Britain is a deeply divided country. Inner London is the richest part of the entire European Union, while Cornwall and Wales benefit from the regional aid dispensed by Brussels. As John B often points out if you took London out of the picture then inequality in hte UK would be entirely normal. For, without London, [...]
Entries Tagged as 'The English'
Understanding UK inequality
April 15th, 2013 · 38 Comments
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Muddy Waters explains the English
April 4th, 2013 · 3 Comments
“the goddammed English got their heads up their ass”. It does rather explain the place, doesn’t it?
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A slightly dim woman here
March 25th, 2013 · 48 Comments
Slam! That’s the sound of doors banging shut on my fantasies. I’d long dreamt of spending what I refer to euphemistically as “the next phase of my life” in a sun-splashed Mediterranean villa, feasting on a diet of olive oil, pasta and Campari, sending postcards to envious oldies stuck here. In this Somerset-Maugham-meets-The-Best-Exotic-Marigold-Hotel scenario, I [...]
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A little note for the colonial cousins
March 22nd, 2013 · 18 Comments
Something I noticed when living on the West Coast of your delightful land. Accents don’t really change very much over distance. It is indeed different in some of the urban areas of the east, but out west there’s not much change. The UK is somewhat different: Miss Ridley says her favourite saying is ‘now then’, [...]
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Yes, we know this, and?
March 14th, 2013 · 1 Comment
The data is likely to deepen concerns about the widening gulf between the capital’s “bubble” economy and the rest of the country. Between 2007 and 2011, London’s economy grew by 12.4pc, despite the painful impact of the financial crisis on the City. That rate compared to growth elsewhere which ranged between 2.3pc in the East [...]
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Wales gives me the shits too
March 2nd, 2013 · 5 Comments
Queen forced to cancel trip to Swansea after being struck down with suspected gastroenteritis
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The culture that is England
March 1st, 2013 · 9 Comments
For the last 156 years the Britannia Coconut Dancers have blackened their faces and donned skirts for their annual dance through the Lancashire town of Bacup to ward off evil spirits in a tradition recalling the area’s mining history. … The Nutters’ dance traditionally takes place on Easter Saturday over a 12-hour period, taking in [...]
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A life in service
February 9th, 2013 · 4 Comments
This is an interesting obit. And it shows up one of the oft unappreciated details of the way that the “life in service” worked. It wasn’t actually a life at all. Florence Georgina Copeland was born on December 8 1912 in West Ham, London, the daughter of a Billingsgate fish porter who was killed in [...]
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Why The English Win Wars
February 4th, 2013 · 1 Comment
In from our Antipodean evidence collection branch: The Dutch themselves regarded the whole thing with delighted astonishment. They marvelled that, at such a time, Heads of Departments and members of the Board of Admiralty should amuse themselves writing rhymes and deal with a serious matter in such an apparently frivolous way. One of the Dutch [...]
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Soaring inequality strikes again
February 3rd, 2013 · 10 Comments
After school tutors priced out the grasp of middle class parents Middle class parents who want to prepare their children for school entrance tests face being priced out of the market by the super-wealthy who are willing to do “almost anything” to secure the best tutors. I do tend to think that this sort of [...]
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Well, yes George. Rather depends upon who you think is the ruling class though
January 29th, 2013 · 10 Comments
Secession from the concerns and norms of the rest of society characterises any well established elite. Our own ruling caste, schooled separately, brought up to believe in justifying fairytales, lives in a world of its own, from which it can project power without understanding or even noticing the consequences. A removal from the life of [...]
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Jeremy Paxman’s “The English”
January 26th, 2013 · 10 Comments
Well using a British Council library you read what you can get. But I’ve been astonished by two points in Paxman’s book “The English”. He makes much of the way that The English (and you can hear the double capitals in his tone) prefer a house with a garden to a flat. This is entirely [...]
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Impressive numbers, eh?
January 23rd, 2013 · 40 Comments
Office for National Statistics figures obtained by Mr de Bois show that in the ten years to 2011, a total of 3,599,000 people permanently left the UK. Contrary to the perception of the typical emigrants being older people retiring to a life in the sun, the figures show that 1,963,000 of those who left were [...]
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Understanding the Hobbitt Through Chesterton
December 17th, 2012 · 18 Comments
The Dude has a point here: The company of Dwarves isn’t the hand-picked band of mighty warriors that the Fellowship of the Ring was, but ordinary (if short) blokes united by faith and loyalty. This is a thread which runs through all Tolkein’s work: the idea that free people thrust into extraordinary situations will do [...]
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Haven’t we all got richer?
November 21st, 2012 · 35 Comments
Interesting little number: a typical home in 1952, but at that time around two thirds of properties had no hot water. It’s around and about true, inflation adjusted, measured by GDP per capita, that the UK in 1952 was as rich as China is today. Those who say that it’s not got better over the [...]
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Saving what for the nation?
November 7th, 2012 · 22 Comments
White Cliffs of Dover ‘saved for the nation’ after National Trust pays £1.2m to secure mile-long stretch from private owner What ignorant tosspottery is this? Anyone think the owner was going to pack it up and ship it to China or something?
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‘Mercans don’t understand Brits
November 5th, 2012 · 13 Comments
The City of London is planning to make a serious upgrade to the street lighting system in Westminster over the next four years. I don’t think so really, do you?
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Talking about butlers
October 20th, 2012 · 11 Comments
Are you being served? The return of the British butler Traditional manservants are very much in demand – but not by the landed gentry Look, if you’re going to talk about the servants couldn’t you at least distinguish between the butler and the valet? The butler is the manager of the servants. The valet or [...]
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The Guardian doesn’t quite get titles, does it?
October 12th, 2012 · 6 Comments
He is married to the daughter of Viscount Matthew Ridley, linking him both to eight generations of Tory MPs and the prominent climate change sceptic Matt Ridley, his brother-in-law. The Ridley’s are a little difficult as they all seem to be called Matthew White Ridley. But one is never “Viscount Matthew Ridley”. One might be [...]
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Jebus, bit early
October 11th, 2012 · 2 Comments
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