Ian,

I agree with everything you've written with regards to modern Britain. It's been a hell of a lot worse in my lifetime.

 I was born and raised in Scotland, educated in Wales and have lived in the north of England for nearly 10 years. The current Government is smug and arrogant but the previous Tory regime ripped the heart out of this country, in my opinion. Their heartless contempt for the working class, Clause 28 , the Poll Tax and their commitment to sleaze and lies made the current lot the only sane option in '97.

edited for clarity

Yes, Bill, and Martin lives nearby.

Like I said, it's like anywhere else, and it's the way you look at it. Hunt for shit, you'll find shit. Doesn't mean the world's made of shit, and you don't have to eat it.

IMP.

You've nailed it, Ian. I try not to judge a whole people or country from what I read in the papers or see on 24 hour news stations. Surely everyone's lives or situations aren't as fraught or grim as they are sometimes presented to us?

I applaud the Americans I see on this board ( and elsewhere ) who stick up for their country and fellow citizens, often in circumstances I would find difficult to do so. I don't live there so don't presume to know. I'm glad to live in the UK and don't find it being dismissed as a nation of "nihilistic whiners" neither accurate or helpful.

edited to make sense  

Not to pick on Bill, but to consider some of his specific complaints about Britain:

I saw a news programme recently in which one item on how pension money wasn't going to be enough was followed by another on how many of us are failing to claim all the tax benefits to which we're entitled, and I thought, just as when I read Bill's post, "It's the same money!" You can't complain simultaneously about taxation and the quality of the services it pays for: the money's got to come from somewhere. Pretending it pays for idlers ignores the national health service and the existence of those roads complained about. Speed cameras "fleece" people who drive illegally fast, who are criminals - the same ones who get let off lightly, apparently. It's easy to moan like a tabloid newspaper; it's harder to be responsible about questions like taxation and criminal behaviour. If you don't speed, speed cameras aren't your problem, and suggesting you can't tell what the speed limit is is, frankly, lying.

One of the things very wrong with this country is the tabloid press. They lie, they're packed with hypocrisy, they encourage exactly the whingeing culture JB thinks is all we have, and everything Bill says is said in them too. Life here is more complex and less miserable than the Press and, no offence, Bill will tell you.

IMP.

Ian: I really feel bad for how much more widespread the tabloid press is in the U.K. Here in the States, it's really kind of annoying and harmless but doesn't really do any lasting damage to anyone. (At least not lately.) The National Enquirer really isn't taken seriously by the majority of Americans.

In the U.K., the tabloid press killed Princess Diana. And the stuff the print on a weekly basis would get them sued for libel in the States in a New York moment. And the public BELIEVES it!

Sadly I have to mostly agree with Bill when it comes to England and what it has come to. To blame Thatcherism is naive though. The rot set in during the 70's (before Thatcher) and certainlly carried on throughout the Thatcher years and has not stopped. If anything it has accelerated more under Blair than Thatcher. Sadly the more rights people are given and the more choices they have the more likely they are to F*&% things up for themselves.

I think a lot of the problems we have have little to do with politics. The remark made about people not watching the same TV shows as each other is not as daft as it sounds. England no longer has any real sense of community anymore. I feel that the fact that pretty much no one goes to church anymore (as an Athiest I hate to say that) has not helped. One thing that Churches do, do well is bring people together. Further to that people no longer stay put in one city. At my place of work I am am the only one in my department who was born in the city I work in. My neighbours are not from my city neither is my partner. People no longer have a shared sense of themselves everything is based on the individual and not on the community.

Our biggest problem at the moment though is that if people do anything wrong in this life from the most basic thing as littering through to murder we can no longer deal with it in a manner that the public can understand or get behind. In my newspaper this week one person was fined £75.00 for feeding a pigeon a chip and another was fined £50.00 for maiming a person for life in a hit and run accident (the driver was not even insured). Child rapists can get sentences so low they can be back on the streets in less than 6 years. The average man in the street has as much to fear from the police as he does from the criminal it seems these days as the generally law abiding have as much to fear from them them as the average crook.

To top all this off though we have a human rights act that does far more harm than good and out of control illegal immigration.

In the U.K., the tabloid press killed Princess Diana. And the stuff the print on a weekly basis would get them sued for libel in the States in a New York moment. And the public BELIEVES it!

.................

Crap. The press might be scum a lot of the time but this death was down to a driver to drunk to do his job.

 The rot set in during the 70's (before Thatcher) and certainlly carried on throughout the Thatcher years and has not stopped. If anything it has accelerated more under Blair than Thatcher.

***

Or maybe we're just all getting older.

***

Or maybe we're just all getting older

........................

I think it has more to do with some people caring far more about rights than responsabilities.

Regarding speed cameras,believe it or not i have a totally clean license(25 years of driving),it irks me that a person can be fined for driving perfectly safely say doing 35 in a 30 mph zone,but the growing number of drivers who drive carelessly or downright dangerously are ignored because the police traffic patrols are virtually non-existent because of cameras.If they are for safety why are a good number hidden behind walls etc on roads that don`t really need them?

The Labour government was supposed to be by and for the working man,now they are more concerned with the human rights of scroungers and criminals.Case in point,guy steals car,is chased by police,he scales building and gets on roof,he then spends the day dismantling the chimney and hurling bricks onto the street below causing thousands in damage to the roof and cars below,rather than leave him to come down when the summer sun gets too much for him,they acually get him a KFC meal and coke because they arte worried about his human rights,never mind the fact that the human rights of the building and car owners are being breached by this moron!

Never mind the tabloid press,I see the examples all around me in day to day life.

Well, the "KFC and a coke" story - I'm guessing that while they had him cornered on the roof he was technically in their custody and so they had a legal obligation to feed him.

Personally I like the fact that in Britain public bodies follow the letter of the law. You can argue that the law should be changed - and if you feel that strongly about it you can lobby your MP or something... but I think it's a good thing that the police (especially) don't just ignore laws they might not like.

(I just got 3 points for speeding after having had a clean licence for 20-odd years. Driving to a meeting in North Wales.)