When did it all start to go wrong in the UK...?

[Wendy]

I have been reading over the past few years about all these dreadful cases of child abuse and child murders in the UK - the one's committed by the mothers or the 'boyfriends' (the 'sink estate' types).

When I was growing up in Australia my view of life in England was gleened through episodes of Black Beauty, Catweazel, Last of the Summer Wine and All Creatures Great and Small...what ever happened to that side of English life or was all that just a parody...?

As most people here are British ex-pats I would like to ask; just when did British society start to fail...? when did the UK start to spawn females who breed without discrimination, without one iota of feeling towards their young...?

When did a welfare cheque become the ultimate goal in life...?

I mean no offense - but I really would like to know just how things have come to be the way they are these days.[8-)]

In Australia the rot set in with the advent of the Labor Party in 1972...

 

[Danny]

[quote user="Jura"]

When I was growing up in Australia my view of life in England was gleened through episodes of Black Beauty, Catweazel and All Creatures Great and Small...what ever happened to that side of English life or was all that just a parody...?

[/quote]

Probably about the same time as the Moors murders then... I am sure it was all like 'Skippy' in Australia though

Danny

[Cat]

I don't think that England (Britain ?) has a monopoly on child abuse, France has its share of horror stories too.

Children beaten to death, babies in freezers...

[Wendy]

Yes, but how many French are leaving France in search of a better life...?

Does France boast the same quantity of 'sink estates' that the UK does...?

[Wendy]

No Danny, the Moors Murders happened in the early 60's - 'Skippy' was a product of the early 70's...

[Bugsy]

Australia is not immune

.

[Wendy]

Oh wow - so many Brits having abandoned Britain - and yet none willing to come up with an answer as to what is wrong with old blighty. You all left for some reason !

I have already said that the rot set in Australia with the 72' Labor mob - so what's YOUR excuse for the way your nation has gone down the plughole...?

Maybe all the UK headlines are wrong then...

Who here cannot wait to go back...?

 

[woolybanana]

Comprehensive schools

 

[Just Katie]

Oh come on Jura, you are an intelligent girl do you really believe that this kind thing, is peculiar to Britain alone?  I don't think so, more like another one of your bitter anti British rants.  Why don't you be a little nicer to us, afterall we are your mother land arent we? [Www]

[woolybanana]

Well, given the number of Welsh lads and lasses who were transported, that may be truer than you think. Always for offences involving sheep, strangely[6]

[Clair]

[quote user="Just Katie"]... bitter anti British rants.  Why don't you be a little nicer to us, afterall we are your mother land arent we? [Www][/quote]

You tease! [:D][;-)]

[Russethouse]

I suspect that nothing much has changed except for developments in communication and perhaps detection.

[Bugsy]

[quote user="woolybanana"]Well, given the number of Welsh lads and lasses who were transported, that may be truer than you think. Always for offences involving sheep, strangely[6][/quote]

Wooly, its not, is it?

[IMG]http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p211/Bugbear2/man_with_sheep.jpg[/IMG]

[:)][:)]

[Just Katie]

Gary please stop insulting us Welsh.  I dont know anyone Welsh who would be seen dead in a hat like that.

[Danny]

[quote user="Jura"]No Danny, the Moors Murders happened in the early 60's - 'Skippy' was a product of the early 70's...[/quote]

it was a wild guess at your age but never mind, you seemed to have missed my point anyway

Danny

[Iceni]

I blame those responsible for abolishing the death penalty.

John

[YCCMB]

You mean the ones who decided that transporting the perpetrators to Australia was more humane?[:D]

[Quillan]

Jura, I notice some of your posts seem to have a dig at the English, like you don't like us [:D]

Every country has good and bad people (just like life) and you can always find somebody to have whinge about the general state of the country you are in. Just try listening to your French friends, mine were banging on about teenagers drinking, state of the health system, immigrants getting free health cover, number of immigrants in general, government being useless etc, sounds rather familiar so far. Perhaps if you watched a bit more French news or read a French paper every couple of days you would spot that some things never change were ever you live.

If you follow the UK press then I am quite frankly amazed that you never realized that the UK seems to have an immigration problem, its normally (present economic situation aside) in the news somewhere. It therefore logically follows that to many the UK is the land of sunshine and honey and they want to live there. As to the French it is said that there are nearly as many French living in the UK as there are Brits living in France although to be fair I have not seen any official information on this. What about the Poles in the UK that many, unjustly so, bang on about. In fact the reason you can get such a variety of menus in restaurants in the UK is down to the diversity of its immigrant population.

