Back in 2005, I offered a half dozen explanations why the white crime rate in Britain is higher than the white crime rate in the U.S. (at least outside of homicide, where our huge number of guns makes crime less frequent but more deadly). You can read it here.
A good analysis Steve, but the question is not only why are downscale British whites so much worse than American whites, it's why are they so much worse than whites from anywhere else in the Western World.
ReplyDeleteThis explanation for how things got out of hand seems plausible:
ReplyDeletehttp://pubphilosopher.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/scarmans-children/
"but the question is not only why are downscale British whites so much worse than American whites, it's why are they so much worse than whites from anywhere else in the Western World."
ReplyDeleteGood question.
The illegitimacy rate in Iceland has been around 65% for a long time. Around 80% of firstborns are illegitimate. Yet, crime is very low in Iceland.
ReplyDeleteAdmittedly, cohabitation is very common. People like to settle down, have a couple of kids and *then* get married. I have no idea how this situation came to be. Maybe people want to delay the wedding until they can afford to pay for it? But Icelanders aren't exactly known for their financial prudence.
The arguement for puritan heritage isn't that good when you look at Australia which was settled by the dregs of the british isles.
ReplyDeleteBrits visiting the US note that public drunkeness is not tolerated in America as it is in the UK. Drunks cannot go commit crimes if they are already sitting in the pokey.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet...
ReplyDeleteWho is it who is resisting the attacks on their community in Enfield and Eltham despite, one might note, an absence of weapons and extreme vilification from police and mainstream press?
Just who is being ruined?
I think all the best men died in 1914-18 and 1939-45, leaving the dregs to breed.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, the upper class that ran the country pretty ruthlessly in its own interest and kept the 'oiks' in line, lost confidence for some reason in 1960s to 70s.
I'll pick up a lot of flak for writing this, but I'll wager that the the majority of Britain's chavs are ultimately of Irish descent.
ReplyDeleteThere has long been mass Irish immigration into Britain.
Not treading on too many toes, the 'wildness' of the Irish is well known.I put it down to a ancient population pushed out to the westernmost fringe of Europe and clinging on in their island fastness.
No idea what you were dribbling on about with your soccer hooligan v nascar criticism. Hooligan only ever made up a small percentage and now they're a complete relic.
ReplyDeleteThe hooligan stuff went out of the English game after Hillsborough and the Euro ban. For an explanation of why the upper classes took to soccer see Nick Hornby's book 'Fever Pitch'. They wanted the 'authentic' fan experience. Best look to Italy if you want modern day hooliganism.
The prawn sandwich brigade rule the Premier League these days.
where our huge number of guns makes crime less frequent but more deadly
ReplyDeleteBoo! Hiss!
British gun control is a post-1920 phenomenon. The large difference in homicide rates existed in the 19th C. For example, around 1900, homicide rates in the UK were below 2 per 100,000 while US rates were around 7.
Homicide of small children (0-4) is much higher in the US than in Britain or the rest of the developed world, about 4.3 times as high. If you remove all the homicides by gun from these figures, the US is still more than 4 times as high. Damn those guns causing people to shake, beat, stab, and smother their babies to death!
Whodathunk Steve is a gun grabber?
"The penalities in the US are WAY harsher,..."
ReplyDeleteExactly. Unless you are in the throes of drug addiction, it's a huge hardship not easily forgotten.
There also seems to be a tendency for working class whites in the US to get jobs with prisons or as probation officers. Avoiding going on welfare by joining the military may be another way this group gets a path to legitimate jobs.
Interesting about the affect religion may have. I've often thought church attendance was a good way to fill in the gap for ineffective parenting. Children are at least informed about high standards of behavior even if their parents don't model it.
It just annoys me that this approach can easily degenerate into the moralistic with people who never recognize more subtle yet no less harmful types of misbehavior while hiding behind their adherence to the rules as they define them. Of course, for the larger purpose of creating generally law abiding citizens it can be very helpful.
England's white poor are urban.
ReplyDeleteThe white poor in the US are rural.
Someone posted this on another thread...but given that whites make up about 96% of the population in the UK and only constitute about 15% of the rioters is pretty good.
ReplyDeletePakistanis and Indians Jailed for Starting Birmingham Riots
http://www.birminghammail.net/news/top-stories/2011/08/11/saltley-man-first-to-be-jailed-for-birmingham-riots-full-court-report-from-first-day-of-prosecutions-97319-29216078/
John Derbyshire estimates that blacks comprise about 2% of the British population but 60 - 70% of the rioters.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/274226/epitaph-britain-john-derbyshire#
...
