The Telegraph has a column by Simon Heffer, currently in Australia, about how from an Australia perspective it’s clear Britain is in worse shape than we think. Australia, with so many people who are British or of British origin, is uniquely placed to look on with dismay as the seemingly endless spiral of self-inflicted decay motors on, accelerated by the current government. It makes for a sobering read:
It is clear from their view of our country, despite the affection almost all feel for it, that we now cut a poor figure in the world. Many Britons know this too: but living there we have, perhaps, become inured to all that is going wrong, and to the chronic incompetence and poor judgement that are diminishing us in the eyes of our international peers. Having spent a month looking at Britain from 11,000 miles away, I have become acutely aware not just of how bad things are, but how utterly unacceptable this mess is.
Our Australian cousins who watch our political life see a Britain with a feeble and uncharismatic Prime Minister whose judgement about people and policies is appalling, and whose life is distinguished by a parade of hypocrisy. They all know about his £20,000 spectacles bill picked up by Lord Alli, his free tickets to Arsenal and the provision of free clothes for his wife. They see him as hapless and leading a divided government. They see, too, an administration staffed by ministers with an uncertain relationship with the truth.
There is a Chancellor of the Exchequer who lied about her career, used to make questionable expenses claims and has, incidentally, torpedoed the economy through her ineptitude, potentially putting thousands out of work, threatening agriculture and driving wealth creators abroad. There is also a Business Secretary who has repeatedly claimed to be a solicitor but isn’t; and even the hitherto untouchable Angela Rayner is now accused of fabricating parts of her own CV.
Australia has made huge efforts to control immigration. Its people note that we have a Home Secretary who pledged to “stop the boats” but hasn’t, and who also presides over a crime wave of stabbings, shoplifters, phone-snatchers and Rolex rippers. Britain is renowned for not knowing how many inhabitants it has. Last week’s eruptions by Donald Trump have reminded the world of how little influence America’s supposedly key ally now has in vital international affairs, and that it has a Foreign Secretary who in 2018 called Mr Trump (among other things) a neo-Nazi. The UK welfare bill is much remarked upon, while our failure to spend more defending ourselves appears to come as a direct consequence of that profligacy.
The NHS is no longer the envy of the world: the Health Secretary adds tens of thousands of people to the NHS payroll while delivering a worse service. The Education Secretary seems driven by class hatred, and is overloading the state schools system following her vendetta against private schools. The Energy Secretary is denying poor people cheaper fuel by insisting on renewables they can’t afford, constructing a fantasy of an electrically-powered Britain that can’t generate enough electricity (that is familiar to Australians, for the same is happening here).
That last comment is a reminder that not everything is perfect about Australia, but it has a long way to go before reaching where Britain has taken itself.
Heffer asked a Labour MP last summer what would happen after the inevitable Labour election victory:
“Five years of managed decline,” he answered. He said they had no money for anything else. But it is increasingly obvious to the world, as it must be to us, that this isn’t managed decline; it’s unmanaged decline. Our appearance as a failing, flailing, once-great nation is the fruit of stupidity, incompetence, ideological prejudice and atrocious judgement.
Heffer finishes up by noting “the serial derelictions that have reduced us to an object of pity among our friends around the world”.
Worth reading in full.
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“Britain Is in Worse Shape Than You Thought”
No it isn’t! It’s every bit as bad as I think, as it will be to anyone paying attention since Mrs Thatcher left No 10.
Not that the Thatcher era was a golden age, but it was, perhaps, the end of the beginning of the Socialist, Statist rot that set in at the beginning of the 20th Century as an emergent Marxist-Labour Party was inching it way towards Downing Street and tainting the political landscape. But the beginning ended with the Grey Suit that succeeded her and the constitutional vandals, economic wrecking balls and serial liars Blair & Brown and New Labour. This followed by Continuity New Labour moving left the so-called Conservatives.
Early signs were the Liberal Party adopting Labour idea of a State health insurance scam, replacing the private health insurance (often incorporating sickness and unemployment insurance) enjoyed by 75% of the population by the end of the 19th Century. The consequent National Insurance Act 1911 killed off private health insurance and local control over health care delivery and cost, and started the long march towards State dependency.
And here we are. A nation of infants ready to wear face nappies when mummy tells us to fend off the big bad virus, whinge and whine about immigration but do nothing about it, bang pans for “our” glorious 7 million long NHS queue, and keep voting for the same evil bunch taxing us to the hilt.
