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Posted on 08/28/2026 3:57:13 PM PDT by EnderWiggin1970
Leslie Poles Hartley famously dubbed the past “a foreign country.” This summer, for the first time, I sensed that the present can be one too. My annual visit to the land of my childhood and youth exposed me to a culture very different from the one that nurtured me. Growing up as a grammar schoolboy in 1970s and ’80s England, I absorbed the importance of personal restraint; emotional self-control in public; privacy; acting with honesty and fairness, even to one’s own hurt; and respecting others regardless of their social status or opinions. At the level of society, such personal values promoted freedoms—of speech, of religion, of expression. All of that is gone, at least from the class that presumes to define the country’s mores and morals.
In retrospect, I see that I grew up at a breaking point in English culture. I was (perhaps symbolically) the last person at my school to study Latin and the last not to take computer science. The ancient disciplines were already on life support, and the technocrats were waiting in the wings. My copy of Lewis and Short, the classic Latin dictionary, is an ever-present symbol of this; it was the school’s copy, given to me when I left as it was of no further use to the institution.
Earlier this year, I had a strange premonition of how different England has become. A young Dutch politician, Eva Vlaardingerbroek, was barred from entering the U.K. One of my sisters had never heard of her and therefore did an AI Google search to find out what had made her so dangerous. To her surprise, the chatbot told her that this politician was known, among other things, to refer to my work in public lectures, and that we were both outspoken opponents of transgenderism...
(Excerpt) Read more at firstthings.com ...
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England Swings
Song by
Roger Miller (1965)
England swings like a pendulum do
Bobbies on bicycles, two by two.
Westminster Abbey, the tower of Big Ben
The rosy-red cheeks of the little children.
Now, if you huff and puff and you finally save enough
Money up to take your family on a trip across the sea
Take a tip before you take your trip, let me tell you where to go
Go to England, oh...
Tryin’ to mock the way they talk fun but all in vain
Gaping at the dapper men with derby hats and canes.
England swings like a pendulum do...
It was cool when I lived there. But that was 1961-1963 so......
England is no longer England.
As a young man I lived in England in the 70s. I loved it. I considered it my second nation.. My son was born there and is a dual national. I would have fought for England as I would for my home nation the USA. England was free then and free speech was cherished and protected.
That is no more. England is lost via self inflicted wounds. England is no more.
Coming to a Texas near you.
LONG gone
Applicable to every Anglophone country, including the USA. Documents the enemy
within, from university, to architecture, to design, to yobs, and mud people.
I sat my O-levels in 1979, and GTFO in 1991. I also went to a boy’s only grammar school, that was founded in 1878. I was back settling my late Mother’s estate last year and visited it for old times sake.
I wish I hadn’t, it’s now about 3 times the size and co-ed. The roll of honor of old boys from both world wars that was proudly displayed in the main hall was gone and the day no longer starts with morning worship. If it did, it would have to be hindi or something else. The best school in the town and it looked like the indigenous population were in the minority.
No one ever asked us if we wanted this, it was just forced on us. I remember when idi amin kicked all the indians out of uganda. I wondered why they would come to England, why not back to india?
I had a front row seat for the begining of the enshitification of England, I’m glad I didn’t have to live the rest of it. My kids and grandkids ask me what it was like living there, I tell them it was great. They want to go and see where Grandad grew up and I tell them it’s not there anymore.
They’ve let their girls be raped and their young men killed.
Very sad. One of the greatest civilizations of all time. Great Britain has such a rich history and the citizens gave so much to the world. Poor leadership with enemies internal and external. Islam is conquering, dismantling and destroying the evidence of its greatness. It will never be great again.
As I see it, there are two possible paths ahead for the UK.
A. Soft fascism, eventually followed by Shariah Law.
B. A military coup, and harsh measures to set things right.
I’d prefer B, of course.
But I’d bet my last dollar on A.
I can’t imagine what kind of society people willing to ban knives will create. Maybe not much bettet than Sharia Law.
“Living on a Thin Line” by the Kinks. Prophetic, especially the first verse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_lG1XE8jYQ
An addition to my post #13, please.
You don’t have to declare Shariah Law for there to be Shariah Law.
All you’ve got to do is enforce it. No pork in public school menus, women must dress modesty, it’s a crime to slander Islam, etc.
More than one Western nation is already well down that path.
🙁
England is the Islamic Republic of Englandstan. Londonstan is the capital of the terrorist organizations, moving closer to the US and soon to take over England’s nuclear arsenal (NOT the soccer team!)!!!
Look mummy, there’s a minaret up in the sky.
The UK is currently run by morons, complete idiots. They actually have knife surrender bins. An English grandmother might drop her old carving knife in such a bin.
But an armed Muslim jihadist would just laugh, and keep on walking.
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