Andrei Martyanov moved to the USA from Russia in the desperate 90's. He was brought up in Baku. He was a Soviet naval officer. He has a good video about the UK's delusions that is to be found here.
As a teenager, I was fascinated by batteries and fuel cells. My father had the entire collection of the "Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology". It was around 1967.
The experts were unanimous that fuel cells would take over the world in a few years. Well, not much has happened since.
As for batteries, the batteries of today are not that much better than those of 100 years ago. The only real nudge forward was the Lithium battery (various types). The problem is with the Periodic Table of Elements - or so it seems to me.
IMHO, the EV craze is going to peter out with a whimper. China has taken the wrong path. But the same is true for most wind turbines and PV farms. I got the list below from my PC.
-----------
Here are the key developments:
Ford Motor Company: Ford has paused its plans for a $3.5 billion EV plant in Michigan and postponed $12 billion in EV investments. The company is shifting focus back to producing gas-powered vehicles due to rising costs and uncertain consumer demand for EVs
.
General Motors (GM): GM has stopped selling its Chevy Blazer EV due to technical issues related to charging and software. Additionally, the company has canceled plans for a more affordable EV model priced around $30,000
.
Volvo: Volvo has abandoned its goal of producing only electric vehicles by 2030, stating that it will now include hybrid models in its lineup. This shift is attributed to declining demand for EVs in key markets and challenges related to trade tariffs on EVs from China
.
Mercedes-Benz: Mercedes has revised its electrification strategy, indicating that only up to 50% of its sales will be electrified vehicles by 2030, a significant reduction from previous targets. The company is also increasing its focus on combustion engine vehicles
My experiences bear some superficial similarities.
In 1971, I graduated in civil engineering from Imperial College. I quickly realised it was a dead-end career in the UK. I went back to college and got a masters in Operations Research. I worked for what was the biggest industry in London at the time - Lucas/CAV. They made fuel injection pumps and had customers worldwide. The only real competitor was German Bosch. Their factory in Acton is now all housing.
I left the UK in 1975. I went to Iran as I had a Persian girlfriend. I cannot stand Anglo women.
After the Revolution, I lived and worked in a large number of countries - Saudi Arabia, France, UK, Germany, Japan, Philippines, Norway, Australia. I even was in Lagos for 10 days. I had a son with a Norwegian lady who didn't want to marry - he is now a doctor. I had two daughters with a Russian wife. They are now in Australia.
I am currently near the Red Sea in Egypt. I planning a relationship with a Russian/Ukrainian lady. On dating websites, I get lots of attention from Chinese ladies in their 20's. I guess they know what Chinese men are like at their young age. But I have no intention to live in China. Their culture is too alien for me. And there is the language problem. I no longer like big cities.
I am posting in response to Bevin's excellent comment at the beginning of the comments.
Given ups and downs of countries, one could not have predicted where Russia is today. But as a thought experiment follow up on Bevin's comment I offer another substack.
This substack was tweeted by Pepe Escobar so I checked it out. It is a very favorable view of Russia but from what I have learned in the last couple of years, much of it from Karl Sanchez's substack, I believe what is said.
*** from the substack ***
"What I found interesting in the conversations is that very few people considered, or had much inkling of the subject of this article - the level of culture, learning, IQ, raw brainpower, professional competence, and crucially, their history. So much else which makes a country a smart choice to move to derives from this - economic prospects, health of the environment - food, water, air, etc., personal relationships, military strength, educational opportunities and their quality, cultural amenities, quality of housing and infrastructure, etc.
Once youโve been in contact with many cultures and peoples you can evaluate them comparatively. There are in fact very few countries, languages and civilizations which really count as heavy hitters in science, literature, theology, arts, culture, etc. I would list them as follows: English speaking world (in which I include India/Pakistan), German world, Russian world, China, ASEAN, the Arab world, Japan, and Iran. These are the civilizational poles with far greater intellectual heft today, not because smaller countries arenโt often very admirable. It often just comes down to accidents of history, geography, race, population, resource wealth, and peculiarities of culture. Within these 8, there are 4 titans: the English speaking world, German world, Russian world, and China. France, Spain, and Italy are still very important, but more for what was than what is today."
"Russia beats out other countries one could migrate to - my reasons.
Russia's human capital makes it a no-brainer (for me).
Charles Bausman Sep 12, 2024"
*** some background on the author ***
"Iโve led a very international life, from growing up in the family of a foreign correspondent, to working as a journalist and businessman outside the US, and Iโve seen a great deal of the world and gotten to know various cultures and 4 foreign languages quite well, spending considerable time in Europe, Latin America, India, and Russia in addition to my native US. From what Iโve seen of the world, Russia is in the champions league in terms of learning, culture, and raw brainpower. Where countries rank in these is not just a matter of what has been happening for the last few decades, it is often cumulative in nature - the result of centuries building these towering civilizations and traditions, and here, Russiaโs legacy is breathtaking."
Thank you for your comment. I would agree that Russia would be a good choice to resettle. If I were starting again with a completely free hand it would be my target, but my recent history has forced my hand and it has to be China. Donโt get me wrong, I am perfectly happy with that.
I do believe that there must be a mounting inclination among dissenters in the west that it is essential now to get out. If you follow Craig Murrayโs blog, you may have noticed that I have made several offers to help him, to no avail. He has been imprisoned, interrogated, now recently says he is prepared to go to jail again for his beliefs, and is now sheltering in Greece again. Whatโs the point? He has a wife and family.
I think I will run a piece on Getting Out and perhaps spark a discussion here.
ยซDuring this period, STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects in universities have been going into a severe decline. STEM graduates would be needed to power an industrial revival based on new advanced technology.ยป
Recent governments have been influenced by some think-tanks arguing that expensive engineering and computing research and degrees should be defunded being unnecessary public spending: any engineering products the UK middle and upper classes need can be bought for cheaper from east Asia (China, Vietnam, ...) than make locally, so there is no need to train local engineers, and any computing employees UK businesses need can be hired for cheaper in southern Asia (India, Pakistan, ...) than in the UK.
The same approach has already been followed in medicine, where the UK government funds less than 1/3 of the degrees needed to staff the NHS and private medicine, and most of the staffing needs are covered with third world immigrants whose degrees have been generously funded by foreign taxpayers and are also cheaper:
"Last year 59% of new registrations in England had been trained by other countries, writes Prof Rachel Jenkins [...] The number of medical student training places in the UK needs to double. This should not be as expensive to Treasury as feared"
โUnpublished figures from the General Medical Council (GMC) show that 7,377 (37%) of the 19,977 doctors who started work in the NHS in 2021 had a British qualification. A total of 10,009 new medics learned medicine outside the UK and the EEA โ so-called international medical graduates (IMGs) โ compared with 9,968 within. [...] In 2021 a total of 1,645 doctors from India began working in the UK, as did 1,629 from Pakistan, 1,250 from Egypt, 1,197 from Nigeria and 522 from Sudan โ a total of 6,243. They comprised 31.3% of all the medics who joined the GMC register, and almost two-thirds (62.4%) of the IMGs.โ
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I guess I should not be surprised that the UK is a parasite on those developing countries regarding staffing of the NHS. I wonder that the countries do not impose some form of controls, although if the medics have funded their training that might be less than just. Are the standards of the training comparable to UKโs own, and is some level of comprehension of the English language I wonder.
ยซAre the standards of the training comparable to UKโs own, and is some level of comprehension of the English language I wonderยป
I guess that matters little: the "sponsors" of the government parties can surely afford to go private as a matter of course, and many if not most "Middle England" voters of the government parties can also go private as needed. Why should they suffer higher taxes to benefit the other users of the NHS? The general idea is that middle and upper class people pay most of the taxes to fund state services but lower class people use most of them, so for middle and upper class people the only goal is to have the cheapest possible state services to minimize their taxes so they have more disposable income to go private.
โhaving spent a decade working for successive Tory ministers whilst in the MODUK, we were repeatedly told that HMG's policy was not to bail out failing industries and to seek best value for money. When it was pointed out (and repeatedly) that "cheapest" did not mean and was very seldom the best VFM, Tory ministers routinely disregarded the opinion.โ
The general tendency is to have "plans": "gold", "silver", "bronze", "stone". For health "gold" plans will be private (typically expense refund) for business executives, directors, owners, "silver" plans will also be private (typically BUPA) for professionals and middle managers, then the state pays for NHS "bronze" plans for affluent areas and "stone" plans for poor areas. As for health the same for schools, universities, local councils/private estates, police, etc.
ยซManufacturing, Margaret Thatcher told us, was just for the lesser breeds to deal with [...] another aim was to weaken the trade union movement which had bloodied the nose of the previous Tory governmentยป
The two aims were coincident: anti-union consultants explained to politicians that manufacturing means putting lots of capital and workers in one place, and that means that organizing labor unions is easier in that one place, and strikes are more effective.
A switch to services prevents that: every "Sainsburys" or "Starbucks" employs only a few, and a strike at any one "Sainsburys" or "Starbucks" has a small impact.
Thanks for this. I have been observing the decline in Britain for a long time. During the early 2000s it became increasingly obvious. I think the bizarre cult of neoliberalism has shown itself to be disastrous for everyone, from Chile through USA, Germany, and UK.
One other major factor in the UK's decline is Britain's public (=private schools, FYI non-Brits) school system, which means that these people (7% of population) get most of the best jobs, inc political ones, regardless of merit. The brutal system of wrenching children away from their families is abusive and creates psychopaths. This is not conducive to rational government of anything.
