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

[Serge Forward]

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?

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.

Coming back, it... seems like none of that really exists anymore? Seems like most areas I go to Brits aren't even a majority. And what's worse, most countries in Asia have better customer service, transport and atittudes than we do here.

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?

Ní thuigim thú.

 

[Rob Ray]

Thing that always gets me about "the culture's all gone" types is they never seem to give two shits about the way "English" culture, ie; a bastardised 19th/early 20th century pseudo-poshness adopted by middle-class southerners, has imposed itself on the regions. Hundreds, if not thousands of years of interesting multi-layered legends, dialects, dances, religious peccadilloes, but it's white guys in bowler hats drinking Pimms that they mourn. Fucking tourists.

 

[Wilf]

Could we merge this with the FEB thread? If we do, I doubt hash browns will survive.

 

[Serge Forward]

((((Hash browns))))

 

[JimW]

Britain has a thriving kombucha and macrobiotic industry so I think it has plenty of culture

My sister once had a job as one of the custodians of the national collection of yeast! Apparently (and obviously if you think about it) brewers and bakers etc would rely on them to supply particular strains.

I've lived in China off and on for the best part of thirty years and it's changed enormously in that time, leaving aside the diversity that you'd expect in such a massive multi-ethnic state, then there's far starker generational differences between my older neighbours who might have been born when this village was a commune and their grandchildren living the modern consumerist hellscape/dream.

Do think something probably changed significantly in mid/late twentieth century Britain with the Thatcher project (economics is the method, goal is to change souls) and decline in mass working class employment at one or two major industries etc. so maybe more atomisation.

 

[spring-peeper]

Do think something probably changed significantly in mid/late twentieth century Britain with the Thatcher project (economics is the method, goal is to change souls) and decline in mass working class employment at one or two major industries etc. so maybe more atomisation.

Things probably changed, but the OP said he was only gone four years and the Britain he left was no longer exists.

 

[Rimbaud]

Thing that always gets me about "the culture's all gone" types is they never seem to give two shits about the way "English" culture, ie; a bastardised 19th/early 20th century pseudo-poshness adopted by middle-class southerners, has imposed itself on the regions. Hundreds, if not thousands of years of interesting multi-layered legends, dialects, dances, religious peccadilloes, but it's white guys in bowler hats drinking Pimms that they mourn. Fucking tourists.

I was thinking something similar, I was going to say that the type of Englishness this guy is mourning isn't present in the whitest parts of the country either like County Durham mining villages, but then the type of Englishness he is talking about never actually existed there in the first place so...

 

[Rimbaud]

I mean seriously Oxbridge chaps afternoon tea. If that’s what Britain British culture means to you. We are on different pages. That’s some retro sitcom trope.

Also tea drinking is something we got from Indian culture. Like vindaloos.

 

[Humberto]

Also tea drinking is something we got from Indian culture. Like vindaloos.

Vindaloos was wine and chillis. Chillis were introduced from Europe, I think the Portugese.

 

[Rimbaud]

Why is it wrong to worry about losing white culture in Britain? Where else do we belong if not here?

"White culture", ah yes because white countries such as the UK, Albania, Bosnia, Russia, Finland, and Spain are so alike.

 

[harpo]

The Oxford-Cambridge railway line is about to be re-opened. Perhaps Oxbridge students will once more be allowed to vote twice in General Elections.

I went for afternoon tea a couple of years ago as a birthday treat, but what has happened to jumpers for goalposts, warm beer, and District Nurses on bicycles? No-one even bends their little finger any more as they sip tea from their cup. Why do the men who work in the City of London no longer wear bowler hats? What became of the telephone call box? Why can we no longer smoke on the London Underground?

I was in Cambridge last weekend. The reopening of the line is a source of great excitement.

 

[krtek a houby]

How is that racist?

I loved Asia, I enjoyed being there as a white person, I would be devastated if I went over there again and it was majority white.

I would be horrified if I went to the Congo and it was majority Indian, or Chinese, or anything other than the lovely culture they have there.

