Why Britain lost its glory?

Kohoutek

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...

We lost our colonial glory because of the crippling financial cost of fighting two world wars and setting up a huge welfare state shortly after despite not really being able to afford it. Can't say I miss not having a British flag in India and most of Africa – didn't really improve many people's lives much at the time anyway.

As to 1 + 3, aren't we still involved in most of the world's trading (City of London) and don't we still have some outstanding universities and corporations that innovate and invent (e.g. biotech, pharmaceuticals, aerospace)?

My only concern is that we don't lose our competitive edge in high tech industries and advanced manufacturing. Virtually every country goes through the same progression: agriculture based economy>light industry/textiles>heavy industry(e.g. steel, shipbuilding)>high tech industry. In South Korea for example they are in the heavy industry stage, but their GDP/capita is substantially lower than the UK. At least we're not one of those countries that gets rich by digging things out of the ground either like Canada, Saudi Arabia or Australia.

robin_banks

Like anything and everything else, empires die.

markharding557

The state of the uk today is the result of many decades of terrible mismanagement by squandering short sited governments of all colours

Mary_Hartnell

Kohoutek wrote: »

We lost our colonial glory because of the crippling financial cost of fighting two world wars and setting up a huge welfare state shortly after despite not really being able to afford it. Can't say I miss not having a British flag in India and most of Africa – didn't really improve many people's lives much at the time anyway.

.

I would say that our colonial adventures destroyed our glory.

When Napoleon called us "a nation of shop keepers", we were a hard working ambitious off shore country; we had learned the trick of double entry book keeping and everyone in the country was expected to pay their way.
Our embryo colonies were expected to do the same - in fact if you could not manage to stay on the straight and narrow you could find yourself with an all expenses paid trip to a colony to try again.

Now compare that situation with the photos of a hundred years later.

The country had been taken over by pomposity heading for hubris. Ruled by a bunch of people who thought they were something specials because it was their granny who had been bare foot and pregnant not their mother.

Believing their own propaganda the resulting war to end all wars soon laid bare the real state of the country.

Now who was it who voted to have a crusade in Iraq with other peoples money and the lives of other peoples sons?

amcluesent

The British nation was financially broken defeating the Hitler in a total war (it's another question of whether that was the sensible). Then rather then recognise we were bankrupt, we used £££ in borrowings to enjoy a 'winners' lifestyle, paying ourselves too much, forgetting to make anything anyone wanted. And believing the Socialist's lies that everyone must have prizes, providing a feather-bed for the idle and heedless.

North Sea Oil was a multi-decade 'get out of jail free' card, now squandered and never to be replaced. (Compare us with the Norwegian position of huge sovereign wealth funds).

Since Maggie was chucked out, we've been sleep-walking to calamity, preferring to believe the shysters with nice hair/teeth who have been lining their own pockets while spinning a web of deceit to those who willingly believe.

The ONLY way forward now is accelerating the confiscation of private wealth in a 20 year spiral of decline as Ponzi welfarism unravels and the systemic fault-lines in education, energy, industry and infrastructure are laid bare.

Grim, grey, grinding years of poverty await as by 2050 living standards collapse to the austerity of the 1930s.

Plus the leftists, 'woolies', dhimmis and hand-wringers have packed-out England with those whose religion, values and lifestyle can never be integrated and who have no wish to do so. Civil war is a very likely outcome as supplies of petrol, food, water etc. become scarce circa 2015.

sabretoothtigger

Britain was best country (economy) in the world during 1900s.

Sterling was the worlds reserve currency a hundred years ago now Dollars are and soon it will be some other countries turn.

Whichever country provides the most facilitation to world trade receives a large benefit in kind from that and can easily become 'great'
Right now sterling is ranked the worlds 3rd reserve currency I think so we could become much poorer if we lost any more trade or anyway that is my take on how it works.

Oldernotwiser

robin_banks wrote: »

Like anything and everything else, empires die.

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

sabretoothtigger

empires die.

amcluesent wrote: »

The British nation was financially broken defeating the Hitler in a total war
Civil war is a very likely outcome as supplies of petrol, food, water etc. become scarce circa 2015.

It was the first world war I think, we lost people as well as wealth so lost partially the ability to create wealth.
Civil war I dont think is likely but turmoil and defeat from monetary failure would be in line with the past.

We are not so much an empire though so I dont think we have far to fall this time. Cameron or Clegg dont strike me as much of an Emperor Nero

[This is a transcript of Professor Joseph Peden's 50-minute lecture "Inflation and the Fall of the Roman Empire," given at the Seminar on Money and Government in Houston, Texas, on October 27, 1984. The original audio recording is available as a free MP3 download.]


the wonder was not that the Roman Empire had fallen, but rather that it had lasted so long. ....



...The Roman state survived. The liberty of the Roman people did not. When freedom became possible in the West in the 5th century, with the barbarian invasions, people took advantage of the possibility of change. The peasantry had become totally alienated from the Roman state because they were no longer free. The business community likewise was no longer free. And the middle class of the cities was no longer free.

The economy of the West was perhaps more fatally weakened than that of the East. The early 5th century Christian priest Salvian of Marseille wrote an account of why the Roman state was collapsing in the West — he was writing from France (Gaul). Salvian says that the Roman state is collapsing because it deserves collapse; because it had denied the first premise of good government, which is justice to the people.

By justice he meant a just system of taxation. Salvian tells us, and I don't think he's exaggerating, that one of the reasons why the Roman state collapsed in the 5th century was that the Roman people, the mass of the population, had but one wish after being captured by the barbarians: to never again fall under the rule of the Roman bureaucracy.

In other words, the Roman state was the enemy; the barbarians were the liberators. And this undoubtedly was due to the inflation of the 3rd century. While the state had solved the monetary problem for its own constituents, it had failed to solve it for the masses. Rome continued to use an oppressive system of taxation in order to fill the coffers of the ruling bureaucrats and soldiers. Thank you. [applause]

Inflation and the Fall of the Roman Empire

MP3

esuhl

Britain lost its "glory" when its government decided to invade countless other countries, subjugate them to its rule and plunder foreign natural resources like a bully stealing dinner money from weaker kids. Nothing highlights the contempt Britain held for other nations more than the way it behaved against China: pushing opium and the miseries of addiction, poverty and death on millions.

Sadly Britain continues to disgrace itself in modern times by participating in illegal wars, creating deceitful propaganda to manipulate public opinion, and collaborating in the criminal torture of suspects that haven't even been charged with a crime. Not to mention the government's "turning a blind eye" to the illegal arms trade, where landmines and cluster bombs were easily traded, and the army's use of depleted uranium shells in the recent wars against Iraq, which has resulted in a dramatic increase in child lukaemia and genetic deformations.

Fortunately, society is changing and media coverage of government has made the population more aware of what is being done in its name. Britain can no longer do whatever it likes to exploit other countries and still expect to hold the moral high ground.

As poorer countries have had their industrial revolutions, their workforce has become exponentially more efficient. Technology and globalisation have opened up opportunities to parts of the world that were previously isolated (geographically and in terms of education). It is now far cheaper to employ a remote Indian engineer with few employment rights than to employ an expensive worker in the West. All that's happened is that the job market has become fairer.

Naturally those of us who stand to lose from this situation may feel hard done by in the same way that slave-owners felt that the glory days were over when they were suddenly expected to treat slaves as equals and stop exploiting them. Although some may think that Britain's fading prosperity is a terrible thing, isn't it also great that more people across the planet have access to education, technology and the chance to make something of themselves?