Vote leave or vote remain, but please vote knowing that Britain is Great…
Anyone who thinks otherwise is obviously uneducated, or French.
Without Great Britain the world would be a poorer place in every regard.
Let’s just remind ourselves why…
We gave the world democracy, common law, the Bailey Bridge, tanks, gravity, the worlds most common second language, Led Zeppelin, fair play, queuing, the backhoe loader, metal bridges, the Magna Carta, modern economics, the industrial revolution and Hollywood villains.
The Beatles, Morris Dancing, penicillin, HP sauce, the World Wide Web (you’re welcome), One Direction, Carry On and Simon Cowell.
Tea drinking, chicken tikka masala, Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, battered Mars Bars, the BBC, the mini (car, roundabout and skirt), the Spice Girls, Darwin, football, Marmite, rugby, cricket, golf, tennis, ping pong, pubs, tea, sharp suits, Spitfires and the fact there are homosexuals, lesbians and transsexuals in the armed forces and you know what, no one gives two shits.
With our friends and allies stood against the Nazis, invented the railway, sarcasm, MRI scanners, the screw propeller and a proper breakfast, been on the right side of the Napoleonic, First, Second and Cold War and gave the world steam power, the Mexeflote, Wallace and Gromit, roast beef dinners, the Dyson, Doctor Who, television, telephones, the Rolls-Royce Merlin, text messaging, GMT, electric motors, lawn mowers, the Land Rover, spotted dick, sewage systems, the thermos flask, the jet engine, carbon fibre, the flushing toilet and polyester (just for the RAF), pencils, radar and the Bank of France (ha ha ha).
The correct method of holding an umbrella
The fighter aircraft, battleship, aircraft carrier, drill that doesn’t look ridiculous, proper salutes, the torpedo, sonar, underwater knife fighters (special forces), the armoured vehicle boiling vessel (for the tea), the Paralympic Games, independent air forces (yep, sorry about that one), the equal sign and gin & tonic.
Did I mention, tea
I am not actually a fan of the term ‘place in the world’ but it does serve as a reasonable place to start a conversation about what we stand for and who we are.
The UK is one of the worlds largest economies, has world-class research, science, engineering, culture, finance and technology industry’s. European Geostrategy even ranked the UK the worlds only global soft super-power, above the USA. We occupy one the UN’s few permanent security council seats and have a disproportionate influence on world governance and business, technology and security standards.
Our military has an incredible reputation and most nations know that whilst we may seem a little soft on the outside we are not to be messed with. Trident, a conventional military force with genuine global reach and a range of capabilities honed in numerous conflicts means that despite recent problems it would be a very brave nation that took us on directly.
The UK, therefore, has a deep well of hard and soft power from which to draw.
There is an ongoing obsession with putting nations into league tables and any casual online search will reveal a plethora of indices, but the bottom line is basic, the UK is one of the worlds leading nations by any measure you care to use.
We should have no illusions about our relationships with the USA, Germany or France and others. Although we are allies and firm friends should not expect anything but self-interest from them, to think otherwise is delusional.
We should not describe ourselves as a bridge to anything or anyone, we are more than that and have the ability to act as an important nation in our own right at the heart of global affairs whether we are part of the EU or not.
The world is changing at a rapid pace and if Great Britain wants to be safe, prosperous and influential our outlook must be outward looking, in all the forms that this might take. We might be an island nation, but we are as interconnected as any, reliant on a complex web of relationships, alliances and connections.
But no matter what, democracy and the ability to govern ourselves is the most important of all things.
So when it comes to voting on the 23rd, if you are voting, please vote not from fear, but from the knowledge this nation of ours is called Great Britain for a bloody good reason and nothing to do with Brittany!