On a personal note, I rejoined the Labour Party during the Corbyn years, and campaigned hard, because I regarded it as the last chance for a change of course. I saw how the media managed to convince a substantial number of the population to act against their own best interests.
I now find most of my information from "Alternative media" - this means I cannot talk about this to most of my friends and family, because they (whatever their political persuasion) are indoctrinated in the conventional view. Even many left-wing people consider the Chinese to be "Ants in a totalitarian state where all decisions are made by Xi Jinping" (I'm exaggerating, but it is impossible to even mention China without a stressful situation developing).
ยซI have been observing the decline in Britain for a long time. During the early 2000s it became increasingly obvious. I think the bizarre cult of neoliberalism has shown itself to be disastrous for everyone, from Chile through USA, Germany, and UK.ยป
I have been observing something quite different: a rapid rise in the living standards and wealth in a large part of Britain. M&S and Waitrose shops are packed with affluent customers spending freely their increasing incomes.
That applies to the 20-40% of "Middle England" families (professional, managerial, small business owners). The rest of the residents have indeed declined, but they do not matter politically, no major party is willing (except Labour during the Corbyn years) to represent them.
What people mistake for โdecline in Britainโ is actually "decline in the British working class".
I have parallel experiences with what you describe. And I had a good friend many years ago, public school educated, double-barreled name, severely damaged personality.
Excellent article. It seems that PhD Engineers make FAR better journalists than those who take it up professionally! The struggle between the small number of very wealthy and the large number of the relatively (and often absolutely) poor masses is a constant in human affairs, perhaps the key conundrum every civilization must tackle one way or another. There are many schemes such as elimination of class differences, redistribution from wealthy to the poor, tyranny, hybrid mixed systems and so on. As human-spawned technology changes many logistical aspects on the ground, so also various approaches lose or gain efficacy making change an unavoidable constant.
That said, things have a cycle or story arc. We know from their ruins that there were quite a few sophisticated civilizations thousands of years ago, some with running water systems. We don't have a very good idea of how and why they first grew and then died. Climate, politics, war, famine, spiritual confusion or ??? I think what they demonstrate is the extreme difficulty we human beings have in making stable civilizations.
That said, if any can be said to have succeeded, then you are living in the heart of that zone which includes most of the Asian countries in and around what today we call China. They have had many ups and downs, but their downs don't eradicate cultural continuity and after a century or two they return. Right now in China I have read in a couple of places (which I don't necessarily trust) that the Princeling class there (the leading communist revolutionary families) is 80% millionaires and billionaires. (This is after decades of intense revolutionary effort to reconfigure their society after a two century slump that began in the mid 1700s as silver and gold from the Americas ran out and world trade decreased markedly, according to Gunder Frank.) This suggests a more or less typical upper class structure common to 99% of all societies throughout human history.
One way of regarding this would be to immediately accuse China of running a bogus system which says it wants to benefit all but is fact mainly benefiting the wealthy, just like pretty much everywhere else. But assuming that's not true, perhaps we could come to a different conclusion, namely that
a) they are doing a pretty darn good job running a (very) large nation being politically and socially stable on the one hand and dynamically developing on the other
b) although there may be more nepotism and other corruption in the mix than they want to acknowledge, let us say that generally there is very little meaning that
c) even though they are running an extremely dynamic high population polity which is spreading wealth to hundreds of millions and raising even more out of medieval levels of rural poverty only fifty years ago, and even though philosophically they have oriented themselves to benefit most of the people building on the communist philosophy in that regard, nevertheless they have a small extremely wealthy class. (What is missing in this analysis is how many millionaires+ there are who are NOT Princeling class; still the fact that this group for 2-3 generations now is multi-generationally wealthy is meaningful, no?). Therefore
d) perhaps we can conclude that any dynamic society is going to end up with a relatively small number at the top who are more successful and wealthy than most of the population because this is just how reality of groups works.
Whether it is a family, a family business, a work crew, a military squad, a government department or a woman's sewing circle, all groups small and large rapidly develop their own internal class relations, both vertical and horizontal.
So I guess the challenge is to make it run as stably and fairly as possible without expecting the impossible, usually some sort of utopia-promising ideology which drives men mad trying to realize, and indeed might be one of the main causes of those ancient civilizations disappearing without a trace - they all went mad!
Anyway, looking forward to more of your pieces. Thank you.
Hi, I moved to Australia from the UK in late 2001. I learned a little about indigenous culture and history. My comments only relate to this cultureโs longevity. Had either of them applied to the English weโd never hear the end it.
What stands out for me is the existence of stories (still part of the culture) that describe the ending of the last ice age. Secondly, Iโve always tried to impress upon my children the fact that boomerangs are evidence of an understanding of the principles of aerodynamics 10s of thousands of years ago.
Thanks for your comment. There undoubtedly is a super rich class in China, I am not among them, and the government does seem to slow a few up from time to time, but the main thing is that life goes on for ordinary people who don't give a damn as long as their experience improves year on year - as it does, like it once did in Britain. That's how it seems to me anyway.
Fair point. But now Iโm wondering when it was so rosy for the โordinaryโ English and wonder how many good periods there were after the 1850โs. Maybe in the small towns or Downton Abbey set? Factory workers and urban working class, not very often I think. They press ganged youth into the Navy on pain of death as the iconoclastic sailor Tristan Shandy documented but maybe thatโs a fringe phenomenon to an unfortunate few. The 20โs? 30s? 40s? 50s? I remember England being somewhat grim in the 50โs when I was a boy, then 60s London lifted off reminding my stepfather who lived through them of the 20s, and rationing and post-war austerities finally seemed to melt away.
I suspect that the Chinese are having a better time generally with โPeaceful Riseโ but of course they had a tumultuous century with hundreds of millions of deaths in several different phases. But at least since the 60s or so they have had it better slowly and steadily after a rough couple of centuries. I wonder how satisfied the factory workers today in China making sweatshop wages feel. Or is that phase tapering off now?
In both British Empire England and China there is an Idea, a Heaven-level concept of the State, the Civilization, the World from โourโ point of view that is somewhat expansive, noble and grand (โTaiโ). But for most โordinaryโ folk - who identify with and are greatly proud of this Big Idea - everyday reality is somewhat challenging and constrained. I wonder, perhaps, if we are not all fooling ourselves? Or maybe life is indeed grand and intellectuals pick at unimportant nits?
I don't think it was ever rosy before the years I described. I said that the late 40s were a time of poverty in our family but we were still better off than when my father was a child in the teens/20s in Pontypool. Just before he died I got him to start writing a biography of his young days, he was semi literate, but he got the gist and he wrote of going to school barefoot. My mother discovered it and destroyed it.
As for sweat shops in China you are out of date. China is no longer a low wage economy. In the past 20 years wages have increased about 8 fold. A Chinese friend up in Longhua,, an outer suburb of Shenzhen where rents and wages are cheaper, has to offer 5000 RMB a month for the most low skill level factory post. 9/10 thousand is more likely for a skilled operator. That's about a thousand pounds a month. And in PPP terms, real value, it is worth 3.75 to the dollar, you can practically double those figures so the sweat shop wage is worth about a thousand pounds a month. We are looking for a housekeeper and ny wife thinks we will need to offer 10,000: nigh on two thousand pounds in PPP terms.
ยซAs for sweat shops in China you are out of date. China is no longer a low wage economy. In the past 20 years wages have increased about 8 fold.ยป
To have an idea of life and culture in the PRC and Asia I watch TV series on Viki.com which is cheap and they are quite well made as well as informative. Indeed there is a huge difference in the depiction of the daily lives of character between those made 15-20 years ago and contemporary ones.
ยซA Chinese friend up in Longhua,, an outer suburb of Shenzhenยป
That is a bit unfair: "Tier 1" cities and regions are pretty special. There are still many areas like Pontypool or Alabama in the PRC. But indeed progress has been pretty huge.
Perhaps the main difference between the "Gongchan" (PRC) and earlier dynasties is that the current mandarinate embodied in the Communist Party of China is engineering based instead of literary based as in previous dynasties, or perhaps the (often brutal) repression of the landlord class has made that possible.
The biggest problem with the PRC is the same as with the UK unfortunately: I would guess that all the middle class and party officials and government figures are property owners and speculators like in the UK, and will eventually sacrifice *everything* (that is throw the working class under the bus) to maximize their property gains.
The problem that Britain faced was that of a Class War in which only one side was aware of what was going on. And that had been a problem for centuries.
The obvious course for Britain in 1945- a course that people like historian GDH Cole actually urged upon the government- was to repudiate the debt to the US and reach out to the Soviet Union, which was desperate for allies, afraid of imperialist aggression and had been, since 1918, calling for British investment of all kinds. The two powers would have been a perfect fit- the USSR had no fear of British industrial competition and would have welcomed industrial exports.
This would have been an opportunity for the UK to do the right thing and wind down the Empire in a decent manner instead of the dreadful and bloody process that was undertaken and has left the world full of unresolved disputes born of British 'divide and rule ' tactics and racial arrogance.
The Labour government of 1945 did many good things- under the intense pressure of an awakened nation in arms-but it did many more stupid, cowardly and evil things, almost all of them involving attempts to milk the colonies to pay off Wall Street and consolidate an alliance with the United States.
