Question for Brits: Does England really swing like a pendulum do?

[Arugula Latte]

Also, was that song popular in England in the early '70s like it was over here?

Thanks. :hi:


England swings like a pendulum do,
Bobbies on bicycles, two by two,
Westminster Abbey the tower of Big Ben,
The rosy red cheeks of the little children.

Now, if you huff and puff and you fina'lly save enough
Money up to take your family on a trip across the sea,
Take a tip before you take your trip; let me tell you where to go,
Go to England, Oh;

Mama's old pajamas and your papa's mustache,
Falling out the window sill, frolic in the grass,
Tryin' to mock the way they talk fun but all in vain,
Gaping at the dapper men with derby hats and canes

[mr blur]

1. It's pretty cool, actually.

Although I seem to remember that song was the '60s, not '70s. Don't see many dapper men with derby hats and canes these days.

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. I suppose it used to in a way,

Oregonian, before the right-wing psychos took over the Government. As the song goes, "it was the day the music died". It's ironical, but Blair is more recklessly coporatist than either Thatcher or Major.

On the pop scene, the young divas chant to the kind of skipping doggerel the girls used to chant in the playground in primary school, while their male counterparts whine mournfully.

However, to revert to the political ethos, which has so debased the nation's spirit, Howard and his Tory neocons are the absolute pits. They just don't have the savvy to realise that they have to throw a few bones to the people; while the people have realised at last that there are no longer any of the old One-Nation Tories (who put Blair to shame) left. In fact, they are just wild animals, who will do what Blair is seeking to do, but straight away! No patient artfulness, no reading of the electorate's level of tolerance, just brute vandalism and plunder.

I read in a brilliant history book that in the middle ages, for all the oppression, Merry England really existed. The English used to be a very cheerful merry people. I suspect the full employment and welfare state of the fifties and sixties brought some of that back.
All we seem to read about in the papers now is mindless violence and suicide. Oh, and of course, the people being cheated and plundered at every twist and turn.

[Arugula Latte]

3. Well, thank you for a very thoughtful reply to my

rather flippant little post! :hi:

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. My pleasure, Oregonian.

Well, bitter sorrow, too, but you know what I mean.

[redqueen]

5. Wow...

Interesting stuff... thanks!

[tjwmason]

6. I'm going to have to disagree here

What Thatcher did was nothing new. British politics has tended to inhabit a fairly small space with a vast amount of fuss made over the little patch of ground between the Tories and Labour (formerly Liberals); this is periodically interrupted with a revolution which moves this small patch and both parties.

After the second world war that moved sharply to the left and the revolution gave us the N.H.S., the strong Trade Union movement, the nationalised industries. Then we had stability again with the so called Butskelism of the '50s.

There was an attempt to move things back to the right under Ted Heath (if you ever want to irritate a Tory - talk to them about him, he is pretty much dispised everywhere now); which failed massively through the 3-day week &c.

Thatcher (whom we must acknowledge was a phenominal politician) tried that revolution again; now we are settling into the calm after that. There is a massive amount of fuss being made on tiny weeny policy differences in the current election.

After a while, perhaps we will get a strong left-wing leader to take us back across the spectrum.

[Joe Chi Minh]

7. No, tjwmason,

I'd have to disagree with you that "we must acknowledge Thatcher was a phenomenal politician". I would say that that is the one thing we must not do. Our infinitely perjured right-wing press will always continue to do that; they don't need our assistance. And, anyway, they couldn't recognise even the most obvious truths, if they hit them on the head.

The truth, imo, is very very different. I believe that, in fact, La Thatcher was at best, just like Hitler, a demagogue in the right (but oh so wrong) place at the right (see previous parenthesis) time.

Certain hard-core psychos, historically the backbone of the Conservativce party, realised what a gift she could be to them. No man could be so passionately crass. Crass, yes, but not passionately crass. (Fortunately, Hitlers don't come with every shower of rain. And he of course, far form being a colossus, was not even just a loser, but the ultimate losers' loser. The defeat of Germany and its aftermath for the survivors, never mind the death and devastation, make that very clear.