Thatcher offered Hope to those willing to work, willing to think, willing to plan for their and their family’s future, where wealth creation, thrift, and the country’s good was part of a natural and common culture.
And bringing Thatcher down was a precursor to Blair.
It’s the blatant avoidance of thinking, as in Labour’s proposals for a ‘State health insurance scam’, that has been most destructive as it discourages any review, as that requires thinking. Fir example, how can ten years of medical trials be reduced to one year, safely?
I am not sure Ozland is in better shape. Full on Rona-Fascist retard, green fascist-net zero and Muslimification proceeds rapidly.
The UK is the centre of globalism – open borders, net zero, Muslims and rapefugees, financial bankruptcy, endless warmongering, trans-queer-gender-fascism, Communist-health-care which is a joke, the school system not much better and a culture that hates itself.
Is Australia really that far behind? Doubtful. The Anglosphere sans Trump’s America is a sick impersonation of what it once was. Open borders etc has consequences. Our political systems are broken beyond any repair.
I agree.
Although the criticism coming from Australia is valid, Australia was hardly a pinnacle of freedom during the Covid crisis.
No it was far worse that here, especially in Victoria with Dictator Dan the evil c*nt!
If I recall, their quarantine involved having to prove you were at home via selfie.
Didn’t they also cull some animals to stop people having an excuse to travel.
Then there’s the horrible picture of a man being forcibly masked by police.
Pretty sure that was Oz.
Quarantine was more than just self verification by selfie. They also routinely had police and public health officers with emergency powers door knocking people to make sure they were home. In Victoria we also had curfews and restrictions which forced people to stay within a 5km radius of home and a maximum of 1 hour outside. I know of multiple people who were followed home by the police so they could give them a ticket for breaching the time or distance limit.
Often times if you refused the cops would just give up and let you on your way, but sadly most of my fellow Australians truly loved being told what to do, “for the greater good”.
UK was a bastion of freedom during COVID compared to the People’s Republic of Australia.
Indeed. Australia is heading towards Britain’s game plan.
The incompetence of Starmer-the-Contemptible’s government is not surprising. What is surprising is the utter loathing he and the other Anti-white Party quarter-wits have for the native peoples of these islands. The problem that we face is how do we get rid of this verminous government? How do we save our people and our country?
Very interesting article. The only thing with which I would disagree is this:
“Our appearance as a failing, flailing, once-great nation is the fruit of stupidity, incompetence, ideological prejudice and atrocious judgement.”
In fact, as many others have said before me, it is The Deliberate Destruction of Western Civilization, The White Men Who Built It, and The Christianity Upon Which It Was Founded.
Meanwhile in cricket’s Champions Trophy, both Anzacs are through to the semis, while the Mother Country suffers National Humiliation at the hands of Afghanistan.
Don’t mention the Khuyber Pass.
With respect to our antipodean friends, Australia doesn’t have much to crow about.
Wokism, infiltration of CCP, woke underpowered military AND the worlds deadliest snakes, jellyfish.
Beer is awful too.
I know baby painful to look at and painful to endure. At least there is a growing admittance now that the country is in terminal decline. There was a lot of denial during the age of cheap credit and consumer culture even though the rot was well-established. I don’t think that there is a soul alive who would deny it now.
On the other hand if you’re Jewish and go into a hospital in Australia don’t expect to leave it alive.
Australia, home of zero covid fanatics, felt so threatened that they had to deport a tennis player for political reasons.
We need a man of steel (no women need apply, they do not have the necessary hard heartedness, and need to be put back in their box) and a series of polices for wholesale destruction of the blob, and all the laws that have enabled the blob. Time to destroy the lefts cherished establishment. Wreck it all. It will leave a better Britain behind.
England has always been a notoriously difficult place to govern. The constutuency of the cities has changed a lot in the last four years and not for the better. Total betrayal of the people by the political class. I wonder about a pathway out. Probably not possible given how blind the Brits were before. I hope that some sort of accomodation can be made in the sense that the white Brits are whisked off to Australia or New Zealand before they end up with a knife in their throat. If you have long lost relatives in Australia then this might be a good time to try and soften em up a bit.
No, actually, I thought this all along and for Many years, the UK is royally funked by its own doing!
F Gaza, F, Israel, F putin, F palistine F ukraine, F Russia, F China, F Europe!
Britain first!
“Five years of managed decline,” he answered. He said they had no money for anything else.
I suppose that is the downside of taking over from a socialist government for the first time.