@Necessary Evil
Trade deals nowadays are more specific. For example, if Liberia seeks more investment within its country, it might be a good idea for it to have a trade deal or a bilateral investment treaty with for example the USA. Now that deal would take around about 1-3 years to conclude, because Liberia is a small economy, and therefore its industries are very limited. Now say the EU (not a member state as they are forbidden from making their own trade agreements) seeks a trade agreement with China (which they do not have). As they are both large economies there will be numerous tariffs and quotas, which inevitably add a lot of time to the negotiations. The thing is, China, whose production costs are very low due to limited regulation, still exports on a huge scale to the EU, and makes a nice profit.
If the UK leaves the EU, it should in my opinion opt for a free-trade economy, thereby rendering exprort tariffs irrelevant. So if British ships are built with cheaper steel, the UK ship industry will still be able to export to the EU and make a nice profit. That can happen without a free-trade agreement. After Brexit there’s no doubt the German car industry which constitutes a large part of the UK-EU trade deficit will want a free-trade agreement, so as long as we negotiate on our terms, UK industries should make an even bigger profit.
If the EU refuses a trade deal, then that’s their loss. In an era of globalisation we can do better, on a global scale.
You forgot the NHS.
In my humblest opinion (and I and my family do not work for it) the NHS is the single greatest thing thus country gas ever done.
An do not forge how the NHS supports the armed services (not forgetting what the NHS gets from the armed services)
@BB
Very very unlikely to see Scots vote tactically to leave. The vote will likely to be 70/30 stay in Scotland. Plus the higher the stay vote the more ammo to be claimed to have been dragged out in case of a BREXIT.
The leave campaign has issues in Scotland
Farage and Johnson are despised north of the border, give merely strongly disliked.
Actually does make me think that even if I understood none of the arguments I could still not bring myself to adopt a position supported by odious creeps like Johnson, Garage, Give and Putin.
That last name should really hit home to those who do not believe that a BREXIT will affect UK or European security. Does a man who last year had x nuclear submarines poised off our coast have our best interests at heart?
Challenger, by D-Day the Germans were indeed already on the slide against the Russians; but if you were to consider America’s complete absence from the war, it might be worse than a slowing of Russian progress on the eastern front.
Without active American involvement in the war, and perhaps (before the point they did join) even just without loaned US-built destroyers in the North Atlantic, the Battle of The Atlantic could have been won by the Germans earlydoors.
Success in the Atlantic, and a successful blockade of Britain would have eliminated the realistic threat of a western front. A couple of million men and thousands of tanks and aircraft could have been released for the war in the east.
Even with US support in the war, had Hitler recognized the potential of the U-boats earlier, the build up of allied forces in England could have been prevented with a relatively small outlay of resources. Much of the German forces in France, Norway, and Italy could have been eastward bound before it went irredeemably pear shaped against the Soviets, and the lack of allied carpet bombing from English airbases could also have had an exponential effect on German industrial output.
The whole war could have hinged on a few US-built destroyers.
Test from my mobile on 4G lap top posts just show awaiting moderation.
Can we expect pro-EU Scottish nationalists to vote tactically to leave in the hope of justifying another Scottish independence referendum?
And would it be likely to make a difference?
NE, I think it’s actually easier to get past tariffs if you are a small entity than if you are a large one. For example, if you were trying to sell something in China, as an independent UK, your volume is small, so it looks less threatening than if you combined it with the whole of the EU where the “total volume produced” might look so large and threatening that it scares them to block the whole thing.
Protectionism if you get right down to the basis for it, is a fear reaction, the fear that their own industries can’t compete and need an “edge” or be forced to close down. Anything that lessens that fear increases the likelihood of a successful “free trade” deal.
Large entities in trade do have their benefits as they represent a huge market which the opposite party might want to do business in and do function well as a threat (open your market or we’ll close ours!), but when you get down to the level where threats are exchanged, that’s already an acrimonious relationship, not somewhere you like to end up. Better to guilt trip and sneak in by incremental small volumes than to try betting the whole pot on one hand.
