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Is Great Britain still Great?

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  • Is Great Britain still Great?

    I'm a bit of a contrarian at heart (yeah, hard to believe I know ;)). So, whenever I hear gloom & doom stories about society 'these days' & how much worse things have become I am always supicious. people have been griping in similar ways since ancient Greece. I am also aware that sensationalist media can often leave false & misleading impressions. Its bread & butter is moral panic - single mothers today, 'killer children' tommorrow, 'migrant hordes' the next.

    So, its always nice to find out that some of your suspicions are well founded. Turns out that in a great many ways Britain is a better place than it was 20 years ago & MUCH better than 30 or 40 years ago. Some of the improvements - such as the dramatic drops in child murder, domestic violence & teen pregnancy or the significant drops in most crimes make truly interesting reading. It isn't all smiles & sunshine, but it isn't as bad as doomsayers might believe. I suspect the same is true in other nations too.

    There are two article here. One is a sort of cut down editorial version - I've reproduced that in full & highlighted some cool stuiff (to me). The other is the more detailed piece. I've linked to that & reproduced some juicy bits. The link has cool graphs & such.

    The state of Britain
    How broken is Britain?

    It has become fashionable to say that British society is in a mess and getting worse. It isn’t

    Feb 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

    THEY are not the world’s most effusive people at the best of times. But even by their usual gloomy standards, Britons seem to have got themselves into a slough of despond of late. Well before the economic crisis they were weeping on the shoulders of pollsters, who reported rapidly rising levels of dismay about the country’s direction and an increased sense of nostalgia about the good old days. For those (and they are legion, on inner-city council estates as well as in the shires) who think that society in Britain is “broken”, the country is stuck in a mire of crime, fractured families and feral youth.

    It is an idea that resonates. Every week serves up a new tragedy or outrage to be added to the pile of evidence. Such episodes have the power to jolt the public mood, as in 1993 when Tony Blair, then the shadow home secretary, described the murder of two-year-old James Bulger as a sign of “a society that is becoming unworthy of that name”. A similarly awful attack last year on two boys in South Yorkshire was held up by David Cameron, the Conservative leader, as not an “isolated incident of evil” but evidence of a profound problem that goes to the heart of society. He has made “broken Britain” a leitmotif in the run-up to the general election due by June 3rd.

    It would be idiotic to claim that Britain is perfect. The vomitous binge-drinking mainly by the young, the drug abuse and teenage pregnancy that are still higher than in most west European countries and the large proportion of single-parent families all tell a tale. But the story of broad decline is simply untrue (see article). Stepping back from the glare of the latest appalling tale, it is clear that by most measures things have been getting better for a good decade and a half. In suggesting that the rot runs right through society, the Tories fail to pinpoint the areas where genuine crises persist. The broken-Britain myth is worse than scaremongering—it glosses over those who need help most.

    The bad old days

    The broken Britain of legend is one where danger stalks the streets as never before. In the real Britain, the police have just recorded the lowest number of murders for 19 years. In mythical broken Britain, children are especially at risk. Back in real life, child homicides have fallen by more than two-thirds since the 1970s. Britain used to be the third-biggest killer of children in the rich world; it is now the 17th. And more mundane crimes have fallen too: burglaries and car theft are about half as common now as they were 15 years ago. Even the onset of recession has not reversed that downward trend so far.

    Comatose teenagers line every gutter in the boozy Britain of popular imagination. Yet after a long period of increase, there are tentative signs that Britons are drinking less alcohol. The overall consumption of drugs is dropping (though some narcotics, including cocaine, are becoming more popular) and rates of smoking are now among the lowest in Europe.

    As for family breakdown, some commentators seem to think that sex really was invented in 1963. British grannies know differently. Teenage pregnancy is still too common, but it has been declining, with the odd hiccup, for ages. A girl aged between 15 and 19 today is about half as likely to have a baby in her teens as her grandmother was. Her partner will probably not marry her and he is less likely to stick with her than were men in previous generations, but he is also a lot less likely to beat her. In homing in on the cosier parts of the Britain of yesteryear, it is easy to ignore the horrors that have gone. Straight white men are especially vulnerable to this sort of amnesia.

    A dangerous misdiagnosis

    Such forgetfulness can be partly blamed on a dominant national press that tends to report the grotesque exceptions not the blander rule. But politicians have connived in this. Labour is far from blameless, but it is the Tories who are on course to be the next government. In attempting to convince voters that society has suffered a comprehensive breakdown (and pandering to his own party’s right wing), Mr Cameron has been guided towards social policies that are designed to heal the entire country, rather than help the relatively few who need it. His proposed tax break for married couples and gay civil-partners is an example. It does nothing for workless households. It would help only 11% of the 4m British children in poverty, while handing bonuses to plenty of well-off people. That would be a bad idea at any time; in a period when the state must tighten its belt it is an extraordinary proposal.

    Above all, however, it is a distraction from the Conservatives’ far better policies to deal with something that does need fixing: education. The main reason why a small but worrying proportion of families and young people is falling behind is that schools are failing to give them the skills they need to get and hold a job. This is about more than Britain’s ability to compete in a brave new globalised world that demands flexible, highly skilled workers. It also has to do with social behaviour.

