Light On Dark Water

Are Things Really This Bad in Britain?

Peter Hitchens says they're very, very bad. I would be interested in hearing the views of anyone who is there or in contact with people who are. 

Update: Theodore Dalyrmple thinks the same. But of course he would–like P. Hitchens, he's been playing Jeremiah for years.

I may have mentioned this before, but in case I haven't: one of my children spent some time in France (mostly)  teaching English, maybe eight or ten years ago now. I expected that he would like the English students that he met, but he didn't care much for them as a group, and said they were  known as "the drunken English" on the continent because that's all most of them were interested in.

Maclin Horton

24 responses to “Are Things Really This Bad in Britain?”

  1. your resident film & theology expert

    A few years ago some people put up pictures of Saturday night mayhem in a high street in GB. The riots last week were that Saturday night mayhem x 100. So yes, it is that bad.

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  2. Janet

    Reminds me of Children of Men.
    AMDG

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  3. your resident film & theology expert

    I have a relatively liberal friend, a hulking big guy, very muscular, who moved back home to NZ a year or so before I too left Aberdeen for the UK. He said he found the kids walking to school outside his flat terrifying.

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  4. your resident film & theology expert

    for the USA! PD James wrote from her experience.

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  5. Mac

    That experience of being chronically and justifiably afraid in certain places (if you have to be in them at all) is certainly part of life in the US.
    I was wondering not so much if the riots were that bad–I’m sure they were–but if the general cultural decline is that bad.

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  6. godescalc

    I saw the “Children of Men” film about a year ago. The whole security-state-lockdown vibe, with all the signs and public announcements and everything, was so Britishly done I felt homesick watching it. (Except for the “homeland security” mention – an obvious anti-Bush jibe, horribly out of place.)
    (Mercifully I don’t know anyone close to the riots back home, so I don’t know how bad it actually is.)

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  7. Mac

    I remember thinking there were several things in it that struck me as anti-Bush jibes and seemed out of place since the movie was supposed to be set some time in the future. The movie is only loosely based on the novel.

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  8. godescalc

    It wasn’t so much the anti-Bush stuff as the aesthetic mismatch – “homeland security” is too American a phrase, I can’t imagine a British government using it.

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  9. Mac

    I don’t remember now what struck me as anachronistic. A lot of Americans, including me, would say that “Department of Homeland Security” doesn’t sound American–it sounds Orwellian, fascist/communist. After almost 10 years it still gives me the creeps. Not only the name, either, but the idea. And now we’ll never get rid of it unless some really fundamental change happens.
    It’s dismaying that the second item that its web site suggests you might be looking for is “career opportunities”. http://www.dhs.gov/index.shtm

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  10. Janet

    I was talking about the wild bands of the youngest generation in Children of Men and they were pretty much the same in book and movie. There are things in the article, though, that are really reminiscent of the movie.
    WRT the Department of Homeland Security, I have been really amazed in working with Immigration for the past 6 years. They are by far the most friendly and helpful government agency that I have ever encountered. Of course, I’m on the administrative end of things, but that doesn’t always help.
    AMDG

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  11. Mac

    I don’t really remember that part. INS used to be a department on its own. They were probably not thrilled about being incorporated into DHS.

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  12. Janet

    I remember reading an article in Time about 20 years ago–probably longer than that–that predicted that something exactly like this would happen in the United States. I wish I could remember something more about it.
    AMDG

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  13. Mac

    One sorta wonders why it hasn’t. All the descriptions make the British situation sound very similar to some of our inner cities. The LA riots were this bad, much worse in fatalities, but that’s been almost 20 years ago now.

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  14. Janet

    I’m wondering, though, if the article I’m talking about wasn’t arguing for more of the kind of welfare state that Hitchens is blaming. I couldn’t find the article in a brief search, but I did find an article talking about riots like this in London somewhere around 1986.
    AMDG

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  15. Mac

    That’s the reflexive response from a lot of people. Like this lady.

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  16. Marianne

    I expected that he would like the English students that he met, but he didn’t care much for them as a group, and said they were known as “the drunken English” on the continent because that’s all most of them were interested in.
    When I moved to New Zealand in 2007, I was shocked by the periodic drunken sprees of university students (mostly broken bottles and burning sofas in the streets), and by their being tolerated, almost encouraged, as a rite of passage, or something. But then in 2009, one of them turned into a riot, with businesses and people being attacked and lots of fires set. After a day of it, the police finally decided to get tough. Since then, no riots but the students still do their usual heavy weekend drinking and Monday morning the streets are filled with broken glass.

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  17. Mac

    As I’m sure you know, American college students are no slouches in the binge-drinking department, but it sounds like the English, and I guess the NZers, have a more violent edge. There’s a bar district in this city and I don’t think I would feel unsafe there on a weekend night, though I might feel out of place. I certainly didn’t give it a thought last Monday when my wife and I were down there watching Tree of Life, but that was a Monday.

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  18. Louise

    Theodore Dalrymple probably has good reason for taking a Jeremian attitude since he mostly only worked with the welfare/lower classes (I think).
    The thing which bugs me about lefty types who think the poor little poppets (the rioters) just need more hand-outs is that they will yammer on about “equality” etc and (especially here in Oz) will insist that there is no such thing as class, but they all live in the posh suburbs and will not deign to even drive out to the more “working class” areas. So, you know, it just looks like they’re deluded.
    Here in Oz, we’re so egalitarian that we don’t have classes, we have “socio-economic groups.” (Is that b/c we sound more egalitarian if we just use longer words?)

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  19. Mac

    Yes, Dalyrymple mentions that often (his experience with the underclass). It seems to have had a thoroughly dispiriting effect on him.
    We have the same class thing here. Our conventional liberals are by and large affluent and educated, are “compassionate” via the government toward the poor from a comfortable distance, and hold the middle class in contempt except when circumstances allow them to regard the middle class as victims.

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  20. Paul

    The ”Daily Mail” is presumably one of the last bastions of public morality, as the range of other stories advertised in the sidebar would seem to demonstrate.

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  21. Paul

    The only thing about Children of Men at all futuristic is the idea of worldwide infertility. The rest (the rioting, the camps) seems to be more in the line of current affairs only ever-so-slightly exaggerated.

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  22. resident film & theology expert

    Hitchens was at a conference in Oxford I attended a few years back. He told the largely conservative Christian audience they should not allow their kids to watch TV. He was roundly barracked by the audience for working for the Daily Mail. His counter argument was of course that if he didn’t, no one good would do so.

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  23. Mac

    I admit I was embarrassed to be linking to the DM. I decided just to ignore, and hope everyone else would ignore, the other stories & pictures, the way you ignore your dog peeing on the bushes when you’re talking to your neighbor.

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  24. Louise

    Yes, Dalyrymple mentions that often (his experience with the underclass). It seems to have had a thoroughly dispiriting effect on him.
    I know it would have a dispiriting effect on me.

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