Social acid has burnt the heart of Britain

Telegraph (UK) ^ | 26/08/2007 | John O'Sullivan

[Panzerlied]

Fifty years ago I was a schoolboy in a Liverpool suburb and a strong supporter of Everton like Rhys Jones. My parents were cautious and loving, but they had no qualms about letting me follow the team around the country.

That a boy might be killed by a drive-by shooter as he was returning from his local soccer practice would have struck them as an episode in a Latin American coup rather than a possibility in their relatively tranquil lives.

Not unreasonably. In 1955, the anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer described this tranquillity in his book Exploring English Character: "When we think of our faults, we put first, and by a long way, any lapse from our standards of non-aggression, bad temper, nagging, swearing and the like. Public life is more gentle than that reported for any society of comparable size and industrial complexity."

[uksupport1]

Precisely. The levels of immigration to the UK are absolutely dwarfed by those to the US. For example, here in the UK we worry about 500,000 illegal immigrants. This compares to the US with 12 million plus, despite having a population size only 5 times that of the UK. Furthermore, I have never seen services in the UK offered in anything but English. We do have problems with immigrant ghettos: but so does Australia, the US and most of the Western world. We’re still a country, however, that is over 90% Anglo-Celtic still.

This article seems ridiculous to me. Is the author seriously arguing that morals and manners in the US at the moment are unchanged since the 1950s? If not, then why does he judge the changes in the UK so harshly? If anything, the recent problems with gangs etc in the UK are starting to mirror problems that have existed in the US for at least a couple of decades. Britain’s roughest areas have a fraction of the gun crime etc that one would find in areas of the US.

(This is not a criticism of your wonderful country, just an observation)

The problems that he describes are common across the developed world.

[uksupport1]

I would strongly suggest that you do visit Britain again. Don’t let sensationalist tabloid stories about the UK put you off. We are indeed having problems with gangs etc at the moment, in rough inner-city areas. However, these problems are really not as bad as in similar areas of the US. Put it this way: in the UK indiviudual crimes featuring the discharging of firearms make the headline news still. If you get off the city tracks and visit areas such as the Lake District, Cornwall, the Brecon Beacons and the English countryside you’ll love it: and the pubs are as good as ever (although you have to go outside for a cigarette now).

The stories about emigrating Brits have been exaggerated. 196,000 Brits left the UK last year: yet, using stats for the past decade, about 50% will return within a few years. We live in a global age of mass migration and most Brits leaving the UK just want to go somewhere a bit sunnier.

[uksupport1]

I think the key thing to note from the article is that, in reality, 900,000 people have left Britain permamently in the past 10 years (1.5% of the British population). Considering that we live in a global age of mass migration, those statistics aren’t that high. Most people leaving the UK are looking for a bit more sun and better housing for better prices.