Why Britain lost its glory?

movilogo

Is it because we goofed things up or rather due to the fact that other nations made rapid advancement compared to us?

The following videos in YouTube makes me believe the later is true even though we did mess it up to a great extent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzCQ219bxl8&feature=related



PS: I could not find another version of the Did you know series video where it said Britain was best country (economy) in the world during 1900s.

bendix

Historians have spent entire careers and millions of pages of carefully researched arguments discussing the same question - and even asking if it's valid. It's good to see that Youtube has solved it for us.

Might I suggest that the subject is a little more complicated - and controversial - than these rather facile arguments seem to indicate?

movilogo

Historians have spent entire careers and millions of pages...

May be those pages are no longer relevant in today's world?

That's what those videos are saying - many researches made 20 years back have no relevance today.

Often people think they can predict the future but in reality they do not.

Even if historians and economists spent years, we can still spend an afternoon on it here in MSE

chucky

it depends what you define as glory

movilogo

it depends what you define as glory

- famous and useful inventions which changed people's lives
- controlling vast amount of land/people (well colonial rule is no longer commendable)
- being involved in world's most trading

That's few comes to mind right now...

chucky

movilogo wrote: »

- famous and useful inventions which changed people's lives
- controlling vast amount of land/people (well colonial rule is no longer commendable)
- being involved in world's most trading

That's few comes to mind right now...

as you say there are lots good things but there lots of very bad things too.

we could mention owning half the world, taking what they wanted from those countries and encouraging slavery - some would consider that educating those countries. i don't.

part of this "glory" has come from this unfortunately.

wymondham

I think we've had our day ..... we were great in the Victorian era with great inventions and being an industrial powerhouse. Other nations who were slow to start have now overtaken us and embrace development. Our main problem is most don't seem to realise this.....

bendix

Here's why:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11012369

It's because we've not only learned to tolerate mediocrity, but we've found a wonderful way to turn it into evidence of quality.

Instead of encouraging education standards to toughen, we dumb them down so we can boast that exam results are getting better and better every year. Meanwhile, employers are crying out for recruits who can read, write and spell.

Everyone is brilliant these days, you know. It's 'because I'm worth it'.

chopperharris

Yeah we built our strength on the back of the poor , on raping foreign countries of their wealth , and as these colonies dwindled so did our economy for the rich.Then comes along do gooders taking kids out the mills and chimneys , destroying unions , executing the radicals etc.

Thank fk the glory days are gone , but as the condems are gearing the media on the poor as the blamehounds for our country today no one asks why the rich are still our politicians...

Happy days are here again.

bendix

chopper. have you tried turning yourself off and on again?

it might help.

PasturesNew

Look back in history and you can see many, many 'great nations' now gone. Incas, Mayans, even the Romans. The British Empire got lucky, then it used that luck to bully people around the world and steal things (land/resources). Now it's somebody else's turn to be a leading nation.