Manufacturing industry should have been nationalised from top to bottom: as both you and Anna recollect the British capitalist class was incompetent, greedy and irresponsible. That is why there was so little capital invested in modernisation, development and research- the ruling class has always been, in the final analysis, indifferent to the fate of the country and conscious that its interests are diametrically opposed to those of the people. Anyone who doubts that should take a look at Britain today, or pick up a copy of almost anything written by Dickens or his contemporaries.
Those who talk about Britain 'falling behind' in the C19th miss the point: the development models chosen by the United States, Germany and Japan were all opposed to Free Trade and Laissez Faire, doctrines that Britain's rulers maintained dogmatically. Britain was 'falling behind' by choice- its capitalists were exporting vast amounts of capital to the rest of the world. Much of it disappeared inthe First World War, most of the rest was taken by the US for loans and war credits. Off-shoring was old hat in the 1880s as any Chilean, Argentinian, American or citizen of the 'white' dominions should know- their countries were built to an important degree by British capital exported instead of reinvested
Anna talks of the waste of capital in the NHS etc- this is quite wrong. The real waste was in the successive wars and colonial adventures which led to Britain spending much more , per capita, than any other 'western' state, including the US, on the military. Increasingly this expenditure was earmarked to buy US made arms and even the British arms manufacturing/aircraft industries were slowly eroded under US pressure. In the meantime Germany, Japan, Italy and most of Europe invested not only in their own industries but in their human capital, education, public health and welfare.
It was not the NHS but adventures designed to protect the property of the ruling class abroad- the White Highlands, Rhodesia, West Africa, Malay Tin and Rubber, Palestine and Arabia, the West Indies- not to mention US and Dutch imperial follies such as Vietnam and Korea- which, together with a revival of capital exporting, led to the starvation of investment in a manufacturing sector which Britain's rulers regarded with suspicion because it employed its enemies, the objects of its hatred, the working class.
There is not the slightest doubt that Britain was de-industrialised in order to punish, impoverish and eradicate the working class, descendants of the peasantry which had been wiped out in the enclosure process.
As to the idea that Britain was bankrupt in 1945: the contrary is the case, The economy and the people were both working 'in fine fettle' at an unprecedented intensity and efficiency- thanks to the common sense policies, including Beveridge's, forced on it by the war. The mistake was in choosing the US over the Soviet Union and, in effect, mortgaging the future of generations of British people (not to mention hundreds of millions in the colonies) in order to reward US capitalists for making money out of the war.
(Check out "Life in a Railway Factory by Alfred Williams" a great book about Swindon and factory work before the museum days. And a reminder of the enormous well of talent and genius among working people wasted by the class rule of the capitalists. )
Thank you very much for your time in writing such an interesting comment. I had never thought before about the alternative approach of going with the USSR after the war. The Labour party I guess was the most socialist it ever had been and is ever likely to become, I wonder which MPs would have been in favour: Bevan perhaps for one? And how would the USA have reacted?
I didn't give it much chance but I found Life in a Railway Factory on Gutenberg.
I am currently reading "Coming up for Air" which is a very curious departure from others of Orwell's works I have read, and will follow up with your suggestion.. I will look up GDH Cole and hope to learn more too.
The idea of a Soviet alliance might be difficult for some people to grasp. But in 1945 there was no institution in the world more popular in Britain than the Red Army- and for the ost obvious reasons. If the Red Army had not 'won the war' it had certainly taken the burden of casualties which, otherwise, would have been British (Imperial) or American.
And then thee was the recognition, which was fairly general among informed people, that there would have been no war had the Tories not refused, again and again, to respond sincerely to Soviet calls throughout the 1930s for Collective Security and, in particular, co-operation to deter Nazi aggression.
But that was only half of the matter. On the Soviet side there was a very powerful public demand for a "Thaw" and the re-introduction of democratic procedures into the Soviet system. And this was supported by the rank and file of the Red Army as well as Generals like Zhukov. In fact there is some evidence that Stalin recognised both the need to reform the system and the opportunity, which arose from the victory, to roll back responses to fears of foreign aggression, encirclement and subversion. That the 'thaw' never occurred can be explained by the way in which the US, with Britain following behind, immediately turned its attention to subverting and attacking Soviet interests.
In fact Stalin and the Soviet Union showed remarkable restraint, disavowing its massive popular support across Europe and urging support for capitalist governments (Greece being a perfect example) and sticking to the sphere of influence agreements reached at Tehran and Yalta. As you will know one consequence of this 'restraint' was Stalin's withdrawal of support from the Communist Party in China and assistance to Chiang.
The root of Britain's problem lay in the reality that, to defend its sovereignty, already compromised by alliance with the United States, symbolised by (the plainly underqualified) Eisenhower's appointment as C in C of the Normandy invasion, it had to break free of the position of second fiddleship into which Churchill and Attlee allowed it to slip-to defend itssovereignty it had to move closer to the only other power around, which is to say the USSR.
Instead the Labour government, weakly, purchased US permission to allow the reforms which culminated in the NHS (reforms hated by Congress and seen as an attack on the US way of life by Washington's oligarchs) by agreeing, against all the country's instincts and interests, to a foreign policy dictated by the US. It was a policy that all sensible, including Tory, British opinion knew was dangerous and likely to lead to another war in which Europe was torn to pieces, Europeans died by the million and America passed through unscathed and enriched.
Again very interesting, thanks. The UK has another chance to restore relations, now with the new Russia which would obviously be in its best interests, but that's not going to happen, there is no way it can break free from the US dominated Western/NATO empire, that will just have to perish in its own time. I feel sorry for the British, perhaps they will feel the need for a revolution when life becomes unbearable, though there is no recent history and the government is obviously making its plans to thwart it. Meanwhile we are doing our best to thwart sanctions, they stopped us sending goods from the UK to Moscow, so they go via an agent in Hong Kong now.
I notice that you have abandoned commenting on the MoA Open Thread which is the only one I have been following for a long time. It is currently totally dominated by anthropogenic climate change deniers, this morning I have scrolled through about a hundred comments with barely a stop. I shall just revert to publicise my new Substack post on Thursdays, it is so effective, I have 751 and 495 views on my first two posts already, they must have virtually all come through MoA. I think it's like the iceberg, we only now see the mouthy fraction above the water level so to speak, but there must be a massive majority of sensible silent followers who never break the surface. I recognise hardly any of those of who have signed up with me.
I'll come back next week with a deeper examination of the historic mistreatment of women in China, written with input from my wife, I think I'll do China every other week, a number of people have particularly welcomed it, and after that the placement of the Philippines in the USA's mounting threat to China.
I think I just subscribed to you, there can't be many socialists in Canada, let alone sociialists named bevin!
Very well said. It was the common practise in war for creditors to cancel the debts of those doing the fighting, but the US broke this rule after WW1 (a major source of the Weimar Republic failure and Hitler) and after WW2. Britain would have been well within its rights to cancel the debts, but that would have removed the UK as a financial centre and therefore greatly damaged the British ruling class.
Corelli Barnett did a good series of books on the decline of Britain, fairly laying the blame at the feet of the British ruling class; The Collapse of British Power; The Audit of War: The Illusion and Reality of Britain as a Great Nation; The Lost Victory: British Dreams, British Realities, 1945-50; and The Verdict of Peace: Britain Between Her Yesterday and the Future
In one example, Britain built up a sizeable machine tool industry in WW1 out of necessity only to let it fall apart after the war. A very significant amount of the war debts was because the UK had to buy from the US as it could not manufacture required products at home. Germany had no such issue with its advanced manufacturing industry.
There was also the overvaluation of the pound and ruinous reconnection to gold to help the interests of the ruling financier class after WW1. Barnett also questioned the investment in the NHS, which as you correctly note was much less wasteful than the costly foreign adventures.
Thank you for this article, which is broadly accurate. My main quibble is that the rot set in far, far earlier than you describe. For all the kerfuffle about British manufacturing prowess in the 1800s, we were already falling behind by the middle of the century, as the US and Germany pioneered machine tools and chemical industries whilst we continued to concentrate on low-profit textiles and suffered from chronic underinvestment. Our manufacturing trade balance was in deficit as early as 1875 - to the tune of ยฃ100 million - and was never positive again, compensated for by rising profits in services and repatriated profits from foreign investments. For many years our prosperity (always limited and unequally distributed) was enabled by having captive markets in the form of the colonies, but this only encouraged a tremendous complacency from trade unions and management alike, and when the colonies went and the markets with them, our basic lack of competitiveness in global markets was exposed. Moreover, the creation of the NHS in the immediate post-war era was a very poor use of Marshall Aid funds by a bankrupted and impoverished nation - the money would have been better used to rejuvenate the decrepit plant and machinery of British industry. This was how our European competitors spent their funds, and they were rewarded with healthier, more balanced economies that rapidly left ours in the shade. The irony is that they were naturally able to afford more generous welfare states, demonstrating that said generous welfare can only ever be a function of healthy economies, and that trying to create the latter through first creating the former will never work (a lesson that the Chinese know all too well). I know something about how backward British industry is/was - my grandfather had factories in the metal-bashing Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, and as a young girl my father used to sometimes take me with him as he visited suppliers in the other Jewellery Quarter factories. Without exception, the factories were filthy relics of the Edwardian era, full of ancient machinery which should really have been in museums rather than on the shop floor. So, to sum up, British decline has been a very lengthy process indeed, and it would probably be far beyond the efforts of any individual government to resolve, however well-intentioned.
