“Almost a third of all drug overdoses in Europe happened in the UK. Also, Britain has the highest proportion of heroin addicts in the EU – 8 in every 1,000 people. And the UK drug mortality rate is three times the EU average, at 60.3 deaths per million people.”
From an otherwise dull article in The Canary.
I’m not exactly sure what the implications of the above are but I find these sorts of statistics that seem to highlight big underlying differences between UK society and the society of our neighbours in Europe fascinating. Another example is the low birth rate in Germany and some other parts of Europe compared to the UK, which I’ve mentioned before.
What on earth is going on? On the face of it, it seems British people or at least a sector of the population appear to be unthinking animals. I’m sure its not as simple as that though. I’m sure there’s a good chance the stats in the Canary have been Cherry picked too.
My question is really about the calibre, cohesion and wellbeing of our society in general though. There was a load of talk after the recent terror attacks and Grenfell about communities pulling together and the response proving that society at large isn’t sick, it’s just our leaders. Does anyone really believe that? Stats like the above suggest otherwise. Any insights into where we really are as a British community and if things really are as bad as they seem how we got to where we got to, while our neighbours didn’t? Is anyone actually proud of where we are?
There’s good and bad in our society and I believe the majority are genuinely ok/good. But the Govt has taught a lot of the population to demonise those who need social help though.
We’re not very good at dealing with the scrotes either (see acid attacks, mental moped thieves, knife crime, drug gangs, banking fraud and Barry’s favourite - extremism)
While it’s nice to celebrate any victory and those drug figures show that we are the leaders in Europe, recent events hinted at where we are as a nation.
Ordinary people of all faiths rallied around when fellow citizens needed help in Manchester and London, showing incredible solidarity, but politicians failed, and continue to fail their communities.
You’ve got to be holistic in assessing these situations. I think you also have to be present, experience the day to day. Some of the worst pontificating about our country comes from people that don’t live here, yet feel super-qualified to enumerate the ills of our nation, be they self-satisfied expats or Donald Trump.
We live in a news culture that only presents the very worst of British life front and centre, yet largely fails to report on the structural problems and is mostly in line with UK government policy.
Ultimately though, the situation in Britain is one that would be recognised by a Roman. Optimares and populares, a ruling class and the rest, and a system that seems to have survived millennia without a great deal of substantive change. Any rights the poor actually get are hard fought for, usually only conceded when that ruling class is at risk, and usually watered down in the implementation to favour the incumbents of power. This has gotten a shitload worse in the last forty years, except we usually cover it with the term inequality again.
Returning this ramble to @stickywhitedovepiss 's topic of the high rates of substance abuse, I’m going to speak in the abstract.
Whenever people do something they know could be harmful to them, and do it anyway, there is always an internal moment in which someone says “fuck it”. As much as I admire my compatriots that have shown good humour under these circumstances, this country has given people more and more reasons to say “fuck it”.
I am pretty proud of who we are, and by that, I mean the British people at large.
I’ve never been to a country that despite its problems, is more racially inclusive. The US is nowhere fucking near us, despite all the rainbow coalitions they put front and centre in their top-rated TV shows to make you think they are.
I was deeply uncomfortable with some of my experiences with African American dudes in the South of the USA. I just could not cope with the deference to white people some of them had. I don’t know if Suzanne Collins ever had any real life inspiration in mind when designing Panem and the districts, but she _could have _picked Paris. London is heading that way more organically by way of gentrification and prohibitive costs for ordinary people. We need to stop that shit.
The other thing that is quite common in the US is people that don’t ever face any challenge to their political views. I worked with some otherwise lovely people that were real Republican gun nuts. They’d drive into work, then go back to an area where almost everyone shared the same skin colour and political views.
We are far from perfect, as any black mush driving a nice car will tell you. We haven’t solved racism. We haven’t solved equality. We’re not done with feminism. We are a shitload further down the line than anywhere else I have been, and we might just be about to elect a left-wing government.
Thanks for your suggestion which I am now giving lengthy consideration to on the basis that self justification is probably something you little people know an awful lot about. Not that one could easily tell from your posts of course. It’s not like you mention your humble upbringing on the flower estates, your many daring scraps and your regular trips to diverse far flung parts of the world every other post.
If only the UK stopped being so apologetic for everything and introduced proper non-politicised performance based Education Systems, removed the entire implication that the State is at fault for everything that happens to an individual, and removed all benefits and of course privatised Healthcare and copied the American Dream.
And of course the wealthiest most benevolent highest rated Educational System part of the world has absolutely none of these issues
I would love to join this thread but am clearly too thick to understand what the thread title means, so I’ll just go and find some more prog rock to put on the music thread.
I expect you did. I was going to downvote @stickywhitedovepiss for his superfluous apostrophe and the spelling of bassoon, but I found a nice big yellow piece of cake and was climbing the walls for hours.
I expect you did. I was going to downvote @stickywhitedovepiss for his superfluous apostrophe and the spelling of bassoon, but I found a nice big yellow piece of cake and was climbing the walls for hours.
For the record I updated this title before Paps comment above. Pap used some kind of forum spy software to instantly report back edits to thread titles and posts. At least we now know what he is capable of. I’m pretty sure he stores and reads the unposted uncompleted comments we enter in the comment boxes as well. Beware.
