I speculate that the sheer spitefulness of Anglo culture is an atavism from your imperial days. Confer American attitudes towards the wider world and the resemblance is uncanny.
Conversation
Living under a system which crushes and abuses the Other for profit does something to the collective mores. I'm almost 100% sure of that.
It makes people very unseemly, at the individual level.
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I see the same creeping narcissism and apathy in the younger generations in Norway.
It's real moral decay. It's a delicious irony that the conservatives take ownership of the term, when they are its worst purveyors.
Well, it makes perfect sense actually, but y'know what I mean.
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(And no, in fact, me and the wife have occasionally considered moving to the UK. We've got plenty of exit routes if something wouldn't click with the finances.
But she's Polish, so I prevaricate. The racism seems... pretty bad.)
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Replying to @Triquetrea
That's an interesting point to consider… I actually don't know how bad the racism really is… I don't think that there are that many truly hateful racists, but a lot of people are disturbingly desperate to be allowed to be.
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There is also the (really primary) concern that the child education & care options seem both A) byzantine and incomprehensible and B) ludicrously expensive.
Here it's quite laissez faire, whatever the ridiculously conservative dominant public mores might have you think.
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Replying to @Triquetrea
We've been broken down very hardly into family units here. Problems like the cost of childcare could be solved quite easily with a bit of collectivism, but it almost never happens. The education should be a lot better than it is, but it gets more bad press than it deserves.
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*harshly
(This was an active process from Thatcher onwards… I have this whimsical idea that a Corbyn government might reverse the change).
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I think people get too hung up on Corbyn's pleasant face and firebrand rhetoric.
He's had repeated chances to purge Labour of its neoliberal elements. As far as I can tell, he hasn't done it. Maybe I missed the news, though. I've consciously tuned out politics recently.
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Replying to @Triquetrea
I'm not sure how quickly that can be achieved or if it's necessary/beneficial to wait for elections - and each one brings an onslaught of brutal headlines… I think it's impressive that his team have managed to weather the storms, but yes: perhaps more action is needed.
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My big worry is if he's really too much of a nice guy to handle subversiveness on that scale.
I'd be pleasantly surprised to be wrong, though. UK economic fundamentals are just as good as Norway's for getting a proper society rolling. Better, even.
Replying to @Triquetrea
Yeah, Corbyn might be too sweet, really. John McDonnell seems like an actual badass, though… I guess we'll see what happens. A bunch of structures have formed that have made the exercise worthwhile, anyway - I think Momentum might evolve into something quite powerful.