The strange case of Britain’s demise • Hacker News Board

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#141

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:05 PM UTC

RachelF wrote: post #131

bsnnkv wrote: post #10

I recently posted some of my feelings related to watching the UK post-2019 from the US as a Brit that left as part of the ongoing brain drain.[1] I received my Green Card since that post and I've booked my flights for a visit to the UK for early next year. Mostly I just want to share how sad reading this article made me feel this morning. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33682030

Yes, the UK has supplied competent people to the world via emmigration for a long time. One wonders if the average intelligence of the place is going down?

[deleted]

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#142

Post by xwdv » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #132

grog454 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is day 0. Only looking forwards, how do you thrive economically in the 21st century under these current conditions with the cards you have to play Counterpoint: how do you avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and learning from them by pretending they never happened?

Not pretending/perceiving that the memetic/reductive/imprecise/misinformative/ incorrect way we describe them is accurate would be a good start. Human communication in 2022 is a train wreck, and there are plentiful artifacts of that in this very thread, in this much more intelligent than average community .

It seems to me that Human communication declines the more it becomes divorced from the threat of physical violence.

The peak decline will be when the possibility of consequences (social, physical, legal, financial…) for communicating anything reaches absolute zero.

Human communication is a great tool but must be kept in check, the goal of communication is to produce useful outcomes, not merely deliver messages and opinions.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#143

Post by JJMcJ » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:07 PM UTC

rr808 wrote: post #138

I think its just a return to normal service after a spectacular period in the 90s and early 2000s. Back then everything was close to perfect, economy, music, politics UK became the best at everything. Now its kinda back to how it was in post war era which is fine but not great.

North Sea oil money didn't hurt.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#144

Post by nine_zeros » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:07 PM UTC

As an outsider, but generally appreciative of British culture's influence on me, I was (and continue to be) flabbergasted with Britain's inward outlook.

For the vast majority of British history, Brits were only wealthy when they traded outside. The trade took various forms such as East India company, trading outposts, industrial trade outside the island, colonization, financial capitalization etc. Britain ruled the seas (and still does behind America), and established English as the lingua franca of world business.

Yet, people keep voting for inwardness. Brexit, tax cuts for the rich, stopping skilled/semi-skilled immigration. This is completely and astonishingly backwards.

The only way Britain survives the competitive world is by trading more and making itself a hub of education, engineering, finance and global businesses. Constantly voting for restrictive trade, restrictive borders and disconnect from the rest of the world takes Britain closer to North Korea than to USA, China, Singapore, Australia, Canada - who are all trying to forge more relationships with the world.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#145

Post by dignick » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:09 PM UTC

Like in the US, democracy in the United Kingdom is faltering. Our first past the post electoral system means the Tories can retain power with a third of the (active) electorate voting for them. Labour believes first past the post serves them well, but it doesn’t, because they would have been leading a coalition government in the last several elections under Proportional Representation. Instead it requires Labour to be a very broad house, meaning Starmer struggles to take strong positions on anything because he doesn’t want to lose votes from different groups (mainly from the centre right based on his recent statements). In a proportional voting system each party can be more focussed on having a distinct set of policies and beliefs, which can be debated openly with other parties without fear of alienating a large proportion of their base. It is clear that this is the core problem in the UK, Brexit was a symptom of this issue because people felt their vote actually counted and they wanted to protest against the neoliberal establishment. Now that the implications are becoming clear, a majority want to return to the EU. If Labour win the next election their position will be very fragile, and I’m unsure they will get more than one term.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#146

Post by notahacker » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:10 PM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #54

prof-dr-ir wrote: post #35

As a former inhabitant of England, I always thought that those in charge suffered from a uniquely wide 'competence gap' which I would like to define as the difference between someone's self-perceived competence and someone's actual competence. (The term is probably useful more broadly...) Maybe it is the historically class-based society alluded to in the article, but it always stunned me how those at the top, and in…

A competence gap is a very polite way to put it. In Britain we live in an inverted meritocracy which rewards smug stupidity, elevates bullshit, while punishing and marginalising our most talented people. I thought this was going to be another cynical Economist hit piece like the earlier "Europe not pulling its weight" [1] but was surprised how on-the-money it is. Some well chosen quotes; "A family with the wrong memb…

> George Carlin put it best I think. He said the definition of real terror is waking up in mid-life and realising that all those pricks you went to school with are now running the country.