But I’m also well aware that my stand might be the result of long term historical brainwashing on the advantages of free trade, so *shrug*. We’ll see how it goes.
MSR, you talk about the remain campaign using facts, but they are happily presenting uncertain economic forecasts as absolute facts.
They are then disingenuous to a further extent in the way they present those ‘facts’.
The bleaker economic forecasts, used to describe a future outside the EU, are often presented in such a way as to suggest a decline against today’s economic performance; however, the figures regularly being used are actually only relative to the rosy forecasts used to describe a future within the EU. The result is that their forecasts, which only suggest slower economic growth outside the EU, misleadingly appear to suggest economic contraction against current performance.
The difference between the uncertain forecasts, of economic performance inside and outside the EU, is then regularly but disingenuously divided by the number of UK households to give a subjective cash figure of some thousands of pounds. This cash figure is presented per household to deliberately give the impression that you and your family will or will not have this money in your hand, depending on how you vote. This is of course not how the economy works, and the size of the overall economy is not necessarily directly related to the wealth of the individuals within it.
Households will not necessarily find themselves with another £N,000 in their hand just because the economy is N% larger than an alternative forecast – not least because a part of the expected economic growth is directly related to predicted population growth. All other things being equal, if you let in three million immigrants over a given period of time, rather than one million over the same period, the economy will be somewhat bigger; that won’t automatically deliver a cash bonus to households though – those additional people will themselves require investment in transport, healthcare, education, housing, policing, etc.
Murphy, if trade deals aren´t required, why is every major economy trying to make trade deals (the trans-Pacific partnership being a good example)?
Yes, and none of them contain any leaves of the tea plant, Camellia Sinesis, which is I believe what TD was referring to. The other drinks are called tea simply because they are also steeped in hot water. In other countries (and in the UK sometimes) they are called infusions.
NE. My sister drinks a lot of camomile tea. Look on the supermarket shelves. There are lots of fruit teas, nettle teas, redbush teas, etc.
“Those who give up liberty in exchange for security deserve neither, and will lose both.”
-Nice catchphrase Murphy, but coming from somewhere who gave up a lot of liberty for security, we haven’t lost security yet! :)
A more appropriate one (though in a different context) I find is “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
Security or Liberty, sooner or later you have to weight one side heavier than the other. Hell, tossing someone in jail is the ultimate definition of depriving someone of liberty, but all countries have jails and laws for “security” of the people. Can you imagine a country that does not clamp down on crime? It has happened many times in many areas and those countries tend not to turn out well. Liberty or death? Too much liberty IS death, look what happened to Syria and Libya post-Arab Spring.
Agree that the EU is protectionist, just object to “catchphrase thinking”. Too many shades of grey in the world to approve of black and white thinking.
Wasn’t there a time before the EU? My opinion is that the “leave” campaigners want to reset the clock back to that period of time, so they don’t specify a future scenario since it’s “same as the past” to them.
Have to remember, the EU is really relatively young, there are a lot of people that still remember a time before that. Maybe through rose tinted glasses, but there are a lot of people that were around pre-1993(?)
One of the reasons as to why Britain and British industry was so so successful in the 19th century was because of her free-trade policy, which allowed her to export at much cheaper prices and therefore selling a lot more.
The EU on the other hand is the complete opposite. With it’s protectionist ideals, is the perfect organisation for large corporations because of it’s numerous regulations and directives which extensively limit competition. When a politician says he is in favour of staying in, it is probably because he has a well payed job lined up for him in Brussels, and not because he actually believes it.
The economies of the EU are stagnant, starting a buissness in the EU is like stepping into a legal minefield and a great many politicians are bought by the EU, or at the very least influenced. The UK is the 5th largest economy in the world and trade deals aren’t required now with the WTO. That for me is enough to want to leave, but in my opinion sovreignty is what matters the most, and that is why I ask you to vote to leave.
“Those who give up liberty in exchange for security deserve neither, and will lose both.”
