Whenurhappy:
Sunfish,
You demonstrate a not-uncommon and erroneous Antipodean view of a Britain that doesn't exist anymore.
Britain (a country that adopted me, I love and have devoted my working life to) has suffered from a crisis in confidence since the end of World War I. It has been characterised by the managed decline of greatness. Arguably it has never recovered from the grevious human and financial losses of the Great War which shook its self image (and acutalite) of invincibility. One just needs to visit any Public School or Oxbridge College and see the In Memoriam boards and weep at the lost of talent and youth (no escaping the fact that these schools and colleges did produce Britain's leaders). At my son's school they lost a hunderd 'old' boys on the first day of the Somme. The youngest had just turned 18; almost all of them Temporary (very temporary) officers. My own College produced Sigfiried Sassoon and three VC winners, amongst many others - all 'bright young things' whose lives were forever changed. Who can blame them that they didn't want Britain to fight more wars and saw the realities of Empire. Just read Orwell's 'Burmese Days' to get a sense of what Empire was all about.
With the greatest respect;
Like hell "it doesn't exist any more". I was married to an English lady for Twenty years, and I've lived it.
The class system is alive and well, read the Speccy and Country Life! I've lived it first hand. I've heard the braying about shooting and fishing and the country house. I had a brother in law in the City and watched the goings on of these conceited idiots. I still have my green wellies and old barbour jacket to "blend in'.
Two things are killing Britain:
1. The class system that ensures that GOOD IDEAS and TALENT are wasted unless the come with the "right" accent.
2. A backwards looking mentality that pines for Empire.
What has occurred since at least the 1870's is the building up of a myth about Britains heroic past that is simply untrue, but worse, it is self perpetuating and damaging to the
future of Britain, because it informs peoples attitudes today.
That myth is something like the idea that the pure, self sacrificing, British gentry built the country and empire out of pure goodness of heart. That Britains rise was pre ordained because of it's unique culture, values and social structure. It includes the idea that the British public (ie: Private) school system is something of value instead of a perverse aberration of human behaviour. It includes the idea that all knowledge flows from Oxbridge, which is a self serving University myth and the subject of much learned debate even today (Find a copy of "The Economics of Scientific Research" if you can).
Your own words perfectly encapsulate this myth:
One just needs to visit any Public School or Oxbridge College and see the In Memoriam boards and weep at the lost of talent and youth.......
.........My own College produced Sigfried Sassoon and three VC winners,
Mate, there was "talent and youth" a plenty lost from all the little grammar schools that was
just as valuable!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is what I am trying to say. Britain has the awful habit of valuing an idea, and a person, not on the basis of intellectual power and worth, but on the social background of the person concerned!
Take Tony Blair for example, he graduated from Oxford in 1976 and
Six years later entered Parliament. What sort of life experience is that????
Look at David Cameron - he has exactly zero experience in anything outside party politics. How do you expect him to make rational and difficult decisions about the future of Britain? He has no working life experience whatsoever to guide him.
If you keep promoting people to leadership positions on the basis of where they went to school or university, instead of upon past performance, then your decline is assured.
BTW, this is not a p1ssing competition. Australia has its own problems and is not immune from "The British Disease."
Anyway, I should shut up. I'm wasting my time.