Not too worried about that; didn't attend Eton. :D

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#147

Post by amanaplanacanal » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:10 PM UTC

recuter wrote: post #38

Ben Page, the boss of Ipsos, a global research firm, points to what he terms the “loss of the future”, common across the West but acute in Britain. In 2008, as the financial crisis struck, only 12% of Britons thought youngsters would have a worse quality of life than their parents, Mr Page notes. Now that figure is 41%. As elsewhere, people worry about immigration and feel threatened by globalisation. All this makes…

The end of the fossil fuel era is going to hit everybody. Making sure you are ready for that seems like a good start.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#148

Post by mytailorisrich » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:10 PM UTC

jemmyw wrote: post #135

mytailorisrich wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corbyn and McDonnell were essentially communists and therefore unelectable. Blair took the realistic route: Socialism does not work, let's have a market economy create wealth that can then be used to finance social programs. A flavour a social democracy. I think a reason Corbyn was so popular among the young is that enough time has passed so that this generation has no idea what socialist countries in Europe were act…

They weren't essentially communists, that is taking the Tory press talking point. They were further left than any other recent popular politicians. Left in the form of worker rights, unionism that sort of thing, not communism. Given how far we've gone into a low wage and poor rights economy I don't think a hard left leadership would have been that bad, especially as it would have been tempered by the rest anyway. How…

Not at all. They even wrote it in their manifesto.

What do you call nationalising companies and handing control to the workers? (It's in the 2019 manifesto)

That's my point: people, especially the young, don't even recognise it when described under a microscopically thin veneer. That's very worrying.

They didn't hide it, either. McDonnell did say clearly that he was a Marxist [1] and Corbyn is a socialist in the very Soviet sense.

[1] https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2018/05/how-john-mcdon...

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#149

Post by gghhzzgghhzz » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:10 PM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #71

equalsione wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the outside looking in, was the opposition worse? On the one hand, labour seem really similar to the Tories - disunited, dogma over common sense and oddly out of touch. Their policies _were_ opposite to Tory policies but they are trying to be an opposition so… Yes Corbin was a leftie (corduroy elbow patches and all) but he’s a leader of a left wing party. It’s like complaining that Thatcher was a bit right-wing.…

Corbyn is a hardcore anticapitalist whose aim is a socialist society (soviet block style). He is in favour of Brexit, too, for this reason. Same goes for McDonnell, a Marxist. That's very far left and is opposed by most people including in the Labour Party. Basically, those guys were the Communist Party and unsurprisingly people did prefer to keep the Tories... It was the same in the 80s when Labour was essentially u…

The 2017 Corbyn manifesto was praised by Polly Toynbee of all people for goodness sake!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/11/leaked...

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#150

Post by skippyboxedhero » Sat, Dec 17, 2022, 9:11 PM UTC

jtrip wrote: post #130

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't (the indicator for this is that Reeves is saying exactly the same thing). It is hard to be brief but: * Financial services - totally fucked, most of the VC funding in the UK comes from overseas investors because pension and insurance rules (that were largely adopted from Europe) mean that they have to own large amounts of govt bonds...the recent problems indicate how wise that was. Everything isn't working:…

> (if people from outside the UK can believe it, some local councils are introducing rules which mean you will be fined if you exit your neighbourhood in a car to go to another part of the same city). Can you give an article or city name for this?

Oxford. Another town announced they were looking at this. I would also point out, this is one measure in a long string of similar measures: LEZs, that wasn't enough so now they are doing ULEZs, banning cars from some cities (York)...near me the council put a traffic calming measure near a school, this was so effective that the school was unable to receive food deliveries...all this stuff came in during Covid (my local council went into an "emergency session" during Covid, passed all these measures without votes or public enquiries...funnily enough, these were all measures that they had proposed before Covid but which failed public consultations).