@MSR
‘The leave camp, however, say leave the EU and… what? When challenged they offer no reasoning as to how we will be better off, and suggest no plan for the future.’
I’d say that sums up the stay campaign as well. I am not aware of any member of the remain campaign who has offered a vision of the UK’s role within the EU after this referendum has taken place and a vote to stay is the result. It would be nice to hear someone saying what they would do with a mandate from the UK public to stay in the EU and what real reforms they would try to achieve and how they would do this, rather than the usual ‘it’s better the devil you know’ crap we are constantly fed while in the same breath agreeing that the EU needs to reform.
“What have the Romans ever done for us eh….”
Oh yes British humour too.
-Nah, I don’t think they can be blamed for that. :)
@Wise Ape
“What have the Romans ever done for us eh….”
Oh yes British humour too.
John Hartley, it was apparently discovered by the Yellow Emperor himself. Oh, and camomile is a completely different plant.
Re: the subject of the thread, would Brexiters be willing to trade a short-term military spending cut as a consequence of an economic downturn caused by market uncertainty for the percieved increase in national sovereignty from a Brexit?
And as a geneticist, I can say that the caffeine in both tea and coffee is a mild carcinogen. :)
Something that tea health advocates seem to have missed noticing.
On a more technical note, the caffeine molecule is just the right shape/size to intercalate between the major groove of a DNA molecule, causing it to “stretch” and cause frameshift mutations when transcribing/translating, if anyone is interested in the technical details.
@Julian
@Ron
Points taken, but I mentioned the principle which is that the remain camp are taking the facts/figures approach in contrast to the leave camp, which doesn’t bother to offer any, and instead try to grab headlines, doubtless working off the dubious idea (as postulated by some think tanks and statistical studies) that most people only get their news from headlines as they walk by the news stand in the petrol station on their way to work.
Both you mention the uncertainty of the future, and I think this is the key: the remain camp say stay in the EU to avoid uncertainty. The leave camp, however, say leave the EU and… what? When challenged they offer no reasoning as to how we will be better off, and suggest no plan for the future. Thus, the leave camp are arguing in favour of uncertainty, which is death to a stable economy.
In fact, the leave camp even argue that they don’t need to come up with a plan/vision/idea/vague notion/slightest hint at how things will work post Brexit and they justify this by saying they don’t need to because they’re a single issue campaign! Would you vote for a party at a general election that made such an argument? “Vote for us because we haven’t got a clue what we’ll do when we win, we just want to win!”
Re tea. It was an early Chinese warlord who is credited with tea drinking. To stop his troops coming down with stomach bugs, he ordered that drinking water be boiled. Some camomile leaves blew into the vats of boiling water. They liked the taste & the rest is history. The UK can take credit for black tea, adding milk & planting in India & Africa (+Cornwall).
As for economic forecasts, I suspect both sides are rubbish, as there is probably a global economic slowdown coming, regardless of the UK referendum vote.
@NE – re tea I remember (a little vaguely) a fascinating documentary a few years back about the 10 (I think) lesser-known things that enabled the British Empire. Tea drinking was mentioned as one because of the antibacterial effects of tea (as demonstrated in the program by the rate at which a frog putrefied I seem to remember). It was claimed that these health benefits enabled greater population densities in the mill towns of the north before rampant disease started to decimate said populations which was important to us in creating mass-production capabilities.
@MSR – re the Brexiters “simple, often childish, emotional statements and no facts and figures of their own” I tend to agree although I do also acknowledge Ron’s point that when considering a future with many uncertainties absolute facts are in short supply.
I do still wish the discussions were a bit more intelligent though. For instance the treasury forecast a week or so ago about what Brexit might do to the economy with the only real retort from the Brexit camp being “more project fear”. If only the treasury could make that forecast model available to anyone who wanted it (maybe they do) so that Brexit economists could plug in their own assumptions to arrive a different and presumably more favourable economic outcome for Brexit. At least then we could discuss the potential validity of each side’s input assumptions rather than simply being presented with “computer says no” (which rather ironically is a quote from the “Little Britain” TV series).
