Emigration From England?

Posted by: Sloop John B on 17 May 2006

Hi all,

I was surprised and a little shocked at the replies to the "what do you think of her majesty's government" thread.

Several of you expressed a wish to emigrate.
Up to a couple of years ago emigration was a fact of life in Ireland. The population in 1950 was about half of that in 1850. It's only in the last few years that this decline has been halted and now we have nett immigration from other (generally poorer) countries.

Ireland being part of England's colonial history, probably has a love hate relationship with England. (If your are in an Irish pub during the world cup not many will be shouting good on ya Beckam - unless he's sent off - but that's another story) Most of us have looked enviously to England at times, at it's cosmopolitan nature, it's great engineering feats, it's strong democracy. Now these views of mine would have been formed in the Thatcher years (where I would have been on Paul Weller's and Billy Bragg's side). The explosion then of music with the clash, the police, madness, the specials, Costello and countless others was amazing. That's the England I like to think is still there, with the possibility of this happening again.


Yeats once wrote of Ireland

Romantic Ireland's dead and gone
it's with O'Leary in the Grave

only to revise his opinion a mere 3 years later.

Do a fair majority of you truly believe England (I'm deliberately not using Britain - Scotland or Wales could win the world cup and we'd all be thrilled - the post colonial syndrome again) is going (gone) down the tubes with no hope of redemption?

Do none of you feel you can do anything about it?


Are you still proud to be English?



SJB
Posted on: 17 May 2006 by Earwicker
quote:
Originally posted by Polarbear:
Its hard work here but overall it is very enjoyable and it is what you make of it

Sadly, it isn't always what YOU make of it. Others fuck it up for you, and it is often inherently shite anyway.

EW
Posted on: 17 May 2006 by Polarbear
Well thats one way of looking at it, yes shite happens but get up and get on with it.
Posted on: 17 May 2006 by Derek Wright
Compare the London Eye and the Millenium Dome.

Eye built in the teeth of government opposition

Dome micro managed and destroyed by politicians and civil servants.

The Eye is a success, the Dome is and was a gross money sink. For which you have to thank the self agrandising politicians that wanted to be associated with it. The Dome is a the 20th centuries camel (designed by a committee)

The millenium tower in Portsmouth comes a pretty good second to the dome for the vast overun in costs and the fact that it opened 995 years early for the next millenium.
Posted on: 17 May 2006 by JonR
...and then there's the Scottish Parliament building...
Posted on: 17 May 2006 by Steve2701
I was one of the early ones in the post who said he was looking to go, and I still am. I also said (I think) that the problem was where to go..

I adore parts of this country. I belong to groups who actively fight to keep the countryside alive and as it should be kept.. clean rivers, rubbish free etc. I work hard for it, and it is so demoralising to see projects like a 3/4 million restoration of 1/2 mile of waterway through an urban area UTTERLY DESTROYED by local inhabitants. Why? It was done to make their area a better place and somewhere to be proud of. In Fredricks thread on pessimism, I see great areas that are in tune with this thread. A complete lack of RESPECT has spread like cancer through the country. I see it daily, and am utterly fed up with it. So, is there actually any place on this planet that we actually haven't f****d up and still has humans who know the meaning of respect? I somehow doubt it, but if I find it, dont expect me to tell anyone, or hear from me in a hurry.
Posted on: 17 May 2006 by Bob McC
In Victorian Manchester the river Irwell was so thick and crusted with filth and sewage and rubbish it was reported that you could walk across it and would die if you fell into it. Not like that now.
I get really annoyed by the moaners that go on about how 'its not like in their day', when the truth is society has never been richer, fairer or healthier than it is today.
Posted on: 17 May 2006 by Rasher
quote:
Originally posted by Steve2701:
I work hard for it, and it is so demoralising to see projects like a 3/4 million restoration of 1/2 mile of waterway through an urban area UTTERLY DESTROYED by local inhabitants. Why?

When I was in my early 20's I was structural engineer on a large regeneration of a council housing estate. During a site meeting one day the architect was describing the mortar colour he wanted for the garden walls, but thought it easier if we just got up and went to the previous stage to look at the houses we had finished 6 months earlier. We were gathered around a section of wall and they were discussing the mortar colour, but I couldn't see past the sprayed graffiti all over it. I just thought..why the fuck are we bothering talking about mortar colour?...For what exactly? It took a long time for me to believe in what I was doing again after that.
Posted on: 17 May 2006 by u5227470736789439
quote:
Originally posted by bob mccluckie:
Frederik
What revisionist tosh!
Believe me unattended cars were being nicked left right and centre in Manchester in 1976!


I am talking of the Malvern or Hereford of 1976. In fairness these places were somewhat behind the times in their descent to towards what I am describing! Fredrik
Posted on: 17 May 2006 by Guido Fawkes
quote:
Originally posted by bob mccluckie:
... I get really annoyed by the moaners ...


Moaning about moaners, you never would have done that in the good old days. Smile
Posted on: 18 May 2006 by Rasher
Mick is right:
We dominated modern music from the 1960's onwards. We had Churchill defeat Hitler. We started the industrial revolution. We have London, the greatest city in the world. We have a history the Americans envy. We have a language that has been adopted by the whole world - and now adopted by the internet worldwide to the point that other languages might die out because of it. Not bad for a tiny tiny little island. Unfortunately it seems that the smart ones are not the majority, and stupidity in big business is letting us down - we don't support and develop home grown discoveries or inventions, we have no manufacturing base anymore. It seems that although England is a great place, someone has dropped the ball.
Posted on: 18 May 2006 by Earwicker
quote:
Originally posted by Rasher:
It took a long time for me to believe in what I was doing again after that.