Within the UK itself there seem to be variations as well. Places such as Liverpool, Glasgow and Manchester obviously seem to be the worse. Though even more affluent areas in the south now have a reputation of being 'chavvy'. I remember seeing this video from Glasgow, and was shocked how far the underclass has descended there:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK2PryGzW5s&playnext=1&list=PLF3E5A9F284BAA4CB
Here in Canada the most violent whites seem to be in BC and Nova Scotia. Since the dismantling of biker gangs, the Quebecois have become the most well behaved in the country. Quebec has had the lowest crime rate among all the provinces for the last 5 years or so. In Ontario, all ethnic groups appear to be fairly well behaved as well (at least compared to BC).
I think it is also worth mentioning that due to the drug trade, Asians in BC seem to have a higher crime rate compared to their counterparts in other parts of the country.
I would add two points to Steve's analysis.
ReplyDeleteAffordable Family Formation-The US is much less crowded than the UK, despite the elite's obsession with making the US as crowded as possible.
Working class whites in the US often live in rural or semirural areas. While this doesn't necessarily mean an idyllic life, especially if your parents are meth addicts, it is more wholesome than a British slum. Also, the fact that it's still possible (barely) for a working class white guy to afford a modest residence in which to raise his family contributes to the preservation of responsible middle class values amongst the working class. It's what Half Sigma would probably call "High Prole" as opposed to "Low Prole" lifestyles.
Emigration-For centuries, lower-class British whites with the ability and the ambition to improve their station in life had better options in the cheap land/high wage colonies than they did in their home country. Perhaps several centuries of draining off the most intelligent and driven lower-class Britons has led to a genetic impoverishment of those who remain.
I agree with the 'good question' here. Continental European working class whites are as irreligious and as hooked to Eurotrash but nowhere is the yob culture as bad as in the UK.
ReplyDeleteOne reason that may contribute to our better-behaved lower class whites is "racism". We have always had blacks as our lowest class, stuck there due to their higher criminality, lower IQs, and lower impulse control. Because blacks and whites have different races and cultures, the existence of the black bottom creates a bright line. You can drop low, but if you drop too low, you have to live among blacks. This will tend to inspire hard work to get out.
ReplyDeleteThus, lower class whites see and abhor black disfunction, and create or sustain cultural memes to keep themselves away from the blacks and their plight. ("Racism".)
Britain, by comparison, did not have any serious number of non-white minorities of any kind until they started importing a new people after WWII, and even then they imported a lot more "Asians" (Indian subcontinentals). Blacks in the UK are still only 2% or so of the population.
Working class values from the other end of the world:
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/erSJGrpfnOI
An unfortunate tendency of human nature is that the more you give people, the less grateful they are. Earning things tends to make us happy, not earning them only eases us for a brief time. This is not merely a tendency of The Poor, but of hereditary aristocrats, artists on subsidies, politicians...
ReplyDeleteThus a receiving culture, a welfare culture, is held in check by either of two means: acceding to their demands, or oppressing them.
Not such a good choice, there.
Hi Steve,
ReplyDeleteJust my take on it but it is the differences in the people who left and who stayed. Those who left (except for indentured servants and convicts) had the means and initiative to go as well as the ability to plan for the future.
Those who stayed lacked those abilities. Since we know planning for the future is a sign of higher intelligence and impulse control perhaps the least got left behind.*
Combine that with importing people with low self control and future planning and a society that makes defending yourself a greater crime than assaulting someone and you have the perfect storm.
The brits needs to dig deep and find that 'Saxon hate' that Kipling wrote about and give some back to the rioters.
Don
*Not entirely my theory, I kind of half-assed stole it from H.Beam Piper.
I'll never forget the first time I watched the British crime series, "Cracker". I didn't realize I was watching a contemporary crime series. I thought it was a post-apocalyptic drama like "Jericho". I finally gleaned from the dialogue that the disaster that had occurred was not nuclear or pathogenic but cultural-- the near-complete collapse of the much-vaunted English civility.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't the presence of the yobbish and crimininally-inclined underclass that shocked me so much as its pervasiveness and the tacit acceptance of it by the middle-class, who, while not criminal, otherwise showed very little self-control.
Yes, I know it was a fictional drama. But it was also a contemporary setting. And judging by some of the real-life English incivility I've read about since, urinating on war memorials, rioting, etc., not unrealistic.
I should add I'm in touch online with several English people who share my interests and they are invariably civil and gracious in the way so many Americans once thought most English people were. Traces of the old England still remain, like ghost signs on old buildings.
Good question.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a good question.