I saw some clips of the Sky News debate with Michael Gove replayed on BBC news last night. They showed one clip of an audience member saying to Michael Gove “With all due respect Mr Gove it appears to me that it’s almost like a First World War general – you’re waving the flag, you’re saying ‘over the top men’, but you have no idea what’s on the front line or what the casualty rate will be in the conflicts to come.”. Personally I thought that was a masterful and beautifully articulated observation.
– Julian
By the way TD, did you really claim that GB gave the world tea? We may have taught the world to mix different strains of tea all together and then add milk to mask the taste, but I really don´t see that as a great innovation.
NB, I mean that there will be more volatility in the short-term, simply because the markets hate uncertainty and we haven´t arranged any alternative trade deals to replace the EU ones.
Ron, you didn´t actually disagree with any of my points. I admit that Britain was the superpower of most of the 19th century because of the industrial revolution, but if we hadn´t conquered the colonies we wouldn´t have had the markets to buy raw materials from, and to sell manufactured goods too. Since this is a military blog, it would be wrong to overlook the contribution of Empire and Commonwealth troops in both World Wars too.
The only point I made about the economy was that if we vote to leave their will be more volatility in the markets (just look what happened when Boris Johnson declared that he was pro-Brexit!), and that in these uncertain times it doesn´t seem like a risk worth taking, especially since our economy is doing rather well (compared with other developed nations) at the moment.
MSR What facts do you want? It’s rather difficult to find facts and figures regarding the future!
If facts and figures are not accurate then that completely diminishes their relevance to the discussion. I would argue that turns them into childish and emotional statements. How is the remain camp any better the only message they seem to be promoting at the moment is that if we leave there will be economic ruin and we will be ostracised by the wider world as some sort of N.Korean state.
My biggest problem with the leave campaigners is that, while the remain campaign tend to present facts and figures (you can argue the accuracy of those facts and figures elsewhere, by the principle remains that they are presenting facts and figures) the leave campaign respond to those facts and figures with simple, often childish, emotional statements and no facts and figures of their own that aren’t immediately and verifiably untrue, such as Penny Mordant’s stupid statement about whether the UK gets to veto possible Turkish membership or not. Plus, there is every single thing that comes out of Johnson’s mouth… the leave campaign are doing negative, emotional propaganda and it could well work, because they’re appealing to the lizard brain in all of us, not the rational brain. Plus, the leave campaign has idiots like Johnson and Gove running it, as well as that horrible little gobby tosser Farage (I don’t like him, as you might have noticed), and this line-up doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence that the leave campaign is anything other than a self-serving exercise in pursuit of narrow-minded agendas. That is not a good reason for ditching the EU. There may be good reasons for ditching the EU, but the leave campaign either don’t know them, or don’t care, because they are utterly failing to communicate them.
Worth reading: https://rusi.org/publication/briefing-papers/SDSR-Brexit
In our munificence we English let the other home nations play for us. With mixed success. Simon Jones helped regain the Ashes. Gavin Hamilton bagged a pair and took 0-63.
BTW seem to recall – from reading not personal experience – that ancient Rome had a fire brigade. Post Nero.
Only the future really matters and glorifying what our ancestors achieved rather than what we have done is rather self indulgent and lazy.
(ps. it’s Great Britain and Northern Ireland)
I couldn’t disagree with you more Necessary Evil. Britain was great because it was the first country to truly become industrialized and therefore massively increased its wealth and productivity which is what enabled it to forge an empire. Greece,Spain,France etc they also are part of the E.U and look at the significant problems they currently have not to mention us. The huge economic risk from leaving and all these doom predictions are based on the assumption that we would stop trading with the rest of the world, which is the opposite of what most Brexiters want. The E.U is now holding itself back because it has become protectionist in mindset and doesn’t want free trade with the rest of the world. There seems to be the opinion trade deals are about getting as much access to their market and giving them as little to yours as possible, therefore the bigger you are the better chance you have. This is wrong. Reducing competition on domestic industries in the long run leads to lower growth in productivity and means as a society we are worse off. That’s before we even get to the argument about democracy and lack of accountability.