At least you once had the faith...
Posted on: 20 May 2006 by u5227470736789439
quote:
Originally posted by Fredrik_Fiske:
quote:
Originally posted by bob mccluckie:
Frederik
What revisionist tosh!
Believe me unattended cars were being nicked left right and centre in Manchester in 1976!


I am talking of the Malvern or Hereford of 1976. In fairness these places were somewhat behind the times in their descent to towards what I am describing! Fredrik


Dear Bob,

I remember the time when both my parents and my brother and me went to Norway for my Aunt's wedding in 1967. We drove down to Heathrow in the Morris 1000, and when we came to park the key was corroded into the lock. Interestingly the car park people were happy to leave it there rather than risk breaking the think altogether. Yes times have changed, and I re-iterate, very much for the worse!

There is nothing revisionist about this at all, Bob.

Fredrik
Posted on: 20 May 2006 by Earwicker
Quite so. The deterioration is there for all to see - espeically in rural areas which used to be safe and quaint. Things have worsened at an accelerated rate under the present government, since it takes the view that a shitty and dysfunctional society is fine provided it's equally shite for us all.

EW
Posted on: 20 May 2006 by u5227470736789439
Dear EW,

That very summer all those years ago, the valve radio was also left on while we were away and died, so we got our first tranny! We did not lock the house, and as we were milking cows in those days no milkman had to be cancelled.

I suppose there was enough activity for no one to really think we were away as we never even considered locking the house. This was impossible in any case given that it was easy to go up through the cellar.

In the mid seventies we saw a change in that one night the workshop was emptied of spanners, pullers, sockets and so forth! Then we fitted a door!

Sigh...

Fredrik
Posted on: 20 May 2006 by Malky
Why don't you all move to Bath. About ten years ago, I parked up, went off for about four hours and returned to find I had left my keys in the driver's door.
Posted on: 20 May 2006 by Bob McC
Fredrik
As the old joke goes you could leave the door open cos who'd want to nick a mangle?
Posted on: 20 May 2006 by u5227470736789439
Dear Bob,

Hung on the walls in the front Room and Dining Room, were paintings, even then worth thousands! Paintings of significant in the National Style of Norway. Let alone some rather fine antique Norwegian furniture. Yes it would have been worth a crook's time!

Fredrik
Posted on: 20 May 2006 by Earwicker
quote:
Originally posted by bob mccluckie:
As the old joke goes you could leave the door open cos who'd want to nick a mangle?

The fact that we now need multiple layers of security on anything we wish to keep is no joke.

EW
Posted on: 20 May 2006 by Jay
quote:
Originally posted by Malky:
Why don't you all move to Bath. About ten years ago, I parked up, went off for about four hours and returned to find I had left my keys in the driver's door.


Does that say something about Bath or your car Winker
Posted on: 20 May 2006 by rodwsmith
Today is the past that the people of the future will look back on with nostalgia.

It has ever been thus. Nothing new about complaining about the present (time or place). Nothing much to be gained, either.
Posted on: 20 May 2006 by Adam Meredith
quote:
Originally posted by Sloop John B:
Are you still proud to be English?



Being Irish and born in England I am very pleased to find myself the very epitome of Englishness.

I don't feel any great pride in this effortless achievement - I just got on with my life and Englishness appears to have been a consequence.

I lived in Dublin for 15 years, on and off, and it would have been the place to which I returned after a brief time in Chicago. That is - if it hadn't become a ghastly parody of 80's Britain, a place I went to Ireland to avoid.
Posted on: 20 May 2006 by Adam Meredith
quote:
Why don't you all move to Bath. About ten years ago


Lack of a time machine.
Posted on: 20 May 2006 by Sloop John B
quote:
I lived in Dublin for 15 years, on and off, and it would have been the place to which I returned after a brief time in Chicago. That is - if it hadn't become a ghastly parody of 80's Britain, a place I went to Ireland to avoid.


Sadly this is true.


I'm very surprised though at the lack of affection shown by posters towards their country, pride was possibly the wrong word. There seems to be little sense of belonging to a similar culture, history and heritage and deriving some satisfaction or solace from this.

I'm proud to be Irish.
Sometimes when in Sligo, Cork or Kerry countryside I feel an immense feeling of being part of a culture that goes back centuries.
That there there is something in the boggy water flowing down the hill that also flows through my veins.

It doesn't mean I couldn't echo all of the complaints re politicians and morals expressed in this thread but beyond that I feel a spiritual connection with my country that would not make me want to live anywhere else.



I've just reread this and I come over all smug, I don't mean it that way. This affection for my country can be a double edged sword but I am truly surprised at the apparent lack of a similar emotion from British posters.


all the best,
John


SJB
Posted on: 20 May 2006 by u5227470736789439
Dear John,

My English familly farmed in the same area here in Herefordshire for nearly three hundred years, and generations of them are buried in a row in one church near the Black Mountain. In the old days my grandmother would go every Good Friday and tend the graves of centuries of my ancestors, even though she no longer lived very close by. the church had been her Parish church till 1920. That, and at the time being still farming was a real connection with the culture and history, as it was a real treat for us grand children to be taken along and do the work under her direction!

I feel this link has completely evapourated. Sad as it may sound, no one cares about agriculture now in UK... let alone looking after old graves. I bet all the stones have been moved or the place is overgrown. But then it is mobility of people nowadays, and the need to be mobile which also explains the loss of roots and connection with an ancient culture.

It's called modernisation and flexibility, and no one need feel sad about it- it was tough in those days for very many people - and the old culture is finished for better or worse, depending on your station in society.

Fredrik
Posted on: 20 May 2006 by John G.
This gal seems to have a good idea of what's happened to Britain.