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Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

ukfoundations.co

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Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#21

Post by matthewmorgan »

JCM9 wrote: post #4

The UK was, and to some senses still is, a culture that strongly values who your parents are vs what you’ve personally accomplished. The head of state is the child of the previous head of state. The House of Lords is still a thing. Prestige based on family lineage is considered a big deal. In the US and other parts of Europe it’s very different. People value you a lot more because of what you’ve done vs who you are a…

Not sure who could be down voting you, because you're right. If your parents didn't send you to the right school to learn the right plummy accent, you don't stand much chance.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#24

Post by trabant00 »

Type of article: country X or company Y or city Z has it bad for such and such decisions, policies, culture. My rule of thumb for these kind of articles: if they don't mention external factors they are not worth reading.

An entity's situation is influenced by much more than its agency. There's competition from other similar entities, historical circumstances, geography, weather, happenstance, the list goes on and on and on. We like to think that everything depends on what we decide when in reality it's far from it.

These observations have been triggered in myself by reading history. Leadership is always blamed in difficult situations even if they were not (or not completely) responsible for the situation.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#25

Post by glimshe »

benrutter wrote: post #18

Really interesting and well researched read. The main take away seems to be that Britain has seen a lack of state funded infrastructure development and it's paying the price for this, especially in the energy sector. I'm obviously oversimplifying, but I think that's an ok rough summary. I think it's well argued and evidenced in the article, but I'm interested in this question: why isn't the US stagnating? My understa…

The US has a more robust system for supplying infrastructure through private investment - including in the energy sector.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#26

Post by widdershins »

JCM9 wrote: post #4

The UK was, and to some senses still is, a culture that strongly values who your parents are vs what you’ve personally accomplished. The head of state is the child of the previous head of state. The House of Lords is still a thing. Prestige based on family lineage is considered a big deal. In the US and other parts of Europe it’s very different. People value you a lot more because of what you’ve done vs who you are a…

I don't think that's really true, outside some niche cultural arenas. Sure, if you're at a posh member's club or a party of aristocrats people might be impressed by your lineage.

I would concede that in politics a degree from Oxbridge has an outsized cachet, and those universities traditionally recruited from elite private schools. However, this is diminishing over time, both because those institutions are proactively recruiting from a wider base, and because people are pointing out the unrepresentitive composition of political parties, which then self-correct to stay politically relevent.

The hereditary parts of the House of Lords are increasingly unimportant, and the Lords is of minor importance to the political process anyway. Royalty has been politically vestigial for more than a century.

But in industry and most business spheres your lineage is unimportant. Just like those other parts of the world you mentioned, it's personal accomplishment that matters.

Britain has big problems, but I think archaic veneration for family lineage is only a small force within them.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#27

Post by t43562 »

The way rail project costs are totalled up is different from one country to another -what costs are included and excluded.

In other words this website is making enormous oversimplifications and not bothering to explain or justify them.

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#28

Post by flir »

gmac wrote: post #11
JCM9 wrote: post #4

The UK was, and to some senses still is, a culture that strongly values who your parents are vs what you’ve personally accomplished. The head of state is the child of the previous head of state. The House of Lords is still a thing. Prestige based on family lineage is considered a big deal. In the US and other parts of Europe it’s very different. People value you a lot more because of what you’ve done vs who you are a…

> Prestige based on family lineage is considered a big deal Are you in the UK? The monarchy and House of Lords are an obvious anachronism and they need abolishing [1], but I would say it's a very small minority who care who you parents are/were (mainly people who think their own parents are/were a big deal) — and a similar small minority who might also ask "which school did you go to?". [1] e.g. https://www.sortition…

I suggest this exercise: Pick a random person from Queen Victoria's court. Look up where their descendants are today.

Chances are, they're still running the country in some capacity. (The example I'm thinking of was a Duchess. Her descendant was a beak at Eton who taught Boris and the haunted pencil).

Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated

#29

Post by tommy5dollar »

misja111 wrote: post #12
steve_gh wrote: post #5

Long essay. TL;DR the UK planning system is too restrictive and is stopping investment. However, some of the comparisons made don't really stack up. Yes. France has a better housing supply, and roughly the same area. But France has over twice the area, and under half the population density, even before you account for the almost uninhabited mountainous areas in Wales, Northern England and Scotland. So our populations…

It's hard to find any European country that didn't have any government projects that went wildly over budget or were very much delayed. So I don't think this is a UK specific problem, and it doesn't explain why Britain has stagnated compared to most of the EU.

Transport projects seem to be particularly expensive these days in Anglo countries compared to European countries. For instance, we currently have a planned short tunnel in the UK (under the Thames but not in London itself) where the actual planning process has so far cost $400m.
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