I believe Mike Nield nailed it.
I think something that has been overlooked is that it wasn´t just Brits who made Britain great, it was all the peoples of the British Empire (for a military example, you need look no further than the Gurkhas). Since we no longer have an Empire, we need to be part of some other large political entity if we want to maintain our greatness. Some Brexiters have suggested making more of our connection to former British colonies, but is this really a better bet than staying in the EU? The colonies may have helped us to become great in the past, but it wasn´t entirely voluntary, whereas the EU has been (at least on a state level).
Perhaps some would argue that we do not need to be part of a large political entity, we only need to be part of a large economic entity, like the EFTA. That might be true, but unfortunately this vote isn´t a choice between staying in the EU and joining the EFTA, it is a choice between staying in the EU and something else. That something else might be much better, or it might be much worse, but I believe the economy will take a hit in the meantime since the markets hate uncertainty, and that seems like a risk that is not worth taking with the world economy in such a fragile state.
WiseApe – True, but in the United Kingdom only England is a Test playing nation and that is definitely not a reason for dismantling the Union.
Dont know why but Betjeman’s poem In Westminster Abbey chimes a distant bell with me.
http://allpoetry.com/poem/8493441-In-Westminster-Abbey-by-Sir-John-Betjeman
Its worse than I thought. Brotherhood of Man was “Save your kisses for me”. Enough to put a continent in a state of terror. “Making your mind up” was Bucks fizz. No wonder they keep voting us down now. Joe & Jake deserved to be in the top quarter, but they ended up second from bottom.
Observer re common man. A month ago, a newspaper asked a Polish construction worker in Britain what he thought. He said the British workers had their hourly rate halved, because of the cheaper migrants undercutting them. Now the Pole was moaning that cheaper Romanians were undercutting him.
Best wishes in your decisions, though to be really honest, I don’t see how staying or leaving will affect the common man much.
Anyone kind enough to enlighten me?
@Chris Brown
‘It may be a point of opinion rather than outright fact, but i think it was Russia who won World War Two rather than the USA. The USA (with British and Commonwealth help) stopped Russia in Germany and prevented western Europe becoming communist’
Agree to some extent and always remember the ‘American money, British brains and Russian blood’ mantra which i think carries at least some weight.
It’s an interesting subject and i think it’s safe to say that by June 1944 the Russian juggernaut was going to thunder into central Europe with or without an Anglo-American campaign in the west. However it’s also interesting to read just how many men and how much war material was needed to try and resist the round the clock aerial bombardment of Germany from 1942 onwards. The Mediterranean campaign, often seen as pointless and mismanaged once North Africa and Sicily were secure, did nevertheless knock Italy out of the war and not only forced the Wehrmacht to commit 25ish divisions to a new theater of war but equally importantly meant they had to take over from the multitude of Italian formations garrisoning Yugoslavia and Greece.
Also whilst the triumphs of Russian war production are (rightly) lorded as part of their success story on the Eastern Front it’s worth remembering that millions of tons of American and British lend-lease equipment and goods were sent to Russia, providing a lot of the less exciting but vital stuff, including most of their radios and trucks and a lot of their medical supplies, boots, other communications equipment, aircraft, ammunition etc.
It’s a fun what if to consider how rapid or successful the Russian victory would have been without all of these indirect but substantial actions by the Western allies up until 1944.
We did give Europe “The Brotherhood of Man” singing “Making your mind up”. Its no wonder they hate us.
Whisky, don’t forget the whisky.
