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Is anyone worried about the future of Britain's culture?

I'll say this. We might not all get on with each other. We may have differences in opinion. We may have had to bung a handful of posters on ignore for the sake of good governance and all the rest of it. But good heavens we're a united forum when it comes to dealing with 'fly by night' racially prejudiced troll accounts. Good work everybody. Sorry OliveGreen .
 
Transport? You think public transport is bad here, try getting a bus or train in the USA or Australia and you'll realise how brilliant we have it.
I'd take urban transport in Australia over that of the UK (outside London) anyday of the week. Free public transport in the centre of Melbourne and Perth - you could just hop-on hop-off and with lots of buses/trains/trams. And even large towns/small cities had decent bus services within them considering their population.

Intercity public transport wasn't great. In WA you basically had to have a car or fly, in Victoria it was better but still not fantastic. But for commuting or sightseeing public transport in Australia cities IME is better than that of the UK.
 
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[citation needed] :hmm:
Actually, yes, I should have fact checked myself as

'
The name is first recorded in the mid-15th century as Morisk dance, moreys daunce, morisse daunce, i.e. “Moorish dance”. The term entered English via Flemish mooriske danse Comparable terms in other languages are German Moriskentanz (also from the 15th century), French morisques, Croatian moreška, and moresco, moresca or morisca in Italy and Spain. The modern spelling Morris-dance first appears in the 17th century.

'It is unclear why the dance was so named, “unless in reference to fantastic dancing or costumes”, i.e. the deliberately “exotic” flavour of the performance. The English dance thus apparently arose as part of a wider 15th-century European fashion for supposedly “Moorish” spectacle, which also left traces in Spanish and Italian folk dance. The means and chronology of the transmission of this fashion is now difficult to trace; the Great London Chronicle records “spangled Spanish dancers” performing an energetic dance before Henry VII at Christmas of 1494, but Heron’s accounts also mention “pleying of the mourice dance” four days earlier, and the attestation of the English term from the mid-15th century establishes that there was a “Moorish dance” performed in England decades prior to 1494.

It is suggested that the tradition of rural English dancers blackening their faces may be a reference to the Moors, miners, or a disguise worn by dancing beggars.'

So it gets its name from Moors, but isn't related to the actual North African sword dances.

Although in double checking this, I have found out that Dutch hardcore Hakken dance is distantly related to flamenco, as it has a big zapeteo influence.
 
I know the OP appears to have been chased off, but as a British person who has spent my entire life on this island, I wanted to say something.

I have just returned to Britain after several years living abroad. Grew up here all my life and kind of ignored this, but coming back I can't help wondering... is it just me worried about Britain losing it's culture? Is everyone really cool with it or are people just numb to it now?

As others have pointed out, we still have our culture here in Britain. But the thing about culture is that it's not static, it evolves alongside the people who produce it in the first place. Many people think of tea drinking as quintessentially British, but when you consider just how long people have lived in Britain, it's a Johnny-come-lately practice, along with Christianity and eating fish and chips. Our ancient forebears might well have been scandalised if they had any inkling that we were going to cut down the sacred groves and pilfer construction materials from the stone circles.

Living in places in East Asia and Africa, many people expressed to me an admiration for 'British' culture. British gentlemen, afternoon tea, the Oxford-Cambridge education system, etc etc. You know the stuff. After years abroad I kind of played up to it. I was proud to tell people about little quirks of our culture, our history, our religion and how it branched off from the rest of Christianity. How monarchy became the Magna Carta became the parliament became what we have today. All that proper 'British' stuff.

That's the theme park version of British culture that gets marketed at tourists. The kind you find preserved in museums and tacky souvenir shops. It's not a reflection of the vast majority of the lives of British people who actually reside in Britain.

I was in Cork recently, and there were a few shops selling tat like that. I guarantee you that the impression of Ireland given by those places would have been very different to the impression of Ireland that would have been given to attendees of the Cork Jazz Festival that just happened (did you even know that Cork has a jazz scene? I didn't until then!), or the impression of Ireland that would have been given by the Cork International Film Festival that was due to happen when I was there.

Culture is what people make of it.

Coming back, it... seems like none of that really exists anymore? Seems like most areas I go to Brits aren't even a majority.

It still exists, but even during the heyday of bowler hats and high-falutin' expensive universities, that stuff was only ever a particularly curated slice of what British culture has to offer. It reflects the aesthetics and aspirations of specific regions and social classes within Britain, and was never indicative of the whole body of what it means to be British.

People who were born and raised in Britain (who are thus British and therefore produce British culture), remain very much the majority of people who live here. Even more so when you consider who is involved in the major cultural institutions of this island. So I can only conclude that you've been seeing people who are obviously not white and/or hearing people speaking languages other than English, and have come to the erroneous conclusion that non-British people are predominant in the areas you've been in. I suspect that you have been hanging around in major urban centres, which have always been ethnically diverse places, even during the times you look back upon as being the heyday of Britishness.

And what's worse, most countries in Asia have better customer service, transport and atittudes than we do here.

So what brought you back here? Speaking as someone who has spent his entire life on this island, I'm proud that we don't have the same nauseatingly obsequious approach to customer service such as what might be found in Asia or even in other Anglophone nations such as the United States. Here's a brief clip in which some British people discuss this:



The poor state of transport in Britain is a result of public policy rather than culture. The Germans have a reputation for Teutonic efficiency, but you wouldn't know that if you travelled by Deutsche Bahn, a passenger rail transport provider which is the butt of many jokes in Germany about trains being late.

Is anyone else worried about this? Are people just apathetic? Do they not realise because it's been a slow creep? Or do people really not mind all the things we've lost?

People have just moved on. This happens in every culture.
 
If you ignore the actual racist post, the question in the heading is an interesting one.

I miss British culture when I'm abroad, but find it exhausting the rest of the time. The self-deprecation translates into the love of all things "a bit shit". There's a glorification of unappealing food combinations (gravy sandwich etc.), bad jokes (most of classic British comedy), substandard products and services (Celebrations), etc. It's like one big meme, and often feels infantile. Is it a counter to the "British culture" as it's seen by the older people abroad, which is essentially some imaginary version of upper-class lifestyle (afternoon tea and Hugh Grant, if you ask my mum)?

Idk, maybe I'm off-course here but I just can't bring to mind an appealing image. I'm thinking of drivers blocking others from merging in turn because of a British sense "fair play". There surely is something better out there. Also, Sunday Roast is a beige pile of carbs that is dismal even in its most laboured version.

I guess I like the BBC (esp The Shipping Forecast) when it's factual and not entertaining (never succeeds in the latter undertaking). Also pubs (unless they do food). What else is good and not shit and not inaccessible to 99% of the society?
 
Haven't followed the thread but I for one am somewhat worried about loss of English culture, my favourite Indian restaurant in Redruth closed down :(





Have discovered another that serves even tastier food though :)

Eta: it's the Amity really worth trying for those regular visitors to Redruth, the lamb pasanda is just lovely ❤️
 
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