What happened to England?
Suddenly, the UK media are full of articles about migrants:
BBC website: Net migration from outside EU hits highest level
Sky News: stopping migrants crossing the English Channel is a 'top priority' for the government
Clearly, some sort of crisis is coming. Could it be that the media are getting UK voters ready for the idea of dumping the EU without an agreement? That's a shameful exit, but one a lot of people seem to be happy with these days.
I think the problem I have with England is that I don't really know much about it. Of course, we all see a lot about England in the press and on TV. England dominates 'national' life, at least in the sense that many TV programmes are broadcast from there and that means most of the work for actors, production units, techie people etc is in England. All the politics that matters seems to come from there. Nobody else's politics seems to matter. The union flag is everywhere (even on bottles of Scotch which - so far - is not produced in England) and the Union Flag seems to have taken over from the flag of England.
I know bits of England: the Lake District, Newcastle, Durham, York, London. But I've always regarded England as the bit of the island you have to cross in order to travel to a more exciting place: France, Belgium, Germany, Spain - just about anywhere you can find where it's sunnier, food and drink are better if not cheaper, and life is more relaxed.
Maybe England has always been exciting but I associate it from way back in the 1960s with sad TV and newspaper campaigns trying to get us to 'Buy British' and claims in Hollywood that 'The British are coming.' The first didn't stop most British industry collapsing due to laziness (by the managers, not the workers), government complacency and a total lack of enterprise. The second: well, it didn't happen: the UK film world is dead. Small numbers of very talented people make it in the movies, but the movies don't get made in England.
I've always thought the two perfect examples of English failure are the Sinclair C5 and Dyson vacuum cleaners.
Designed in the UK in the 1980s without a thought for the British climate. Didn't hold a bag of shopping, let alone a small child. Even the designer looks embarrassed by it.
Heavy, clunky, overpriced and - o boy - where's the style?
But remember - both Clive Sinclair and James Dyson were at one time the great white hope of British industry and soaked up lots of UK money.
Of course, it wasn't always like this: England was once the leader of the British Empire, striding out across the globe and conquering (and sometimes killing) all before it. It was the powerhouse of the 19th century industrial revolution. People like me heard endlessly at school about the 'British' inventions that fuelled industry then: the bicycle, tarmac, the Spinning Jenny...The Empire fought and England claims it won wars all over the world. It did this with a lot of help from people like the Irish, the Scots, the Welsh and the poor English peasantry, not to mention the Sikhs, the Gurkas and the soldiers of the Empire, but it feared nothing and it looked to be unstoppable.
So what happened?
The England we now see in the press and in politics is a small, inward-looking, frightened place. It was, quite simply, overtaken by the rest of the world.
It doesn't seem to have worked out a decent relationship with its former Empire. There's a Commonwealth but no one is clear what its relationship with England is. There's a section of the English population that thinks it still has an Empire to command. Some don't understand that Ireland is an independent country and has been for a century.
Once a country that embraced all races, England has become infamous for its hatred of foreigners, including the ones it desperately needs, like nurses and doctors, care assistants - even the people who pick its fruit and veg. It still wages wars but won't take responsibility for the refugees fleeing those wars as a result. It's scared of a a boatload of refugees in the English Channel.
Somehow, the idea has got around that there used to be a wonderful, white England that these foreigners have spoiled by coming here.
If you don't believe me, have a look at BBC1's series Father Brown, set in the 1950s. If I switch on to this, I find myself looking at the whitest, most English programme ever made. The only 'foreign' person in the show is an Irishwoman. It's misogynistic, homophobic, and totally in keeping with the period it's set in. Is this the world English people want to live in now?
England has turned its back on Europe, especially the European Union. There's an irony here: England is the country that the French President de Gaulle initially wanted to keep out of the Common Market in the 1960s because he said England wasn't a team player. Fancy that.
England is not 'insular' because it's not an island but it doesn't get on with its neighbours in the British Isles. It either ignores or tries to bully them and has no understanding that devolution has happened (20 years ago, in fact) or what devolution means. And now that some of its neighbours are getting antsy and looking for independence and friendships with the EU and the Nordic and Celtic nations, England is frankly affronted.
What's the future for England?
For Scotland and Wales, it's clear independence will come sooner or later. We don't need England. England can only go on telling the people of Scotland and Wales they depend on England financially for so long, before we start to ask them to prove it. And they can't. The myth that the Scots are sitting here north of the border, not paying taxes and fleecing England is laughable.
England, seen from the outside, has more serious problems. It needs a constitution, a parliament of its own, more power devolved to places like Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds and Liverpool. Some elements of the English government will resist that all they can. Never forget, it was Tories - Heseltine and Thatcher to be exact - who were prepared to let the great cities of the North of England rot back in the 1980s, rather than try to pull their communities together.
The Great Cities of England (I offer that name to them free of charge) have survived but it wasn't due to England. It was all their own work. They are thriving. Now they need to stand up to nonentities like the current crop of Tories in London. That shouldn't be too difficult and I wish them luck in their endeavor.