โApproximately two-thirds of the European production of cotton textiles took place in the UK. The comparable percentages for iron production and coal production were 64 and 76 per cent. [...] The total of installed steam engine horsepower was far larger than on the continent. In 1840, 75 per cent of the combined total capacity of stationary steam engines in Britain, France, Prussia and Belgium was in Britain alone (the other three countries accounted for the great bulk of installed capacity on the continent.โ
ยซas the US and Germany pioneered machine tools and chemical industries whilst we continued to concentrate on low-profit textiles and suffered from chronic underinvestment.ยป
That โunderinvestmentโ was really asset stripping, as the dream of the industrial class of the UK was largely that of being country gentlefolk, gentry or nobility, and considered industry as a vulgar trade to be used only to squeeze as much as they could to fund their gentlefolk lifestyles, as you describe:
ยซJewellery Quarter factories. Without exception, the factories were filthy relics of the Edwardian era, full of ancient machinery which should really have been in museums rather than on the shop floor.ยป
Indeed... Recently I visited the GWR engine and car works in Swindon and most of the site is now a large shopping mall and there was a GWR museum with some photos and equipment left over, and it is obvious that up to 30s and even 50s-60s the works were unchanged from the edwardian era or even earlier in both endlessly-patched-up equipment and practices. The GWR train I took to Swindon was made by Hitachi.
ยซSpeaking about his first year in business with Lord Sugar, Mark Wright, the winner of last yearโs Apprentice, said the Amstrad founder had given him tips on creating long-term wealth. โLord Sugar said you make money from property and do business for fun. Many of our customers make money from property and Iโd love to go into property development one day,โ said Mr Wright.ยป
I was born in Egypt. My Egyptian grandfather, Labib Nassim, is recognised as the first industrialist in Egypt in modern times. The British allowed him to build a tiny factory because he had an English wife.
Egypt was a major exporter of cotton in the 19th century. It benefited greatly from the American Civil War, for example. At one time, Egyptian farmers hardly grew anything other than cotton. This cotton was bought by Egyptian Jews. The British controlled Egypt and they gave this monopoly to the Jews - doubtless the Jews in the UK helped them do this. The cotton went to Manchester. It was bought by Jewish merchants and factory owners. They produced cloth. The cloth was exported to places like Egypt at an extortionate price. The cloth was sold to ordinary Egyptians by Jewish merchants.
This is the way imperialism worked. British politicians were in debt to Jewish money lenders and bankers. Look at the real history of Randolph and Winston Churchill. But that is a tiny example.
A similar process is going on at present in pharmaceuticals and the medical complex. But that is another story. Look up the ethnicity of the owners/managers of these huge pharmaceutical companies to see what I mean.
The Chinese have assiduously worked to keep the Jewish bankers and financiers out of China. Shanghai will replace New York and London as the world's financial system. That is why they want a war with China. Sanctions and tariffs are a precursor of war.
ยซThe cloth was sold to ordinary Egyptians by Jewish merchants. [...] British politicians were in debt to Jewish money lenders and bankers.ยป
There some traditions that princes follow:
* They channel into "odious jobs" (in particular lending and banking) some easily recognized minority (this is documented to have already happened in Sumeria 5,000 years ago).
* They extort money from those holding "odious jobs" under the pretense of lending.
* When threatened by riots they point they mobs are at the holders of "odious jobs" to make get let off steam by letting them massacre those minorities.
In the kingdoms of Israel and Judea the minority was the samaritans (remember the parable of the unexpectedly "good" samaritan):
โHadrian promised to rebuild the Temple, but the Jews felt betrayed when they found out that he intended to build a temple dedicated to Jupiter upon the ruins of the Second Temple. A rabbinic version of this story claims that Hadrian planned on rebuilding the Temple, but that a malevolent Samaritan convinced him not to. The reference to a malevolent Samaritan is, however, a familiar device of Jewish literature.โ
The european princes the ottoman empire used mostly armenians and greeks, the south-east asian empires use mostly overseas chinese. Israel is a giant trick by the western powers to use the most fanatical israelis to destabilize western Asia (another "odious job") which is the "near abroad" of the ancient arab, persian and turkish empires.
Note: "odious jobs" are those that create personal resentment in the "customers", principally among them tax farming and collecting, then debt collecting; shopkeepers often sell on credit ("tabs") so they become debt collectors too (many overseas chines shopkeepers were massacred in Indonesia during the CIA-organized pogroms of 1965-1966, and in the similar 1998 pogroms).
The big question is why so many from minorities still go for "odious jobs" and I am not so sure; perhaps because of being pushed, perhaps because of been greedy, perhaps because for some minorities long training in madrassas/yeshivas makes a part of them clever with written words but in an aspergery way.
Andrew Marr "A history of modern Britain": โIn 1942, as Rommelโs tanks drew nearer, and Churchill was fulminating about Cairo being a nest of โHun spiesโ, the British ambassador told Egyptโs King Farouk that his prime minister was not considered sufficiently anti-German and would have to be replaced. The King summoned his limited reserves of pride and refused. It was, he insisted, a step too far, a breach of the 1937 treaty.
Britainโs ambassador simply called up armoured cars, a couple of tanks and some soldiers and surrounded King Farouk in his palace. The ambassador walked in and ordered the monarch to sign a grovelling letter of abdication, renouncing and abandoning โfor ourselves and the heirs of our body the throne of Egyptโ. At this royal determination crumbled. The king asked pathetically if, perhaps, he could have one last chance? He was graciously granted it and sacked his prime minister.โ
William Rees-Mogg, "The Times": โWhen Jack Straw was replaced by Margaret Beckett as Foreign Secretary, it seemed an almost inexplicable event. Mr Straw had been very competent โ experienced, serious, moderate and always well briefed. Margaret Beckett is embarrassingly inexperienced.
I made inquiries in Washington and was told that Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, had taken exception to Mr Strawโs statement that it would be โnutsโ to bomb Iran.
The United States, it was said, had put pressure on Tony Blair to change his Foreign Secretary. Mr Straw had been fired at the request of the Bush Administration, particularly at the Pentagon.[...]
The alternative explanation was more recently given by Irwin Stelzer in The Spectator; he has remarkably good Washington contacts and is probably right. His account is that Mr Straw was indeed dismissed because of American anxieties, but that Dr Rice herself had become worried, on her visit to Blackburn, by Mr Strawโs dependence on Muslim votes. About 20 per cent of the voters in Blackburn are Islamic; Mr Straw was dismissed only four weeks after Dr Riceโs visit to his constituency.
It may be that both explanations are correct. The first complaint may have been made by Mr Rumsfeld because of Iran; Dr Rice may have withdrawn her support after seeing the Islamic pressures in Blackburn. At any rate, Irwin Stelzerโs account confirms that Mr Straw was fired because of American pressure.โ
The american empire now does to England as England did to Egypt, as that is the logic of empires.
ยซAt one time, Egyptian farmers hardly grew anything other than cotton. [...] They produced cloth. The cloth was exported to places like Egypt at an extortionate price.ยป
This was the system across the whole empire, including mostly white, mostly developed "dominions":
Part of the reason the New England colonies rebelled was that it was illegal to manufacture even *nails* in America, the had to be imported from England. That is how empires work, not just the english one.
Good comment, thanks, and I take your point. I think another issue was, in Europe, that the war destroyed a lot of infrastructure, particularly in Germany, and they had no choice but to rebuild, whereas in the UK the money counters prevented it. One odd fact comes back to me which illustrates that, is that the Triumph (I think it was) motor cycle of 1956 was much slower than the original of 1939 because the tooling had just got worn down and the machining tolerances were all shot. And as I think you suggest, the process is probably too far gone to be reversed.
ยซthe process is probably too far gone to be reversedยป
I think it could be reversed, but affluent "Middle England" voters are doing very well with the current system and would be very opposed to any reversal. They got theirs and do not want any risks.
That's a very interesting point about the Triumph, thank you for that. And yes, you are absolutely right that having one's country completely smashed up does have some compensating benefits when it comes to facing the bean counters!
Andrei Martyanov moved to the USA from Russia in the desperate 90's. He was brought up in Baku. He was a Soviet naval officer. He has a good video about the UK's delusions that is to be found here.
๐๐น๐ฒ๐ ๐ฎ๐ป๐ฑ๐ฟ ๐ก๐ฒ๐๐๐ธ๐'๐ ๐ฅ๐ฒ๐ฑ ๐๐ถ๐ป๐ฒ๐
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm4HnJg4wy8
๐๐ผ ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐๐ฒ๐น๐ผ๐ฝ ๐ฎ ๐บ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ธ๐ฒ๐๐ฎ๐ฏ๐น๐ฒ ๐ณ๐๐ฒ๐น ๐ฐ๐ฒ๐น๐น ๐ฒ๐น๐ฒ๐ฐ๐๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐น ๐ฒ๐ป๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ด๐ ๐๐ผ๐๐ฟ๐ฐ๐ฒ
As a teenager, I was fascinated by batteries and fuel cells. My father had the entire collection of the "Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology". It was around 1967.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/0471238961
The experts were unanimous that fuel cells would take over the world in a few years. Well, not much has happened since.
As for batteries, the batteries of today are not that much better than those of 100 years ago. The only real nudge forward was the Lithium battery (various types). The problem is with the Periodic Table of Elements - or so it seems to me.
IMHO, the EV craze is going to peter out with a whimper. China has taken the wrong path. But the same is true for most wind turbines and PV farms. I got the list below from my PC.