Why is it wrong to worry about losing white culture in Britain? Where else do we belong if not here?

I've met people like you in Japan. Some of you stay for years, moaning about foreigners and losing touch with reality.

You're the "expats" and the rest of us are migrants.

 

[krtek a houby]

I was abroad for 3-4 years. Not that long in the grand scheme of things, but coming back from all these homogeneous nations, it kind of hit me like a ton of bricks.

Like... where is my people's country? It doesn't feel like this is it. Do you know what I mean?

I'm not saying those things I listed are uniquely better than any other culture's quirks. But... they're ours? Just like all those little quirks in Japan, or Korea, or Uganda. But the difference is ours are disappearing away

 

[JimW]

What about the culture of Britain's future? Do we Dan Dare to think about that?

 

[rubbershoes]

Could we merge this with the FEB thread? If we do, I doubt hash browns will survive.

So something good will have come out of this debacle

 

[ElizabethofYork]

.... 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.

Are you a character from an Agatha Christie novel?

That's a weirdly specific bit of "British culture". A white, upper class, southern English bit from the 1920s!

 

[Chilli.s]

I loved Asia, I enjoyed being there as a white person, I would be devastated if I went over there again and it was majority white.

I would be horrified if I went to the Congo and it was majority Indian, or Chinese, or anything other than the lovely culture they have there.

your problem is youre frightened of change

culture is constantly changing

nostalgia for childhoods world is an idyllic illusion and fantasy

 

[cupid_stunt]

View attachment 450653

That's always worth a re-post.

ETA - NSFW - Tommy Robinson is a cunt.

View attachment 1a.mp4

 

[Boo Radley75]

British culture is still alive and well...

 

[tommers]

British culture is still alive and well...

Live, laugh, love.

 

[MickiQ]

British culture is still alive and well...

There is clearly an interesting story behind this scene. I love how the guy sparked out on the ground is still reaching out for his pint.

 

[PR1Berske]

Thing that always gets me about "the culture's all gone" types is they never seem to give two shits about the way "English" culture, ie; a bastardised 19th/early 20th century pseudo-poshness adopted by middle-class southerners, has imposed itself on the regions. Hundreds, if not thousands of years of interesting multi-layered legends, dialects, dances, religious peccadilloes, but it's white guys in bowler hats drinking Pimms that they mourn. Fucking tourists.

Quoted to like.

Obvious example is Christmas, with so many of the modern trappings coming from upper class Victorians.

 

[tony.c]

Quoted to like.

Obvious example is Christmas, with so many of the modern trappings coming from upper class Victorians.

And reverence for the monarchy which was largely disliked by most Brits, especially the Scots, Irish and Welsh until it was repackaged by Queen Victoria, who was of German heritage.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Go back in time in one hundred year stops and tell me what British culture is.

 

[krtek a houby]

And reverence for the monarchy which was largely disliked by most Brits, especially the Scots, Irish and Welsh until it was repackaged by Queen Victoria, who was of German heritage.

Irish aren't British, but otherwise yeah

 

[Pickman's model]

And reverence for the monarchy which was largely disliked by most Brits, especially the Scots, Irish and Welsh until it was repackaged by Queen Victoria, who was of German heritage.

to be fair a large number of people disliked the victorian monarchy, consider for instance the homerton social democratic federation's 1880s banner with its slogan 'blessed be the hand that dares to wield the regicidal steel that shall redeem a nation's sorrow with a tyrant's blood'

 

[ouirdeaux]

Surely they could have come up with a snappier slogan.

 

[Serge Forward]

Surely they could have come up with a snappier slogan.

It was Victorian times. That was snappy.

 

[Rob Ray]

Whatever happened to essay banners eh? Are people worried about the creep of shortened slogans or are we all just numb to it?

 

[Johnny Vodka]

When it all gets too much, there is always Jacob Rees-Mogg's reality TV programme. A proper English gentleman doing proper English things.