Anarchy in the U.K.

Having completed our whirlwind tour of the three contiguous countries of the United Kingdom and celebrated my 60^th birthday, I’ve got a pretty good sense of how far “Thatcher’s Bloody Britain” has evolved. I was fortunate enough to live in England at the height of punk and left it just before it devolved into House music. The 1970s was a fine time to be traveling in Britain. Today it’s a different story. Here’s my (loving) eulogy (okay it’s a rant) for bits of my youth.

Politics

Brecon was taking the opportunity to hold a by-election. Its Member of Parliament, Conservative Chris Davis, was caught fiddling about with his expenses and admitted to it. Hauled up before the beak, he was found guilty and recalled by his constituents, triggering a by-election. When we arrived in Brecon, electioneering was in full swing. Four parties were going all out for the seat. The Conservatives, Labour, the Brexit Party, and the Liberal Democrats were all vying for it. The Lib Dems are Remainers, and still the only party with an active policy to stay in the EU. The Brexit Party is busy splitting up the Conservative Party, while Labour is wandering about hoping for rehabilitation.

I paused during our evening perambulation to chat with a local Lib Dem organizer. He was very gung-ho. And rightly so. Ten days later the Lib Dems won the seat with 43% of the vote and a 14-point swing. It is significant that agrarian Wales receives around £300,000,000 a year in farm subsidies from the EU, all of which vanish immediately with a No-Deal Brexit. Losing his Brecon MP leaves the new Prime Minister, arch Brexiteer Boris Johnson, a majority of one (1) in Parliament. A hard night on the booze followed by heart trouble or a road traffic accident might topple his government. In that case Boris goes down in history as the UK’s shortest serving Prime Minister. But there are many chickens to count and many eggs as yet unhatched before that happens. Stay tuned…

Driving

Modern Britain is a wealthy place. Forty years ago, when I was young, people traveled around by hitchhiking or taking a bus. Today they own cars and jam the roads with them. As a result, England now looks a lot more like America. Shopping malls by definition suck the life blood of town centers. Worse, you need a car to get to one. England now has lots of shopping centers, all with the same 10 stores. Just like America. Milton Keynes, a new town built in the 1980s at the nadir of government central planning, is now a soulless wasteland of dual carriageways and roundabouts. Which is a shame, because some of England’s prettiest villages are in the area. Such is the power of the automobile to shape our world.

Driving in the UK used to be fun. Brits used to be good drivers. British cars used to be crap, but the roads were well cared for and traffic generally flowed smoothly. Now British cars are made by Germans and Indians and CCTV watches your every move. Traffic crawls along. Drivers no longer pay attention or know the size of their cars. Driving is, frankly, a misery. Why bother with a 200mph Aston Martin when you’re stuck in traffic moving along with the mopeds? Even if there is a break, there’s a surveillance camera and a heavy fine waiting for any and every infraction. I once drove from Salisbury to Chiswick in an hour. This week I drove from downtown Salisbury to an Aldi supermarket three miles away in the same time.

1984

Britain’s love affair with its surveillance state goes deep. George Orwell told us it would happen. Every government since 1980 has implemented his nightmare with whatever enabling technology was available. One pedestrian crossing I saw had six cameras on it. Six. The bed and breakfast we stayed in in Richmond, North Yorkshire, had two CCTV cameras trained on us, one in the guest lounge and one in the foyer. Carol thought there might have been one in our bedroom, too. Perhaps they were afraid for their doilies. It’s creepy and weird.

It gets darker. Americans, for good or ill, have the First Amendment. Brits believe there no such thing as free speech. There is no behavior that can’t be disagreed with or legislated against. Indeed, there is so much legislation that England is no longer just a nation of shopkeepers, it is a nation of braying, nannying busybodies. Just ask Jeremy Clarkson.

The Expanse

Forty years of Europe and Brits have started looking more like Bavarians. Holidaymakers in Cornwall are, shall we say, “robust“? We expect Americans to be obese, but not the English. I blame the beer. In the same way it took an American band (Nirvana) to save rock ‘n roll, American microbrews are better than their British antecedents. There I said it. And it’s true. Pub beer is warm (which is really okay), but watery compared with America’s hipster brews. Therefore Brits drink more than they should and all those empty calories have to go somewhere. It doesn’t explain why the kids are so large, other than the English tradition of drinking from the age of 12 or 13 is closely held.

Correctness

I wanted to lookup the word ‘Helch’, as in the popular graffiti ‘Boris is Helch’, on Urban Dictionary. Well, that website is blocked by my EE SIM card. To unblock access to Urban Dictionary I’d have to opt out of EE’s and every other cellphone provider’s voluntary restrictions. Those restrictions are tougher than China’s and designed to ‘keep children safe’.

All the controls have done is teach kids about VPNs and the Dark Web. But the law of unintended consequences isn’t relevant when laws like these are crafted by MPs with nothing better to do than fudge their expenses and twiddle their thumbs over Brexit. As Oscar Wilde might have said, in politics it is better to appear to be doing good, rather than actually doing good.

Follow British correctness to its illogical ends and, well, that’s a whole other rant. I’ll leave you with the news that gender stereotypes in British advertising are now considered ‘harmful’ because people are still incapable of changing channels when something they don’t like comes on the telly.

And…

Things have improved vastly in the UK. It’s now possible to take a shower with warm water. Decent coffee can be enjoyed without traveling to Italy. Food is tasty at worst and deliciously creative the rest of the time. If you’re lucky enough to own a house you’re wealthy beyond your needs. Crime is low, healthcare is free-ish, and the weather predictably changeable. There’s plenty of good bottled beer and artisan gin, and the Pound is at an all time low. So much has changed for the better in the past 40 years you really should come see for yourself.