-----------
Here are the key developments:
Ford Motor Company: Ford has paused its plans for a $3.5 billion EV plant in Michigan and postponed $12 billion in EV investments. The company is shifting focus back to producing gas-powered vehicles due to rising costs and uncertain consumer demand for EVs
.
General Motors (GM): GM has stopped selling its Chevy Blazer EV due to technical issues related to charging and software. Additionally, the company has canceled plans for a more affordable EV model priced around $30,000
.
Volvo: Volvo has abandoned its goal of producing only electric vehicles by 2030, stating that it will now include hybrid models in its lineup. This shift is attributed to declining demand for EVs in key markets and challenges related to trade tariffs on EVs from China
.
Mercedes-Benz: Mercedes has revised its electrification strategy, indicating that only up to 50% of its sales will be electrified vehicles by 2030, a significant reduction from previous targets. The company is also increasing its focus on combustion engine vehicles
Roger takes an opposite view. Have a look at his latest piece, he thinks the US and European industries are finished.
My experiences bear some superficial similarities.
In 1971, I graduated in civil engineering from Imperial College. I quickly realised it was a dead-end career in the UK. I went back to college and got a masters in Operations Research. I worked for what was the biggest industry in London at the time - Lucas/CAV. They made fuel injection pumps and had customers worldwide. The only real competitor was German Bosch. Their factory in Acton is now all housing.
I left the UK in 1975. I went to Iran as I had a Persian girlfriend. I cannot stand Anglo women.
After the Revolution, I lived and worked in a large number of countries - Saudi Arabia, France, UK, Germany, Japan, Philippines, Norway, Australia. I even was in Lagos for 10 days. I had a son with a Norwegian lady who didn't want to marry - he is now a doctor. I had two daughters with a Russian wife. They are now in Australia.
I am currently near the Red Sea in Egypt. I planning a relationship with a Russian/Ukrainian lady. On dating websites, I get lots of attention from Chinese ladies in their 20's. I guess they know what Chinese men are like at their young age. But I have no intention to live in China. Their culture is too alien for me. And there is the language problem. I no longer like big cities.
Who is interested in migrating to Russia?
I am posting in response to Bevin's excellent comment at the beginning of the comments.
Given ups and downs of countries, one could not have predicted where Russia is today. But as a thought experiment follow up on Bevin's comment I offer another substack.
This substack was tweeted by Pepe Escobar so I checked it out. It is a very favorable view of Russia but from what I have learned in the last couple of years, much of it from Karl Sanchez's substack, I believe what is said.
*** from the substack ***
"What I found interesting in the conversations is that very few people considered, or had much inkling of the subject of this article - the level of culture, learning, IQ, raw brainpower, professional competence, and crucially, their history. So much else which makes a country a smart choice to move to derives from this - economic prospects, health of the environment - food, water, air, etc., personal relationships, military strength, educational opportunities and their quality, cultural amenities, quality of housing and infrastructure, etc.
Once youโve been in contact with many cultures and peoples you can evaluate them comparatively. There are in fact very few countries, languages and civilizations which really count as heavy hitters in science, literature, theology, arts, culture, etc. I would list them as follows: English speaking world (in which I include India/Pakistan), German world, Russian world, China, ASEAN, the Arab world, Japan, and Iran. These are the civilizational poles with far greater intellectual heft today, not because smaller countries arenโt often very admirable. It often just comes down to accidents of history, geography, race, population, resource wealth, and peculiarities of culture. Within these 8, there are 4 titans: the English speaking world, German world, Russian world, and China. France, Spain, and Italy are still very important, but more for what was than what is today."
https://arkrussia.substack.com/p/russia-beats-out-other-countries
"Russia beats out other countries one could migrate to - my reasons.
Russia's human capital makes it a no-brainer (for me).
Charles Bausman Sep 12, 2024"
*** some background on the author ***
"Iโve led a very international life, from growing up in the family of a foreign correspondent, to working as a journalist and businessman outside the US, and Iโve seen a great deal of the world and gotten to know various cultures and 4 foreign languages quite well, spending considerable time in Europe, Latin America, India, and Russia in addition to my native US. From what Iโve seen of the world, Russia is in the champions league in terms of learning, culture, and raw brainpower. Where countries rank in these is not just a matter of what has been happening for the last few decades, it is often cumulative in nature - the result of centuries building these towering civilizations and traditions, and here, Russiaโs legacy is breathtaking."
Thank you for your comment. I would agree that Russia would be a good choice to resettle. If I were starting again with a completely free hand it would be my target, but my recent history has forced my hand and it has to be China. Donโt get me wrong, I am perfectly happy with that.
I do believe that there must be a mounting inclination among dissenters in the west that it is essential now to get out. If you follow Craig Murrayโs blog, you may have noticed that I have made several offers to help him, to no avail. He has been imprisoned, interrogated, now recently says he is prepared to go to jail again for his beliefs, and is now sheltering in Greece again. Whatโs the point? He has a wife and family.
I think I will run a piece on Getting Out and perhaps spark a discussion here.
ยซDuring this period, STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects in universities have been going into a severe decline. STEM graduates would be needed to power an industrial revival based on new advanced technology.ยป
Recent governments have been influenced by some think-tanks arguing that expensive engineering and computing research and degrees should be defunded being unnecessary public spending: any engineering products the UK middle and upper classes need can be bought for cheaper from east Asia (China, Vietnam, ...) than make locally, so there is no need to train local engineers, and any computing employees UK businesses need can be hired for cheaper in southern Asia (India, Pakistan, ...) than in the UK.
The same approach has already been followed in medicine, where the UK government funds less than 1/3 of the degrees needed to staff the NHS and private medicine, and most of the staffing needs are covered with third world immigrants whose degrees have been generously funded by foreign taxpayers and are also cheaper:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/feb/09/britain-needs-to-double-the-number-of-doctors-it-trains
"Last year 59% of new registrations in England had been trained by other countries, writes Prof Rachel Jenkins [...] The number of medical student training places in the UK needs to double. This should not be as expensive to Treasury as feared"
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/08/nhs-hiring-more-doctors-from-outside-uk-and-eea-than-inside-for-first-time
โUnpublished figures from the General Medical Council (GMC) show that 7,377 (37%) of the 19,977 doctors who started work in the NHS in 2021 had a British qualification. A total of 10,009 new medics learned medicine outside the UK and the EEA โ so-called international medical graduates (IMGs) โ compared with 9,968 within. [...] In 2021 a total of 1,645 doctors from India began working in the UK, as did 1,629 from Pakistan, 1,250 from Egypt, 1,197 from Nigeria and 522 from Sudan โ a total of 6,243. They comprised 31.3% of all the medics who joined the GMC register, and almost two-thirds (62.4%) of the IMGs.โ
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I guess I should not be surprised that the UK is a parasite on those developing countries regarding staffing of the NHS. I wonder that the countries do not impose some form of controls, although if the medics have funded their training that might be less than just. Are the standards of the training comparable to UKโs own, and is some level of comprehension of the English language I wonder.
ยซAre the standards of the training comparable to UKโs own, and is some level of comprehension of the English language I wonderยป
I guess that matters little: the "sponsors" of the government parties can surely afford to go private as a matter of course, and many if not most "Middle England" voters of the government parties can also go private as needed. Why should they suffer higher taxes to benefit the other users of the NHS? The general idea is that middle and upper class people pay most of the taxes to fund state services but lower class people use most of them, so for middle and upper class people the only goal is to have the cheapest possible state services to minimize their taxes so they have more disposable income to go private.
https://on.ft.com/2rqiIVF
โhaving spent a decade working for successive Tory ministers whilst in the MODUK, we were repeatedly told that HMG's policy was not to bail out failing industries and to seek best value for money. When it was pointed out (and repeatedly) that "cheapest" did not mean and was very seldom the best VFM, Tory ministers routinely disregarded the opinion.โ
The general tendency is to have "plans": "gold", "silver", "bronze", "stone". For health "gold" plans will be private (typically expense refund) for business executives, directors, owners, "silver" plans will also be private (typically BUPA) for professionals and middle managers, then the state pays for NHS "bronze" plans for affluent areas and "stone" plans for poor areas. As for health the same for schools, universities, local councils/private estates, police, etc.
ยซManufacturing, Margaret Thatcher told us, was just for the lesser breeds to deal with [...] another aim was to weaken the trade union movement which had bloodied the nose of the previous Tory governmentยป
The two aims were coincident: anti-union consultants explained to politicians that manufacturing means putting lots of capital and workers in one place, and that means that organizing labor unions is easier in that one place, and strikes are more effective.
A switch to services prevents that: every "Sainsburys" or "Starbucks" employs only a few, and a strike at any one "Sainsburys" or "Starbucks" has a small impact.
Thanks for this. I have been observing the decline in Britain for a long time. During the early 2000s it became increasingly obvious. I think the bizarre cult of neoliberalism has shown itself to be disastrous for everyone, from Chile through USA, Germany, and UK.
One other major factor in the UK's decline is Britain's public (=private schools, FYI non-Brits) school system, which means that these people (7% of population) get most of the best jobs, inc political ones, regardless of merit. The brutal system of wrenching children away from their families is abusive and creates psychopaths. This is not conducive to rational government of anything.
On a personal note, I rejoined the Labour Party during the Corbyn years, and campaigned hard, because I regarded it as the last chance for a change of course. I saw how the media managed to convince a substantial number of the population to act against their own best interests.
