Is Great Britain "STILL GREAT" ??

[Sunray10]

Is Great Britain "STILL GREAT" ?? This is a question that many people are asking at the moment. When I go about town I get chatting to fiends, and they say to me "Great Britain isn't "great" any more. I don't know how to reply to them or, I just try to get on to another subject. So, what do YOU think ??

[Stanley]

Tell them it's the wrong question, they should be worrying about whether it's a good place to live. I know that nowadays the name is applied to whether we are the 'greatest' but the origin of the name was the necessity to distinguish greater Britannia from its smaller neighbour across the channel, what we now call Brittany in France.

[Sunray10]

Thank you Stanley. I will tell them what you have said. Whether they'll agree is another matter, but I know what you mean.

[Whyperion]

Was Britain ever great ? Methinks it all went downhill after we lost Calais to the French.

[Sunray10]

Ha, yes you "could" be right about that Whyperion.

[Sunray10]

I have noticed that many organisations now refer to Great Britain as 'The United Kingdom'. When you fill in a petition they always call us United Kingdom. I can't really agree that [we] are all "united" are we? Scotland's gone its own way, and so as Wales in part - so we cannot really be "a United Kingdom".

[PanBiker]

That will be because it is the correct way to refer to it!

Great Britain and The United Kingdom are not the same thing, the latter includes Northern Ireland the former does not.

Project Britain - British Life and Culture

[Sunray10]

Arrrrr, I see now. Thanks Panbiker.

[cloghopper]

Believe me, when you see how other countries institutions function, Great Britain is still 'great' when viewed in perspective. From a pedantic 'geographical' point of view, I always tend to say 'I'm going to the UK' rather than 'I'm going to GB'. Your car sticker says 'GB' and your passport says 'United Kingdom of Great Britain etc.'
cheers,
cloggy

[Tizer]

Great Britain and The United Kingdom are not the same thing, the latter includes Northern Ireland the former does not

And `The British Isles' are different again. They include Republic of Ireland and the small islands

As Wikipedia says: "The British Isles are a group of islands off the north-west coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain, Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: Ireland (sometimes called the Republic of Ireland)and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom). The British Isles also include three dependencies of the British Crown: the Isle of Man and, by tradition, the Bailiwick of Jersey and the Bailiwick of Guernsey in the Channel Islands, although the latter are not physically a part of the archipelago."

When I was an editor I was taught to always be very careful to use the correct term or it can be seriously misleading (and can cause offence too). Wales of course was not the subject of any union - it just got absorbed as part of England very early on and parts of it (e.g. Pembrokeshire) are almost as English as what we all think of as England.

[Whyperion]

There could be ways of making Britain 'Great'(er). Economically one would be to re-unite Ireland freeing Westminster of an area of responsibility , and making Ireland a stronger place too , unfortunately because of long historical links this probably wont happen , even though it is more logical for the future of both nations. Politically floating off Scotland and Wales could be beneficial for England as the minor parties wont be able to exercise disproportionate power in Westminster. England could then get on doing whatever its best at. Would it work ? Different tax and benefit regimes for adjoining areas and things like public charges - prescriptions , hospital queues , university fees could result in a skewed population with the remaining European Union freedom of movement of persons and business.

The original question has probably been posed countless times before , from Any Questions on Radio 4 to the Brains Trust on the Home Service, however there have been some events that arguably have eroded the greatness of Britain.

1) The Royal Mail/Post Office - Reductions in the number of local Post Offices , Reductions in the Collection dates and times from Post Boxes and businesses, changes and reductions to delivery times.

2) The nationalised social industries - Telecoms, Gas and Electricity. ( See 'The Paradox of Choice -theres a youtube video on this ). Competition theories break down when lock in contracts , constant variation of price in favour of the supplier occur and the few suppliers seem to collude together, creating worry for older people and confusion for younger ones.

3) The High Street - losses of some of the household names of the past, Woolworths perhaps being the greatest example.

4) The weather - as a nation we found that sunny holidays could be more guaranteed in the Med and other far away places so mass holiday migration reduce the length of time inland and coastal resorts are visited, leading to some ghost towns, though gradually they are re-inventing themselves as more specialist short stay locations.

5) Immigration - The encouragement of migrants from far in more recent years was probably not a good idea, based on a false analysis of what made good socially cohesive societies where multi-culturalism already existed ( (a) it failed to note that it had taken 40 years and a couple of times of riot for things to settle down and (b) did not note that the 2nd generation of children of previous immigrants had not wholly grasped all opportunities to get fully economically involved ) , and migration from near ( the enlarged EU ) brought problems of new cultures and languages in a short space of time. [Though note over the last 200 years much of our industry and retail innovation has come from incoming migrants , refugees and asylum seekers, along with the establishment of UK bases of overseas industries]

6) The 'lazy' British - related to (5) above. Criticised for not wanting , low-paid , long hours work , immigration has been encouraged - again not noting that immigrants are more likely to accept multi-occupation housing in dense city areas paying (relatively) cheap rents , rather than attempting to try to save for deposits for there own (nice location/ size ) property and still maintain family connections. Too often political soundbites talk down the inventiveness of the British and seem to think that all our young people are lazy , benefit scroungers , in reality I don't think many are but the opportunities to develop have been limited.

7) Education - A failure to create an excellent , wholly comprehensive school system. Again too much political change and interference and not enough solid sharing of skills for the future. Having said that could any parent achieve the level at say GCSE their children are getting to ?

8) Emigration - Ironically it could be argued that the best of British made good by getting out of here. The colonies were seen as lands of opportunity for both the advantaged land holders of Britain and the disadvantaged underclasses, plundering the lands of the Americas , extracting value and resources from Africa and India , trading with China and Japan , re-creating Britain beyond the seas in Australia and New Zealand all areas that are now less accessible than in the numbers of previous centuries.

9) Economic Performance - one could look at most figures from the 1950s onwards and relatively as a whole Britain's economic performance has always been worse than any other country perhaps caused by wrong investment decisions by both banks and governments.

10) Chimneys. Could a regression analysis/ cross-section analysis between economic performance and the number of functioning [ or indeed standing ] chimneys be drawn over the past 200 years ?
10a) Tramways. Ditto.

11) Was the wrong question asked ? Given that Britain is still an attractive destination for many people of the world , we must either be doing something right or our Goldilocks economy ( we still have it even if it is only 95% of what it was ) means that we are still on the good side of more than mediocre.

12) Where will the future take us ? Toward even more of our needs provided by the big 5 retailers , industrial sized farms or a more diverse smaller scale economic trading ?

[Sunray10]

Thank you all for your input on this question. In particular, Wyperion for your informative work. All very interesting.

[Whyperion]

Related to one of the other topics . The loss of Matron in Hospitals and the District Nurse , and the Doctor that smoked 80 a day and still visited you at anytime of day/night to dispense some brown liquor to cure all ills.

Related to one of Stanley's other posts , perhaps the view in Nelson ( reading the Town Centre Survey Report too ) , is a little backward looking to when large employment was sustained and many people found fulfillment in that mass employment ( and holidays ) , with things more diverse and less working together for common cause the present looks at best uncertain , and possibly worse than the past. I am reminded of the coal mining valleys of South Wales where after the closure of the mines, the valleys were reverted to green in some cases , and are slowly inventing themselves mainly as nice places to live for the commute to Cardiff and Newport. Its taking time and some are progressing better than others ( Merthyr Tydfill being perhaps the one with the worst remaining problems ). In some ways Nelson is a comparable place, but without an easy commute to the larger places like Manchester.

Maybe this Radio4 point of view has a point . http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/rad ... -2100b.mp3