we had free healthcare, free university tuition and maintenance grants, low unemployment, low rents and inexpensive housing...it was very easy to get these basics and people felt secure. The 1980s opened up opportunities to make big money but the proportion of people excluded from the comfortable zone has just got larger and larger every year since then.

Interesting.

The 1970s has this same sort of image over here in the US. Industrial decay and stagflation and national malaise and oil embargoes and all that.

But in retrospect it seems almost like a paradise. Like I look back at the US in the 1970s now and think "damn, take me back to that." The people then had no idea how good they had it.

[mongers]

I would like to make England merrie again, too much gloom and despondency these days.

Yeah England has seemed kind of depressed ever since the 1960s.

It was the Beatles breaking up, wasn't it?

It's all the rain

Obligatory Brit posts to point out ,,,, East England is surprising light on rain, as dry as central Spain, other than the NE and Cornwall/Devon, the rain mainly falls on Wales and Western Scotland*, not England. 


* I'm told Ireland, South and North is rather wet.

[Neil]

I was young and broke in the 1970s but still think that decade is unfairly highlighted as being uniquely awful. The truth is that while it was very difficult to get rich the basics were readily available. So we had free healthcare, free university tuition and maintenance grants, low unemployment, low rents and inexpensive housing...it was very easy to get these basics and people felt secure. The 1980s opened up opportunities to make big money but the proportion of people excluded from the comfortable zone has just got larger and larger every year since then.

It's a difficult place to argue, because on the one hand the argument was made that the low but comfortable lifestyle afforded by the generous programs of the Sixties and Seventies wasn't going to be sustainable in the more competitive world that the recovery of Asia was going to create.  On the other hand, the trend towards privatizing the gains made on the back of the big public investments in infrastructure in previous decades, and public reinvestment has been extremely weak.