I now find most of my information from "Alternative media" - this means I cannot talk about this to most of my friends and family, because they (whatever their political persuasion) are indoctrinated in the conventional view. Even many left-wing people consider the Chinese to be "Ants in a totalitarian state where all decisions are made by Xi Jinping" (I'm exaggerating, but it is impossible to even mention China without a stressful situation developing).
ยซI have been observing the decline in Britain for a long time. During the early 2000s it became increasingly obvious. I think the bizarre cult of neoliberalism has shown itself to be disastrous for everyone, from Chile through USA, Germany, and UK.ยป
I have been observing something quite different: a rapid rise in the living standards and wealth in a large part of Britain. M&S and Waitrose shops are packed with affluent customers spending freely their increasing incomes.
That applies to the 20-40% of "Middle England" families (professional, managerial, small business owners). The rest of the residents have indeed declined, but they do not matter politically, no major party is willing (except Labour during the Corbyn years) to represent them.
What people mistake for โdecline in Britainโ is actually "decline in the British working class".
I have parallel experiences with what you describe. And I had a good friend many years ago, public school educated, double-barreled name, severely damaged personality.
https://www.docdroid.net/DDu7zJf/silent-weapons-for-quiet-wars-a-pdf
Bilderberg migth have the answer
Excellent article. It seems that PhD Engineers make FAR better journalists than those who take it up professionally! The struggle between the small number of very wealthy and the large number of the relatively (and often absolutely) poor masses is a constant in human affairs, perhaps the key conundrum every civilization must tackle one way or another. There are many schemes such as elimination of class differences, redistribution from wealthy to the poor, tyranny, hybrid mixed systems and so on. As human-spawned technology changes many logistical aspects on the ground, so also various approaches lose or gain efficacy making change an unavoidable constant.
That said, things have a cycle or story arc. We know from their ruins that there were quite a few sophisticated civilizations thousands of years ago, some with running water systems. We don't have a very good idea of how and why they first grew and then died. Climate, politics, war, famine, spiritual confusion or ??? I think what they demonstrate is the extreme difficulty we human beings have in making stable civilizations.
That said, if any can be said to have succeeded, then you are living in the heart of that zone which includes most of the Asian countries in and around what today we call China. They have had many ups and downs, but their downs don't eradicate cultural continuity and after a century or two they return. Right now in China I have read in a couple of places (which I don't necessarily trust) that the Princeling class there (the leading communist revolutionary families) is 80% millionaires and billionaires. (This is after decades of intense revolutionary effort to reconfigure their society after a two century slump that began in the mid 1700s as silver and gold from the Americas ran out and world trade decreased markedly, according to Gunder Frank.) This suggests a more or less typical upper class structure common to 99% of all societies throughout human history.
One way of regarding this would be to immediately accuse China of running a bogus system which says it wants to benefit all but is fact mainly benefiting the wealthy, just like pretty much everywhere else. But assuming that's not true, perhaps we could come to a different conclusion, namely that
a) they are doing a pretty darn good job running a (very) large nation being politically and socially stable on the one hand and dynamically developing on the other
b) although there may be more nepotism and other corruption in the mix than they want to acknowledge, let us say that generally there is very little meaning that
c) even though they are running an extremely dynamic high population polity which is spreading wealth to hundreds of millions and raising even more out of medieval levels of rural poverty only fifty years ago, and even though philosophically they have oriented themselves to benefit most of the people building on the communist philosophy in that regard, nevertheless they have a small extremely wealthy class. (What is missing in this analysis is how many millionaires+ there are who are NOT Princeling class; still the fact that this group for 2-3 generations now is multi-generationally wealthy is meaningful, no?). Therefore
d) perhaps we can conclude that any dynamic society is going to end up with a relatively small number at the top who are more successful and wealthy than most of the population because this is just how reality of groups works.
Whether it is a family, a family business, a work crew, a military squad, a government department or a woman's sewing circle, all groups small and large rapidly develop their own internal class relations, both vertical and horizontal.
So I guess the challenge is to make it run as stably and fairly as possible without expecting the impossible, usually some sort of utopia-promising ideology which drives men mad trying to realize, and indeed might be one of the main causes of those ancient civilizations disappearing without a trace - they all went mad!
Anyway, looking forward to more of your pieces. Thank you.
Hi, I moved to Australia from the UK in late 2001. I learned a little about indigenous culture and history. My comments only relate to this cultureโs longevity. Had either of them applied to the English weโd never hear the end it.
What stands out for me is the existence of stories (still part of the culture) that describe the ending of the last ice age. Secondly, Iโve always tried to impress upon my children the fact that boomerangs are evidence of an understanding of the principles of aerodynamics 10s of thousands of years ago.
Thanks for your comment. There undoubtedly is a super rich class in China, I am not among them, and the government does seem to slow a few up from time to time, but the main thing is that life goes on for ordinary people who don't give a damn as long as their experience improves year on year - as it does, like it once did in Britain. That's how it seems to me anyway.
Fair point. But now Iโm wondering when it was so rosy for the โordinaryโ English and wonder how many good periods there were after the 1850โs. Maybe in the small towns or Downton Abbey set? Factory workers and urban working class, not very often I think. They press ganged youth into the Navy on pain of death as the iconoclastic sailor Tristan Shandy documented but maybe thatโs a fringe phenomenon to an unfortunate few. The 20โs? 30s? 40s? 50s? I remember England being somewhat grim in the 50โs when I was a boy, then 60s London lifted off reminding my stepfather who lived through them of the 20s, and rationing and post-war austerities finally seemed to melt away.
I suspect that the Chinese are having a better time generally with โPeaceful Riseโ but of course they had a tumultuous century with hundreds of millions of deaths in several different phases. But at least since the 60s or so they have had it better slowly and steadily after a rough couple of centuries. I wonder how satisfied the factory workers today in China making sweatshop wages feel. Or is that phase tapering off now?
In both British Empire England and China there is an Idea, a Heaven-level concept of the State, the Civilization, the World from โourโ point of view that is somewhat expansive, noble and grand (โTaiโ). But for most โordinaryโ folk - who identify with and are greatly proud of this Big Idea - everyday reality is somewhat challenging and constrained. I wonder, perhaps, if we are not all fooling ourselves? Or maybe life is indeed grand and intellectuals pick at unimportant nits?
I don't think it was ever rosy before the years I described. I said that the late 40s were a time of poverty in our family but we were still better off than when my father was a child in the teens/20s in Pontypool. Just before he died I got him to start writing a biography of his young days, he was semi literate, but he got the gist and he wrote of going to school barefoot. My mother discovered it and destroyed it.
As for sweat shops in China you are out of date. China is no longer a low wage economy. In the past 20 years wages have increased about 8 fold. A Chinese friend up in Longhua,, an outer suburb of Shenzhen where rents and wages are cheaper, has to offer 5000 RMB a month for the most low skill level factory post. 9/10 thousand is more likely for a skilled operator. That's about a thousand pounds a month. And in PPP terms, real value, it is worth 3.75 to the dollar, you can practically double those figures so the sweat shop wage is worth about a thousand pounds a month. We are looking for a housekeeper and ny wife thinks we will need to offer 10,000: nigh on two thousand pounds in PPP terms.
ยซAs for sweat shops in China you are out of date. China is no longer a low wage economy. In the past 20 years wages have increased about 8 fold.ยป
To have an idea of life and culture in the PRC and Asia I watch TV series on Viki.com which is cheap and they are quite well made as well as informative. Indeed there is a huge difference in the depiction of the daily lives of character between those made 15-20 years ago and contemporary ones.
ยซA Chinese friend up in Longhua,, an outer suburb of Shenzhenยป
That is a bit unfair: "Tier 1" cities and regions are pretty special. There are still many areas like Pontypool or Alabama in the PRC. But indeed progress has been pretty huge.
Perhaps the main difference between the "Gongchan" (PRC) and earlier dynasties is that the current mandarinate embodied in the Communist Party of China is engineering based instead of literary based as in previous dynasties, or perhaps the (often brutal) repression of the landlord class has made that possible.
The biggest problem with the PRC is the same as with the UK unfortunately: I would guess that all the middle class and party officials and government figures are property owners and speculators like in the UK, and will eventually sacrifice *everything* (that is throw the working class under the bus) to maximize their property gains.
This is excellent, Walt.
The problem that Britain faced was that of a Class War in which only one side was aware of what was going on. And that had been a problem for centuries.
The obvious course for Britain in 1945- a course that people like historian GDH Cole actually urged upon the government- was to repudiate the debt to the US and reach out to the Soviet Union, which was desperate for allies, afraid of imperialist aggression and had been, since 1918, calling for British investment of all kinds. The two powers would have been a perfect fit- the USSR had no fear of British industrial competition and would have welcomed industrial exports.
This would have been an opportunity for the UK to do the right thing and wind down the Empire in a decent manner instead of the dreadful and bloody process that was undertaken and has left the world full of unresolved disputes born of British 'divide and rule ' tactics and racial arrogance.
The Labour government of 1945 did many good things- under the intense pressure of an awakened nation in arms-but it did many more stupid, cowardly and evil things, almost all of them involving attempts to milk the colonies to pay off Wall Street and consolidate an alliance with the United States.