I don't believe it's any coincidence that the nerds who try to prove their machismo by shooting unarmed people, whether school kids, their classmates, or adult nutters, their workmates, tend to worship Hitler. I remember the commentator on a cable programme about the U-boats chuckling at the difficulty Doenitz had in convincing Hitler that he couldn't expect crack troops - which the U-boat crews were - to machine gun the innocent women and children who survived their attacks.

Her ego was endlessly fed by by the myrmidons of the press at the behest of their criminally louche and sociopathic owners, so that the people were given the impression that she was a colossus, and of course, she was the first to believe it. In places like Outer Mongolia, she was (and I'm afraid politically, I have to include American rednecks in the 3rd world here) immensely admired, but in Europe she would have been despised, if they could have stopped laughing at her chilling mediocrity matched only by her crass narcissism.

Perhaps they saw it as a wee smidgeon of "schadenfreude", as a little something by way of payback for our age-old master-race mentality and insularity. (Hitler was a great admirer of our Empire and the ruthless "disciple" Britain was able to impose on "inferior races").

In the Guardian's Notes & Queries column, someone deplored our appellation of Waterloo Station, as the terminus for French visitors to London by rail; altough it was too puerile, I suspect for the French to be really offended. (Incidentally, it wasn't primarily Wellington who won that battle, but Blucher. Everyone else knows that, but we cherish our myths. One of my favourites is that our legal system is the envy of the world!) Someone wrote in that they should rename the Gare du Nord, La Gare Thatcher. 'Nuff said.

Anyway, to get back to my point... so it explains, why, when she started using the royal plural, and the remaining Tories (the One-Nation grandees had quit by this time) gave her the bum's rush within 48 hours or so, she was utterly mystified. "But.. but.. I'm still the same person I was last week, when they were all telling me what a marvellous leader I was. How can they want to get rid of me like this. There is so much more I can do...". (Pass...) She'd ceased to be useful to them and had simply become a liability. A pawn. No more A pawn.

All premiers, president and politicos are pawns of the real power-brokers, but she was uniquely definitively *used* by them. Like an unfortunate "lady of the night. Routinely discarded by them, once they had had their wicked way with her.

Incidentally, you give the impression, cjwmason, that you think much more highly of La Thatcher than you do of Ted Heath. Are you one of those types who likes "a strong leader", or rather equates a so-called "conviction" leader with a "strong" leader. Please say "no".

As for needing a strong left-wing leader, again, I would have to disagree. We need a strong left-wing party that is Christian and not simply budding fascists/corporatists, "on the make", more than we need a "strong left-wing leader. The Lords is full of ermined, "strong", left-wing Labour Party leaders and trade-union leaders, who sold out, once they got their feet above the bottom rungs.

Everyone with some measure of worldly political intelligence is a natural right-winger, and the natural man, particularly in politics, cannot withstand the immense pressures towards cynicsm that come with middle age, unless they have accepted a rigorous code of ethical standards outside of themselves.

For all that, for as long as it lasts, better to have a socialist society under bad hypocritical rulers, than none at all; better that
vice should pay at least some kind of tribute to virtue, than none at all. The post-war Labour party under Attlee were no saints, but they were able to perform miracles with a society which, far from "never, never having been slaves", had always been treated by its monied elites as, not so much as a lower class, as a lower caste - the last of the colonies. Unfortunately, a deep political cynicism of the national pscyhe is now inbred.

When a French teacher was interviewed by one of our media luminaries during a crippling French strike, she replied to the predictable kind of question he asked, "Well, of course, I hate the terrible inconvenience it causes, but next month it maybe us who are striking to protect our living standards (or jobs)". That is not the sort of answer that would be reported in this country, in the unlikely event of its being heard. Basically, I think we're too dim, too unworldly for the kind of leaders we've been cursed with for so long. But maybe the *worm* is turning. There's been talk on the box of the Lib/Dems, the only ones in the big three raising taxes on the richest (the one measure than can save the plummeting spiral to an ever more ugly moral and social anomie. I think they may also be re-introducing some kind of local income tax, instead of the flat-rate council tax, but that could be the Scots Nats.