    The waning of the manufacturing jobs that used to be the mainstay of the working class has created a generation of young males, in particular, who don’t know what to do with themselves. Britons have been boozers and scrappers for centuries, but self-destructive behaviour today in part reflects the perception that their lives are not worth much. As for children bearing children, there is evidence elsewhere that if girls are given better education—not just about sex, but also in areas likely to improve their job prospects—they are less likely to get pregnant at 16. Yet for all the official talk at home about ever-improving exam results, Britain is beginning to slide down the international league table of educational attainment.

    The government used to be keen on overhauling education but it has run out of puff. Now it is the Tories who have thoughtful ideas about getting more good school places through supply-side reforms. They should focus on these rather than proselytising about marriage, which suggests a nannying streak curiously at odds with Mr Cameron’s (largely correct) view that government has got too big for its boots. Britain has a crunched economy, an out-of-control deficit and plenty of social problems; but it is not “broken”.

    The state of Britain: How broken is Britain? | The Economist

    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
    .

    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
    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.
    Among teenagers an interesting trend is emerging: the number of young people who abstain completely from alcohol is rising, but those who do drink are guzzling more. Something similar is happening with the consumption of drugs. Over the past five years there has been a fall in overall drug abuse, driven mainly by declining interest in cannabis. But consumption of cocaine, a less common but more dangerous drug, has doubled, and it is now more popular in Britain than almost anywhere else in western Europe. It seems that while the majority are sobering up, a dedicated minority are partying on.
    Britain's “broken society”: Through a glass darkly | The Economist
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  • #2
    IMO consuming is the key word.

    this is not only Britain' s problem

    it is very easy to reach almost everything.

    globalisation & the possibilities of today somehow exceeds the "ancient" morale concept maybe

    the "consuming speed" of human notions/core values/morale is in increasing every day.

    and people become less grateful day by day.

    humankind is prone to be corrupted in every meaning of the word.
    Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none; be able for thine enemy rather in power than use; and keep thy friend under thine own life's key; be checked for silence, but never taxed for speech.

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    • #3
      a teenager,

      who reaches his own car not by his efforts will not be grateful to know the value of his own money,
      who reaches sexual satisfaction too early will not be grateful to know the value of love.

      just two exemples.
      Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none; be able for thine enemy rather in power than use; and keep thy friend under thine own life's key; be checked for silence, but never taxed for speech.

      Comment


      • #4
        This reminds me of a scene from Dr. Who (10th doctor).

        The Doctor rescued a man from the future who was working on a tour to the past (present time). He said he didn't want to go back. He wanted to stay here and visit earth so he could see Great Britain, Great Germany, and Great France.

        The Doctor said "no, no, no...only Britain is Great. Germany is just Germany and France is just France."
        "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Bigfella View Post
          I'm a bit of a contrarian at heart (yeah, hard to believe I know ;)). So, whenever I hear gloom & doom stories about society 'these days' & how much worse things have become I am always supicious. people have been griping in similar ways since ancient Greece. I am also aware that sensationalist media can often leave false & misleading impressions. Its bread & butter is moral panic - single mothers today, 'killer children' tommorrow, 'migrant hordes' the next.

          So, its always nice to find out that some of your suspicions are well founded. Turns out that in a great many ways Britain is a better place than it was 20 years ago & MUCH better than 30 or 40 years ago. Some of the improvements - such as the dramatic drops in child murder, domestic violence & teen pregnancy or the significant drops in most crimes make truly interesting reading. It isn't all smiles & sunshine, but it isn't as bad as doomsayers might believe. I suspect the same is true in other nations too.
          I dont think it has got anything to do with how things actually were way back when things were easier, and everyone was nice. Or that the social reality matters when talking of the good old times.

          The old timers cry about how easy it is for the current generation they do not realise that the kids have to face more competition, they have to perform much better, i have seen the competition go up from when i was in school and college. Their views will never change as they only see that people have access to things that make life a little easier to live while these very things make life equally complicated.

          The parents talk about how good it was for them 'back then' thats just because they were kids and everything is so amazing in childhood, hell i remember the 90s being a nice time, did not have to work, all about playing cricket and wishing chocolates for dinner, while my parent were working hard to make the family work. Even when confronted with facts these feelings would be the same, because really it was better when we were kids.
          Last edited by kuku; 11 Feb 10,, 10:40.

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          • #6
            Any country where binge drinking and takin the piss outta the French is a great country. Just sayin.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by rickshaw92 View Post
              Any country where binge drinking and takin the piss outta the French is a great country. Just sayin.
              Hic , cant take ze pees no more , zey own most of ze bizznes in U/K now , and zey send illegals tro ze tunn,el it is zey oo tak zee pees , we soon sharing ze aircraft carrieeer soon , but zey never win ze battles wiz us ,one to one
              Last edited by tankie; 11 Feb 10,, 17:04.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by Big K View Post
                a teenager,

                who reaches his own car not by his efforts will not be grateful to know the value of his own money,
                who reaches sexual satisfaction too early will not be grateful to know the value of love.

                just two exemples.
                I don't know what you are talking about

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