Manufacturing industry should have been nationalised from top to bottom: as both you and Anna recollect the British capitalist class was incompetent, greedy and irresponsible. That is why there was so little capital invested in modernisation, development and research- the ruling class has always been, in the final analysis, indifferent to the fate of the country and conscious that its interests are diametrically opposed to those of the people. Anyone who doubts that should take a look at Britain today, or pick up a copy of almost anything written by Dickens or his contemporaries.
Those who talk about Britain 'falling behind' in the C19th miss the point: the development models chosen by the United States, Germany and Japan were all opposed to Free Trade and Laissez Faire, doctrines that Britain's rulers maintained dogmatically. Britain was 'falling behind' by choice- its capitalists were exporting vast amounts of capital to the rest of the world. Much of it disappeared inthe First World War, most of the rest was taken by the US for loans and war credits. Off-shoring was old hat in the 1880s as any Chilean, Argentinian, American or citizen of the 'white' dominions should know- their countries were built to an important degree by British capital exported instead of reinvested
Anna talks of the waste of capital in the NHS etc- this is quite wrong. The real waste was in the successive wars and colonial adventures which led to Britain spending much more , per capita, than any other 'western' state, including the US, on the military. Increasingly this expenditure was earmarked to buy US made arms and even the British arms manufacturing/aircraft industries were slowly eroded under US pressure. In the meantime Germany, Japan, Italy and most of Europe invested not only in their own industries but in their human capital, education, public health and welfare.
It was not the NHS but adventures designed to protect the property of the ruling class abroad- the White Highlands, Rhodesia, West Africa, Malay Tin and Rubber, Palestine and Arabia, the West Indies- not to mention US and Dutch imperial follies such as Vietnam and Korea- which, together with a revival of capital exporting, led to the starvation of investment in a manufacturing sector which Britain's rulers regarded with suspicion because it employed its enemies, the objects of its hatred, the working class.
There is not the slightest doubt that Britain was de-industrialised in order to punish, impoverish and eradicate the working class, descendants of the peasantry which had been wiped out in the enclosure process.
As to the idea that Britain was bankrupt in 1945: the contrary is the case, The economy and the people were both working 'in fine fettle' at an unprecedented intensity and efficiency- thanks to the common sense policies, including Beveridge's, forced on it by the war. The mistake was in choosing the US over the Soviet Union and, in effect, mortgaging the future of generations of British people (not to mention hundreds of millions in the colonies) in order to reward US capitalists for making money out of the war.
(Check out "Life in a Railway Factory by Alfred Williams" a great book about Swindon and factory work before the museum days. And a reminder of the enormous well of talent and genius among working people wasted by the class rule of the capitalists. )
Thank you very much for your time in writing such an interesting comment. I had never thought before about the alternative approach of going with the USSR after the war. The Labour party I guess was the most socialist it ever had been and is ever likely to become, I wonder which MPs would have been in favour: Bevan perhaps for one? And how would the USA have reacted?
I didn't give it much chance but I found Life in a Railway Factory on Gutenberg.
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/40975/pg40975-images.html
I am currently reading "Coming up for Air" which is a very curious departure from others of Orwell's works I have read, and will follow up with your suggestion.. I will look up GDH Cole and hope to learn more too.
Thanks again!
The idea of a Soviet alliance might be difficult for some people to grasp. But in 1945 there was no institution in the world more popular in Britain than the Red Army- and for the ost obvious reasons. If the Red Army had not 'won the war' it had certainly taken the burden of casualties which, otherwise, would have been British (Imperial) or American.
And then thee was the recognition, which was fairly general among informed people, that there would have been no war had the Tories not refused, again and again, to respond sincerely to Soviet calls throughout the 1930s for Collective Security and, in particular, co-operation to deter Nazi aggression.
But that was only half of the matter. On the Soviet side there was a very powerful public demand for a "Thaw" and the re-introduction of democratic procedures into the Soviet system. And this was supported by the rank and file of the Red Army as well as Generals like Zhukov. In fact there is some evidence that Stalin recognised both the need to reform the system and the opportunity, which arose from the victory, to roll back responses to fears of foreign aggression, encirclement and subversion. That the 'thaw' never occurred can be explained by the way in which the US, with Britain following behind, immediately turned its attention to subverting and attacking Soviet interests.
In fact Stalin and the Soviet Union showed remarkable restraint, disavowing its massive popular support across Europe and urging support for capitalist governments (Greece being a perfect example) and sticking to the sphere of influence agreements reached at Tehran and Yalta. As you will know one consequence of this 'restraint' was Stalin's withdrawal of support from the Communist Party in China and assistance to Chiang.
The root of Britain's problem lay in the reality that, to defend its sovereignty, already compromised by alliance with the United States, symbolised by (the plainly underqualified) Eisenhower's appointment as C in C of the Normandy invasion, it had to break free of the position of second fiddleship into which Churchill and Attlee allowed it to slip-to defend itssovereignty it had to move closer to the only other power around, which is to say the USSR.
Instead the Labour government, weakly, purchased US permission to allow the reforms which culminated in the NHS (reforms hated by Congress and seen as an attack on the US way of life by Washington's oligarchs) by agreeing, against all the country's instincts and interests, to a foreign policy dictated by the US. It was a policy that all sensible, including Tory, British opinion knew was dangerous and likely to lead to another war in which Europe was torn to pieces, Europeans died by the million and America passed through unscathed and enriched.
Again very interesting, thanks. The UK has another chance to restore relations, now with the new Russia which would obviously be in its best interests, but that's not going to happen, there is no way it can break free from the US dominated Western/NATO empire, that will just have to perish in its own time. I feel sorry for the British, perhaps they will feel the need for a revolution when life becomes unbearable, though there is no recent history and the government is obviously making its plans to thwart it. Meanwhile we are doing our best to thwart sanctions, they stopped us sending goods from the UK to Moscow, so they go via an agent in Hong Kong now.
I notice that you have abandoned commenting on the MoA Open Thread which is the only one I have been following for a long time. It is currently totally dominated by anthropogenic climate change deniers, this morning I have scrolled through about a hundred comments with barely a stop. I shall just revert to publicise my new Substack post on Thursdays, it is so effective, I have 751 and 495 views on my first two posts already, they must have virtually all come through MoA. I think it's like the iceberg, we only now see the mouthy fraction above the water level so to speak, but there must be a massive majority of sensible silent followers who never break the surface. I recognise hardly any of those of who have signed up with me.
I'll come back next week with a deeper examination of the historic mistreatment of women in China, written with input from my wife, I think I'll do China every other week, a number of people have particularly welcomed it, and after that the placement of the Philippines in the USA's mounting threat to China.
I think I just subscribed to you, there can't be many socialists in Canada, let alone sociialists named bevin!
Very well said. It was the common practise in war for creditors to cancel the debts of those doing the fighting, but the US broke this rule after WW1 (a major source of the Weimar Republic failure and Hitler) and after WW2. Britain would have been well within its rights to cancel the debts, but that would have removed the UK as a financial centre and therefore greatly damaged the British ruling class.
Corelli Barnett did a good series of books on the decline of Britain, fairly laying the blame at the feet of the British ruling class; The Collapse of British Power; The Audit of War: The Illusion and Reality of Britain as a Great Nation; The Lost Victory: British Dreams, British Realities, 1945-50; and The Verdict of Peace: Britain Between Her Yesterday and the Future
In one example, Britain built up a sizeable machine tool industry in WW1 out of necessity only to let it fall apart after the war. A very significant amount of the war debts was because the UK had to buy from the US as it could not manufacture required products at home. Germany had no such issue with its advanced manufacturing industry.
There was also the overvaluation of the pound and ruinous reconnection to gold to help the interests of the ruling financier class after WW1. Barnett also questioned the investment in the NHS, which as you correctly note was much less wasteful than the costly foreign adventures.
A.minor point...
โgive 3 million a year to Zelenskyโ,
- 3 Billion, surely?
Ha!
That was what I thought I had written!
I'll correct it. Thanks!
Thank you for this article, which is broadly accurate. My main quibble is that the rot set in far, far earlier than you describe. For all the kerfuffle about British manufacturing prowess in the 1800s, we were already falling behind by the middle of the century, as the US and Germany pioneered machine tools and chemical industries whilst we continued to concentrate on low-profit textiles and suffered from chronic underinvestment. Our manufacturing trade balance was in deficit as early as 1875 - to the tune of ยฃ100 million - and was never positive again, compensated for by rising profits in services and repatriated profits from foreign investments. For many years our prosperity (always limited and unequally distributed) was enabled by having captive markets in the form of the colonies, but this only encouraged a tremendous complacency from trade unions and management alike, and when the colonies went and the markets with them, our basic lack of competitiveness in global markets was exposed. Moreover, the creation of the NHS in the immediate post-war era was a very poor use of Marshall Aid funds by a bankrupted and impoverished nation - the money would have been better used to rejuvenate the decrepit plant and machinery of British industry. This was how our European competitors spent their funds, and they were rewarded with healthier, more balanced economies that rapidly left ours in the shade. The irony is that they were naturally able to afford more generous welfare states, demonstrating that said generous welfare can only ever be a function of healthy economies, and that trying to create the latter through first creating the former will never work (a lesson that the Chinese know all too well). I know something about how backward British industry is/was - my grandfather had factories in the metal-bashing Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, and as a young girl my father used to sometimes take me with him as he visited suppliers in the other Jewellery Quarter factories. Without exception, the factories were filthy relics of the Edwardian era, full of ancient machinery which should really have been in museums rather than on the shop floor. So, to sum up, British decline has been a very lengthy process indeed, and it would probably be far beyond the efforts of any individual government to resolve, however well-intentioned.
