i like this country and wouldn't want to live anywhere else - i know its not perfect here but its still the best place in the world... that doesn't mean we shouldn't trying and change things for the better but i think the future is bright.
sometimes i wonder if i'm the only one that likes it here - am i?
Out of interest, specifically which period of UK was 'perfect'. I'll be fascinated (genuinely) to read your response.
I'm not old enough to remember the consumer boom of the fifties which led MacMillan to say 'most of our people have never had it so good', but I do recall the general feeling of relief after the '97 Labour landslide (remember the whole 'Cool Britannia' thing, Britpop, UK fashion taking over the world, a young invigorated government etc).
Is that the period you mean?
Can't be the 80s (miners' strike, unemployment, every man for himself) or the 70s (political and social meltdown with unions killing British manufacturing). Perhaps you mean the sixties?
Not the only one Iggy, I'm really rather proud of my heritage such as it is.
Gormless - I'd be interested to know where and how you got your figures? Because stabbings being up doesn't necessarily have anything to do with multicultural Britain. I only ask because the stabbings recently where I worked weren't all done with knives and three of them were domestic (violence) incidents that I'm aware of. So the figures could be quite easily manipulated in that sense.
Gormless: I NEVER believe statistics because they can be dressed up in many different ways depending which type of argument is trying to be made.
Plus, your thinly veiled inference that this is because Britain is "multicultural" is bordering on racial intolerance.
IggyB: No, you're not alone - this country still has mega amounts going for it - why do you think so many foreigners are trying to come here to live?
VHG: Do you so easily forget traumatic instances in the 1980s like the miners' strike and the poll tax riots? Rather a selective memory there, mate!
What do we want, guys? Martial law? Curfews? Restrictions on freedom of speech or movement? State control of the press and media? One-party elections? Restoration of capital punishment? Compulsory "repatriation" for those not born here?
I can think of many worse countries to live but am struggling to think of any better !!!
Interesting and well constructed answers and wherever you live there are pluses and minuses.
You can pick any era in the past and highlight political upheavals whether they be Conservative or Labour so when one compares UK, the past and the3 present, then one is generalizing.
Taking UK 40 yrs ago, one could generally speaking enter an inner city on a weekend�..I would never do that now.
Teenage pregnancies, although down this year, are the highest in Europe and UK is the yob binge drinking centre of Europe. I accept that major cities in Europe all have their problems, but to quote from a Spanish source re.Barcelona,
� We can cope with the pick-pockets and the prostitutes, but the Brits pose a much bigger problem�
Survival rates for cancer in the UK are one of the lowest in the Eurozone countries.
The battle cry of the Labour Party was once � the NHS, the Envy of the World��when did you last hear that?..............a long time ago. Why? Because it isn�t.
Why do foreigners want to live in UK���immigrants for the free handouts and the mega rich for the significant tax concessions.
There are still plenty of pluses for living in the UK, but the negatives are increasingly �bubbling� to the surface.
I live in the UK, I fought for the UK, and quite honestly, in my lifetime, the state of this country now, is the worst its ever been,
Eleven years this so called Labour Party has been in Goverment, anything that was wrong before, they've had time to correct, but they've made it worse.
I can name loads of good things they've done for other countries, but for this one, I can't think of one.