BBC website: Net migration from outside EU hits highest level
Sky News: stopping migrants crossing the English Channel is a 'top priority' for the government
Clearly, some sort of crisis is coming. Could it be that the media are getting UK voters ready for the idea of dumping the EU without an agreement? That's a shameful exit, but one a lot of people seem to be happy with these days.
I think the problem I have with England is that I don't really know much about it. Of course, we all see a lot about England in the press and on TV. England dominates 'national' life, at least in the sense that many TV programmes are broadcast from there and that means most of the work for actors, production units, techie people etc is in England. All the politics that matters seems to come from there. Nobody else's politics seems to matter. The union flag is everywhere (even on bottles of Scotch which - so far - is not produced in England) and the Union Flag seems to have taken over from the flag of England.
I know bits of England: the Lake District, Newcastle, Durham, York, London. But I've always regarded England as the bit of the island you have to cross in order to travel to a more exciting place: France, Belgium, Germany, Spain - just about anywhere you can find where it's sunnier, food and drink are better if not cheaper, and life is more relaxed.
Maybe England has always been exciting but I associate it from way back in the 1960s with sad TV and newspaper campaigns trying to get us to 'Buy British' and claims in Hollywood that 'The British are coming.' The first didn't stop most British industry collapsing due to laziness (by the managers, not the workers), government complacency and a total lack of enterprise. The second: well, it didn't happen: the UK film world is dead. Small numbers of very talented people make it in the movies, but the movies don't get made in England.
I've always thought the two perfect examples of English failure are the Sinclair C5 and Dyson vacuum cleaners.
Designed in the UK in the 1980s without a thought for the British climate. Didn't hold a bag of shopping, let alone a small child. Even the designer looks embarrassed by it.
Heavy, clunky, overpriced and - o boy - where's the style?
But remember - both Clive Sinclair and James Dyson were at one time the great white hope of British industry and soaked up lots of UK money.
Of course, it wasn't always like this: England was once the leader of the British Empire, striding out across the globe and conquering (and sometimes killing) all before it. It was the powerhouse of the 19th century industrial revolution. People like me heard endlessly at school about the 'British' inventions that fuelled industry then: the bicycle, tarmac, the Spinning Jenny...The Empire fought and England claims it won wars all over the world. It did this with a lot of help from people like the Irish, the Scots, the Welsh and the poor English peasantry, not to mention the Sikhs, the Gurkas and the soldiers of the Empire, but it feared nothing and it looked to be unstoppable.
So what happened?
The England we now see in the press and in politics is a small, inward-looking, frightened place. It was, quite simply, overtaken by the rest of the world.
It doesn't seem to have worked out a decent relationship with its former Empire. There's a Commonwealth but no one is clear what its relationship with England is. There's a section of the English population that thinks it still has an Empire to command. Some don't understand that Ireland is an independent country and has been for a century.
Once a country that embraced all races, England has become infamous for its hatred of foreigners, including the ones it desperately needs, like nurses and doctors, care assistants - even the people who pick its fruit and veg. It still wages wars but won't take responsibility for the refugees fleeing those wars as a result. It's scared of a a boatload of refugees in the English Channel.
Somehow, the idea has got around that there used to be a wonderful, white England that these foreigners have spoiled by coming here.
If you don't believe me, have a look at BBC1's series Father Brown, set in the 1950s. If I switch on to this, I find myself looking at the whitest, most English programme ever made. The only 'foreign' person in the show is an Irishwoman. It's misogynistic, homophobic, and totally in keeping with the period it's set in. Is this the world English people want to live in now?
England has turned its back on Europe, especially the European Union. There's an irony here: England is the country that the French President de Gaulle initially wanted to keep out of the Common Market in the 1960s because he said England wasn't a team player. Fancy that.
England is not 'insular' because it's not an island but it doesn't get on with its neighbours in the British Isles. It either ignores or tries to bully them and has no understanding that devolution has happened (20 years ago, in fact) or what devolution means. And now that some of its neighbours are getting antsy and looking for independence and friendships with the EU and the Nordic and Celtic nations, England is frankly affronted.
What's the future for England?
For Scotland and Wales, it's clear independence will come sooner or later. We don't need England. England can only go on telling the people of Scotland and Wales they depend on England financially for so long, before we start to ask them to prove it. And they can't. The myth that the Scots are sitting here north of the border, not paying taxes and fleecing England is laughable.
England, seen from the outside, has more serious problems. It needs a constitution, a parliament of its own, more power devolved to places like Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds and Liverpool. Some elements of the English government will resist that all they can. Never forget, it was Tories - Heseltine and Thatcher to be exact - who were prepared to let the great cities of the North of England rot back in the 1980s, rather than try to pull their communities together.
The Great Cities of England (I offer that name to them free of charge) have survived but it wasn't due to England. It was all their own work. They are thriving. Now they need to stand up to nonentities like the current crop of Tories in London. That shouldn't be too difficult and I wish them luck in their endeavor.
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