ยซFor all the kerfuffle about British manufacturing prowess in the 1800s, we were already falling behind by the middle of the centuryยป
Not quite yet this is what me the English Empire powerful:
Tony Wrigley, "Energy and the english industrial revolution" (2010)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/energy-and-the-english-industrial-revolution/A18E48989B4A915D0E77A29D57D85763
โApproximately two-thirds of the European production of cotton textiles took place in the UK. The comparable percentages for iron production and coal production were 64 and 76 per cent. [...] The total of installed steam engine horsepower was far larger than on the continent. In 1840, 75 per cent of the combined total capacity of stationary steam engines in Britain, France, Prussia and Belgium was in Britain alone (the other three countries accounted for the great bulk of installed capacity on the continent.โ
ยซas the US and Germany pioneered machine tools and chemical industries whilst we continued to concentrate on low-profit textiles and suffered from chronic underinvestment.ยป
That โunderinvestmentโ was really asset stripping, as the dream of the industrial class of the UK was largely that of being country gentlefolk, gentry or nobility, and considered industry as a vulgar trade to be used only to squeeze as much as they could to fund their gentlefolk lifestyles, as you describe:
ยซJewellery Quarter factories. Without exception, the factories were filthy relics of the Edwardian era, full of ancient machinery which should really have been in museums rather than on the shop floor.ยป
Indeed... Recently I visited the GWR engine and car works in Swindon and most of the site is now a large shopping mall and there was a GWR museum with some photos and equipment left over, and it is obvious that up to 30s and even 50s-60s the works were unchanged from the edwardian era or even earlier in both endlessly-patched-up equipment and practices. The GWR train I took to Swindon was made by Hitachi.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/enterprise/11929491/Lord-Sugar-tells-his-Apprentice-to-invest-in-property-if-he-wants-to-be-wealthy-in-business.html
ยซSpeaking about his first year in business with Lord Sugar, Mark Wright, the winner of last yearโs Apprentice, said the Amstrad founder had given him tips on creating long-term wealth. โLord Sugar said you make money from property and do business for fun. Many of our customers make money from property and Iโd love to go into property development one day,โ said Mr Wright.ยป
๐๐ฝ๐ฝ๐ฟ๐ผ๐ ๐ถ๐บ๐ฎ๐๐ฒ๐น๐ ๐๐๐ผ-๐๐ต๐ถ๐ฟ๐ฑ๐ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐๐ฟ๐ผ๐ฝ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ป ๐ฝ๐ฟ๐ผ๐ฑ๐๐ฐ๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป ๐ผ๐ณ ๐ฐ๐ผ๐๐๐ผ๐ป ๐๐ฒ๐ ๐๐ถ๐น๐ฒ๐ ๐๐ผ๐ผ๐ธ ๐ฝ๐น๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ฒ ๐ถ๐ป ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐จ๐
I was born in Egypt. My Egyptian grandfather, Labib Nassim, is recognised as the first industrialist in Egypt in modern times. The British allowed him to build a tiny factory because he had an English wife.
Egypt was a major exporter of cotton in the 19th century. It benefited greatly from the American Civil War, for example. At one time, Egyptian farmers hardly grew anything other than cotton. This cotton was bought by Egyptian Jews. The British controlled Egypt and they gave this monopoly to the Jews - doubtless the Jews in the UK helped them do this. The cotton went to Manchester. It was bought by Jewish merchants and factory owners. They produced cloth. The cloth was exported to places like Egypt at an extortionate price. The cloth was sold to ordinary Egyptians by Jewish merchants.
This is the way imperialism worked. British politicians were in debt to Jewish money lenders and bankers. Look at the real history of Randolph and Winston Churchill. But that is a tiny example.
A similar process is going on at present in pharmaceuticals and the medical complex. But that is another story. Look up the ethnicity of the owners/managers of these huge pharmaceutical companies to see what I mean.
The Chinese have assiduously worked to keep the Jewish bankers and financiers out of China. Shanghai will replace New York and London as the world's financial system. That is why they want a war with China. Sanctions and tariffs are a precursor of war.
ยซThe cloth was sold to ordinary Egyptians by Jewish merchants. [...] British politicians were in debt to Jewish money lenders and bankers.ยป
There some traditions that princes follow:
* They channel into "odious jobs" (in particular lending and banking) some easily recognized minority (this is documented to have already happened in Sumeria 5,000 years ago).
* They extort money from those holding "odious jobs" under the pretense of lending.
* When threatened by riots they point they mobs are at the holders of "odious jobs" to make get let off steam by letting them massacre those minorities.
In the kingdoms of Israel and Judea the minority was the samaritans (remember the parable of the unexpectedly "good" samaritan):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Kokhba_revolt
โHadrian promised to rebuild the Temple, but the Jews felt betrayed when they found out that he intended to build a temple dedicated to Jupiter upon the ruins of the Second Temple. A rabbinic version of this story claims that Hadrian planned on rebuilding the Temple, but that a malevolent Samaritan convinced him not to. The reference to a malevolent Samaritan is, however, a familiar device of Jewish literature.โ
The european princes the ottoman empire used mostly armenians and greeks, the south-east asian empires use mostly overseas chinese. Israel is a giant trick by the western powers to use the most fanatical israelis to destabilize western Asia (another "odious job") which is the "near abroad" of the ancient arab, persian and turkish empires.
Note: "odious jobs" are those that create personal resentment in the "customers", principally among them tax farming and collecting, then debt collecting; shopkeepers often sell on credit ("tabs") so they become debt collectors too (many overseas chines shopkeepers were massacred in Indonesia during the CIA-organized pogroms of 1965-1966, and in the similar 1998 pogroms).
The big question is why so many from minorities still go for "odious jobs" and I am not so sure; perhaps because of being pushed, perhaps because of been greedy, perhaps because for some minorities long training in madrassas/yeshivas makes a part of them clever with written words but in an aspergery way.
ยซThe British controlled Egyptยป
How are the mighty fallen! Compare these stories:
Andrew Marr "A history of modern Britain": โIn 1942, as Rommelโs tanks drew nearer, and Churchill was fulminating about Cairo being a nest of โHun spiesโ, the British ambassador told Egyptโs King Farouk that his prime minister was not considered sufficiently anti-German and would have to be replaced. The King summoned his limited reserves of pride and refused. It was, he insisted, a step too far, a breach of the 1937 treaty.
Britainโs ambassador simply called up armoured cars, a couple of tanks and some soldiers and surrounded King Farouk in his palace. The ambassador walked in and ordered the monarch to sign a grovelling letter of abdication, renouncing and abandoning โfor ourselves and the heirs of our body the throne of Egyptโ. At this royal determination crumbled. The king asked pathetically if, perhaps, he could have one last chance? He was graciously granted it and sacked his prime minister.โ
William Rees-Mogg, "The Times": โWhen Jack Straw was replaced by Margaret Beckett as Foreign Secretary, it seemed an almost inexplicable event. Mr Straw had been very competent โ experienced, serious, moderate and always well briefed. Margaret Beckett is embarrassingly inexperienced.
I made inquiries in Washington and was told that Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, had taken exception to Mr Strawโs statement that it would be โnutsโ to bomb Iran.
The United States, it was said, had put pressure on Tony Blair to change his Foreign Secretary. Mr Straw had been fired at the request of the Bush Administration, particularly at the Pentagon.[...]
The alternative explanation was more recently given by Irwin Stelzer in The Spectator; he has remarkably good Washington contacts and is probably right. His account is that Mr Straw was indeed dismissed because of American anxieties, but that Dr Rice herself had become worried, on her visit to Blackburn, by Mr Strawโs dependence on Muslim votes. About 20 per cent of the voters in Blackburn are Islamic; Mr Straw was dismissed only four weeks after Dr Riceโs visit to his constituency.
It may be that both explanations are correct. The first complaint may have been made by Mr Rumsfeld because of Iran; Dr Rice may have withdrawn her support after seeing the Islamic pressures in Blackburn. At any rate, Irwin Stelzerโs account confirms that Mr Straw was fired because of American pressure.โ
The american empire now does to England as England did to Egypt, as that is the logic of empires.
ยซAt one time, Egyptian farmers hardly grew anything other than cotton. [...] They produced cloth. The cloth was exported to places like Egypt at an extortionate price.ยป
This was the system across the whole empire, including mostly white, mostly developed "dominions":
https://blissex.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/poliuktradeempireasymm.jpg
Part of the reason the New England colonies rebelled was that it was illegal to manufacture even *nails* in America, the had to be imported from England. That is how empires work, not just the english one.
Good comment, thanks, and I take your point. I think another issue was, in Europe, that the war destroyed a lot of infrastructure, particularly in Germany, and they had no choice but to rebuild, whereas in the UK the money counters prevented it. One odd fact comes back to me which illustrates that, is that the Triumph (I think it was) motor cycle of 1956 was much slower than the original of 1939 because the tooling had just got worn down and the machining tolerances were all shot. And as I think you suggest, the process is probably too far gone to be reversed.
ยซthe process is probably too far gone to be reversedยป
I think it could be reversed, but affluent "Middle England" voters are doing very well with the current system and would be very opposed to any reversal. They got theirs and do not want any risks.
That's a very interesting point about the Triumph, thank you for that. And yes, you are absolutely right that having one's country completely smashed up does have some compensating benefits when it comes to facing the bean counters!