I was hoping for an extended article on inshore security. Perhaps written by a serving RN officer?
It’s a secret ballot and far be it for me to try and influence anyone, but you do know that not one of the other 27 members of the EU is a Test playing nation, don’t you?
Would just like to echo the statement Repluse had made.
In fear of losing individuals on the way to the vision we now have a vision of “everyone being the same”. What a shame. What a waste. Why would we all want to be the same anyway?
Lets aim for something. Lets let people be diverse. Let them try and fail so they can try a second and third time. When they do succeed it will be so much sweeter.
The nation needs a target in the sights. Otherwise we end up with Politicians concerned with their own power rather than genuine progression.
agreed and will repost
Great list of achievements, and others have added more. I would like to add: Penicillin, Accurate Time Keeping, Longitude, Breech loaded weapons and of course the Longbow (thanks Wales !). Sadly Churchill’s statement “it is better to jaw jaw than war war”, has been taken to extremes by some of our European neighbors, and we need more than just a talking shop.
Interesting times ahead, and for some on both sides of the debate, they have forgotten that when we, “The British”, are threatened with “Fear”, we all club together and respond as a collective and most times come out on top.
Keep up the good work
Repulse
It may be a point of opinion rather than outright fact, but i think it was Russia who won World War Two rather than the USA. The USA (with British and Commonwealth help) stopped Russia in Germany and prevented western Europe becoming communist.
Hear hear TD.
I would go either further and say that the UK (and Commonwealth) paid a heavy price to keep the candle of democracy burning in Europe. Whilst the Americans were key ultimately in victory, the price we paid them early in the war in terms of money, land and technological secrets ultimately diminished this country to the betterment of the US. It seems Europe and the US now want us to pay an even greater price of freedom and ambition to keep Europe “peaceful”.
The problem with the whole EU debate is that it is done in the absence of any clear statement of UK ambition, the government and virtually all governments post war have seen their role as managing decline rather than setting a new vision. I’m not talking empire / conquest, but purpose greater than trying to keep the NHS funded and the worship of false celebrity idols. Europe has a vision, but the government will not tell it straight as they know the British public do not want it. Nor should we pretend that we can change the rules of the club against the majority wishes. The problem is by not having vision, the void will be filled by right wing nationalists – something very unbritish.
Without vision and ambition the UK will continue to be a rudderless boat and continue to live of the achievements off the past, which are slowly being eroded due to leftist / PC tendencies in our media / teaching professionals.
Here is one vision, that would make best use of our scientific, industrial and exploratory skills – Britain should take the lead in Space Exploration, aiming for a permanent base on Mars by 2035.
So in short TD, Britain is Great, but can and must do so so much more.
Independance Day 323rd June.
I think you left roller skates and real custard off the list of British gifts to humanity.
Nicely put. I suspect that if Brexit win Scotland will be leaving one of the most successful unions in history thus making Great Britain substantially less “great”. Is that a price worth paying (a question to Brexit supporters)?
You’ve forgotten factories, industrial processes, Bessemer steel processing, the moving production line (yes- bollox to Ford, the worlds first was a traction engine company in the south-east), Powered flight (and indeed the principles of flight), Computers, fundamental christianity (the puritans)….
….The police (a proper civilian force, as opposed to giving soldiers nailed clubs), forensic science, a legal system, civil rights,
professional Fire Brigades.
….did you mention tea?
“They” are being remarkably bellicose about their little club. they might do well to remember that the poliglot people of these island AND our cousins from around the Britich Commonwealth have bailed them out three times so far. Without out Contemptable, proud, stubbornly nationalistic Island the Corporals would have seen to it that the European project was very different. We are neither dependant on, nor limited by European Federations. We are a key player in a Global family and prefer to keep it that way. I want Out because I am a proud (and unfashionable) Nation (alist)! They want us In so that they can finally rid themselves of us – the Incorrigibly , stubborn British.