It seems every time I talk to family members about world events, watch question time, read a paper, or even sometimes just browsing forums here on MAP people are always complaining about the UK and what a sorry state we're apparently in and its starting to bug me. I've known for a little while we apparently have some sort of international reputation for being self deprecating but on occassion it feels like some people are just rather blinkered/ignorant and I'm curious if this idea that Britian's going to the dogs is actually that widely felt and why people have that view? In an attempt to make this readable I'm going to have to break this down a bit:
Military.
I've noticed this quite a bit on QT recently which makes sense in light of the situation in Libya and the winding down in Afghanistan but British people seem to be always ready to herald the bravery, training, professionalism etc of our soldiers but in the same breath doubt Britian's ability to use them in any conflict.
Now just from what I remember off the top of my head about Britain's military force:
Great Power in line with France, Germany, Canada and even Russia according to some estimations. The only classification above that is superpower. From my understanding those are given based on force projection, international influence and a few other things but that puts the UK near the top of all Western Powers and leaves quite a few countries underneath.
2nd largest Air Force in NATO second only to the US and the 5th largest on the globe (thats as of early 2011 so I asume thats even with the cuts taken into account)
2nd largest Navy in NATO, again second only to America, with "overall tonnage" making it the 4th largest naval force in the world despite claims we're handing everything over to the French.
Thanks to the marines and the paras we have the 2nd largest quick reaction and force capabiity in NATO and are the only country in Europe capable of large scale ampihbious warfare.
I do accept that I am a nerd for this type of thing but it does me pretty skeptical when I constantly hear that the UK is an island country and we pretty much have only island level power. Just because we no longer have an empire and rule the seas doesn't mean we can't pack any punch at all.
I've just realised that was the only one I could break down like that...meh.
Education:
Cambridge is the recognised top uni in the world leading in pyshics and one of the leading in social sciences wth Oxford and Cambridge being the most respected for Law and sociology respectively. A couple of london based unis made top ten for business and economics. Cambridge made second highest for study in medicine. Cambridge is 3rd for computer science although it scored highest for employment prospects after graduation. Oxbrdige are 1st and third for natural sciences and Cambridge is 4th for engineering.
Obviously I'm playing the country up based off two unis but I struggled to find an actual table for other results. that said apparently we are the bottom of the world for school results according to newspaper articles from last year which I find slightly hard ot believe. Bottom in Europe maybe but bottom in the world seems weird. Meh, maybe kids today are stupid and exams are just piss easy. I'll take my 13 GCSEs and burn them shortly
Science and technology
I'm struggling to find comparison charts for this so not much I can say except historically Britian has a pretty good record for churning out important people. That said, its history not present although we do still get Hawking and his epic rap skills.
Economics
This is the one that probably pissed me off most to hear complained about and was what got me to write this long winded post (if you're still reading at this point, thankyou, you earned a cookie) after arguing with a couple people now that we should be giving foreign aid to the piss stained hell holes on Earth. The guaranteed response is "we're in debt and have no money" shortly followed by "people are unemployed, immigrants, benefits etc etc"
I will now take this moment to smugly point out:
6th largest GDP in the world.
Admittedly 23rd public debt but we still beat the French and Germans
I'll leave it there but my point is that despite what people think we're not some crummy third world country that needs to be shut off from the rest of the world while we desperately cling to a cliff face by our fingertips. I'm actually not some union jack waving, Al Murray type patriot I'm just tired of reading and hearing how awful we all supposedly are when in reality we should be damn grateful we live somewhere like this. I'm not asking for American levels of patriotism (no offence guys) but I can name a long list of places a hell of a lot worse to live than here and as I say a bit of gratitude and realism would be lovely.
So two questions: Why do we have such a self defeating attitude and how could it be changed?
Or am I completely wrong here and we are in fact in a very bad way?
And finally, I tried to make this post as clear as I could but when I'm involved in stuff like this I have a lot of trouble controlling my thoughts and keeping them on one track so sorry if its as messy as it seems to be.
Military.
I've noticed this quite a bit on QT recently which makes sense in light of the situation in Libya and the winding down in Afghanistan but British people seem to be always ready to herald the bravery, training, professionalism etc of our soldiers but in the same breath doubt Britian's ability to use them in any conflict.
Now just from what I remember off the top of my head about Britain's military force:
Great Power in line with France, Germany, Canada and even Russia according to some estimations. The only classification above that is superpower. From my understanding those are given based on force projection, international influence and a few other things but that puts the UK near the top of all Western Powers and leaves quite a few countries underneath.
2nd largest Air Force in NATO second only to the US and the 5th largest on the globe (thats as of early 2011 so I asume thats even with the cuts taken into account)
2nd largest Navy in NATO, again second only to America, with "overall tonnage" making it the 4th largest naval force in the world despite claims we're handing everything over to the French.
Thanks to the marines and the paras we have the 2nd largest quick reaction and force capabiity in NATO and are the only country in Europe capable of large scale ampihbious warfare.
I do accept that I am a nerd for this type of thing but it does me pretty skeptical when I constantly hear that the UK is an island country and we pretty much have only island level power. Just because we no longer have an empire and rule the seas doesn't mean we can't pack any punch at all.
I've just realised that was the only one I could break down like that...meh.
Education:
Cambridge is the recognised top uni in the world leading in pyshics and one of the leading in social sciences wth Oxford and Cambridge being the most respected for Law and sociology respectively. A couple of london based unis made top ten for business and economics. Cambridge made second highest for study in medicine. Cambridge is 3rd for computer science although it scored highest for employment prospects after graduation. Oxbrdige are 1st and third for natural sciences and Cambridge is 4th for engineering.
Obviously I'm playing the country up based off two unis but I struggled to find an actual table for other results. that said apparently we are the bottom of the world for school results according to newspaper articles from last year which I find slightly hard ot believe. Bottom in Europe maybe but bottom in the world seems weird. Meh, maybe kids today are stupid and exams are just piss easy. I'll take my 13 GCSEs and burn them shortly
Science and technology
I'm struggling to find comparison charts for this so not much I can say except historically Britian has a pretty good record for churning out important people. That said, its history not present although we do still get Hawking and his epic rap skills.
Economics
This is the one that probably pissed me off most to hear complained about and was what got me to write this long winded post (if you're still reading at this point, thankyou, you earned a cookie) after arguing with a couple people now that we should be giving foreign aid to the piss stained hell holes on Earth. The guaranteed response is "we're in debt and have no money" shortly followed by "people are unemployed, immigrants, benefits etc etc"
I will now take this moment to smugly point out:
6th largest GDP in the world.
Admittedly 23rd public debt but we still beat the French and Germans
I'll leave it there but my point is that despite what people think we're not some crummy third world country that needs to be shut off from the rest of the world while we desperately cling to a cliff face by our fingertips. I'm actually not some union jack waving, Al Murray type patriot I'm just tired of reading and hearing how awful we all supposedly are when in reality we should be damn grateful we live somewhere like this. I'm not asking for American levels of patriotism (no offence guys) but I can name a long list of places a hell of a lot worse to live than here and as I say a bit of gratitude and realism would be lovely.
So two questions: Why do we have such a self defeating attitude and how could it be changed?
Or am I completely wrong here and we are in fact in a very bad way?
And finally, I tried to make this post as clear as I could but when I'm involved in stuff like this I have a lot of trouble controlling my thoughts and keeping them on one track so sorry if its as messy as it seems to be.