As to crime, what about that chap (was it in Belgium or Holland) who locked up his daughter in the cellar, had several children with her, raping her and even killing one of the babies. Did you see the documentary on the US called the Chamber the other night?

Wrapping your self up in cotton wool in some small village in the back and beyond does not mean these things are not happening in the country in which you live.

Funny enough though your not the first person to ask these sort of questions although in my experience they are normally asked more frequently by those from 'New World' countries where people really shouldn't start throwing stones around. We can always start on Australians if you want, no indigenous white history or culture for example, past and present treatment of the real indigenous population. We all have our skeletons so perhaps its best left well alone [;-)] .

[plod]

I seem to recall that children used to work ten hours a day, and the East End of London was full of people out of their skulls on gin. The UK is no better or worse than other countries. My wife and I came to France for the adventure of living in another country, certainly not to escape from the UK.

[Will]

Very true plod - one should move for positive reasons, not negatives.

This is in danger of becoming another of those pointless:
"France is better than England"
"Oh no it isn't"
"Oh yes it is"
type discussions.

Please don't look at the black and white (or should that be black and pink) and remember there are shades in between; the countries are different, with their respective advantages or disadvantages, but there are an awful lot of similarities.

So my answer to the question would be "At the same time as France (or perhaps a few years in advance, because France has a habit of catching up, just as Britain 'catches up' with the USA).

In case you don't believe how things are in France, this is an excerpt from a similar discussion at another, fluffier, forum, describing life in rural Mayenne as seen by one who is actually in the community, with her eyes open:

• there are fights in every 'boite' in our area & we hate our daughter going out to one of them. Most of them are owned by the gens du voyage as well so there are plenty of drugs and weapons about.

• My son was threatened with a knife at collège and he was always being picked on.

• There are loads of drugs around especially cannabis - one of my son's friends at lycée supports himself through selling dope and they even smoke it in class. France is second in the table for Europe for cannabis. 

• When we moved into our present house the village was being terrorised by 2 druggies whose pitbull & rottie regularly got out and as they lived next to the school the kids couldn't go out to play or go home/lunch.

• Suicide rates are very high in France especially amongst school age kids. The pressures they have to bear through the educational system here are immense.

• Our neighbour hung himself because he couldn't pay his cotisations.

• Since coming here my health has deteriorated enormously because of stress.

• The train my daughter used to take to lycée on a Sunday afternoon (TGV Marseilles to Rennes) was more often than not delayed because of a suicide on the track.

Those are just a few of the points made - needless to say they were countered by others listing the many positives, but I repeat these just to show that the 'things wrong with the UK' are present in France too.

Of course, in any such discussion one person's positive is another's negative. I mean not the serious issues above, things more like 'fantastic food' being quoted in a list of pluses, and 'boring cuisine with no diversity' in the next person's minuses. Also, a bit more food for thought - plus: 'great and cheap booze'; another plus: 'no pub/booze culture, happy hours, etc.'

[Clarkkent]

[quote user="Jura"]

As most people here are British ex-pats I would like to ask; just when did British society start to fail...?

[/quote]

When a certain Australian bought a stable full of newspapers and took them downmarket, filling them with nipples and stories about "trailer trash".

[Will]

I think, to be fair to Mr Murdoch (something which admittedly sticks in the throat), the nipple count in the Times is still comparatively low, his first UK acquisition (News of the World) was already a famous down-market scandal sheet before he came on the scene, and the changes to the Sun (previously the Daily Herald, relaunched by the Mirror Group as a mid-market left wing paper and named the Sun) were merely to compete with the Mirror Group's own flagship tabloid which was, by then, firmly entrenched in the sensationalist down-market sector.

[NormanH]

"The train my daughter used to take to lycée on a Sunday afternoon (TGV

Marseilles to Rennes) was more often than not delayed because of a

suicide on the track."

Can't quite believe that one. I'm not even sure that there  IS a TGV

Marseilles to Rennes

[AnOther]

IMO one event of modern times stands out as pivotal in the road to UK's decline - the sale of council houses.

Suddenly a huge section of working class people who traditionally had little option but to rent, found themselves endowed with a valuable and appreciating asset and the potential to access to resources consequential to that, i.e. more borrowing. There is little doubt in my mind that this single event was both the ignition and the fuel for the property and debt booms and busts of the past 3 decades, and for the current one.

I really can't complain though, it's how we started on the property ladder, and without that initial leg up who knows if we would be where we are today ?

[Sunday Driver]

TGV direct Sunday service - depart Marseille St Charles 07.39 arrive Rennes 13.40

[8-|]