Steve - your dad was in aviation so you must have seen Brits showing up in the industry during the British brain drain. A lot of them came to Atlanta/Lockheed. They started rugby football here. One of the successors to the original Atlanta RFC was the Old Whites.
It was my privilege to know the founder of rugby in Georgia, the British expatriate Mr. Alan Simms and his family. Alan was already long in the tooth for a rugger back then.
My father played with the Atlanta RFC for years and after Alan's untimely death, captained the ARFC side versus the Renegades in the memorial game played in Alan's honor.
Anyhoo, I think Britain better get ready for another outflow of human capital. (There was one the past decade as well).
Not much left to pillage in London other than Buckingham Palace, and I bet that's what burns next time.
Don't whites in the UK live in closer proximity to blacks? I have never been there so maybe someone can clarify that for me. In the US, most lower class whites seem to avoid the heavily black urban areas and live in the rural areas instead. Maybe that might account for some of the differences between UK and US white trash.
ReplyDeleteUK lost its manufacturing base long before US. As white working class has fewer jobs, fewer families will stay together. More will be on welfare, more will be raised in single family homes.
ReplyDeleteAlso, UK was feminized before the US. Young males growing up in feminized nanny home and state tend to grow more rebellious to assert their repressed manhood and turn to stuff like drink and thuggery.
It seems to be happening here as well, with far more women going to college while many buys party and farty to self-ruin.
I wonder why US style evangelical churches didn't spread in UK and other European nations. Maybe people like Huckabee should go here and prosletize to the proles. Of course, many are proles only by name. Working class? What working class in UK? More like shirking class.
ReplyDeleteChanges in UK from watching 7 UP to 49 UP are pretty depressing: cultural, economic, social, etc.
Most of university graduate Brits I have met believe that it is manly to drink themselves to a state of incoherence in public.
ReplyDeleteThe Brits are the only white nationality I know that admires bullies.
Robert in Arabia
A very good analysis, which I have quoted.
ReplyDeleteGood question.
ReplyDeleteYes, indeed. The rest of Europe and East Asia proves that you don't need religion to be good.
Here's my theory: Hollywood is destined to wreck havoc on the morals any society. So Britain loses by the fact that it speaks English and can better understand what's going on in American movies and shows than others.
So why are low class white Americans relatively immune? In Judith Rich Harris' book The Nurture Assumption, she points out that people tend to contrast themselves with out groups. So if you split up two groups of young males, one will swear all the time and see the other group as wimpy, while the other might take on a pious character. Small differences become greatly exagaratted as individuals identify with their own in-group.
White Americans contrast themselves with blacks, a higher testostosterone and lower IQ group. So what makes them different from balcks gets amplified. Plus, they get a psychological boost from not being at the very bottom of society. I grew up and socialized with the white working class; there was always the attitude of "I may be bad in some areas of life, but I at least take care of my children and hold down a steady job, not like you know whos." It was at least something they could take pride in.
but the question is not only why are downscale British whites so much worse than American whites, it's why are they so much worse than whites from anywhere else in the Western World.
ReplyDeleteI've written here before Mr Sailer, that for a yank, your knowledge of Britain and British culture is quite impressive.
IMHO, you are spot on with regard to Class vs. Race.
Class is deeply embedded here in a way that most Americans, or even Australians, Canadians and Kiwis might find difficult to understand.
George Bernard Shaw said "It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him."
Regional rivalries exist but are nothing compared to the class hatred that is there just beneath the surface, and whilst Mr Shaw said this a long time ago, never kid yourself that we are all just one big happy family these days.
As for "why are they so much worse than whites from anywhere else in the Western World?"
I think it is because I suspect class division is considerably more strongly embedded in the UK than other Western country.
It probably goes all the way back to the Norman Conquest.
England was the first country to be colonised in the British Empire, and our Lords and masters are still running the place nearly a thousand years later - in as much as there is still a culture of Lords and peasants, even though it is possible to slowly climb the greasy pole. And by Lords, I am more likely to mean middle class Guardianistas than actual Lords.
I grew up on a council estate (the equivalent of your projects) and left school at 16 - the equivalent of not completing high school.
I'm a working class Englishman. And after having had experience of mixing with Americans (and Canucks, Aussies and Kiwis too) I feel considerably more comfortable in yank company than I do with middle class Englishman. Considerably so.
I have had the impression when mixing with yanks, that to them, I am just a foreigner with a funny accent, and as such they are more likely to listen to what I am saying, rather than let their opinions and prejudice obscure my words.
If I could have, I would have emigrated. But my wife wouldn't go. Australia would have been my first choice. Partly inspired by Nevil Shute novels and partly a long family history of emigrating there going back to the middle of the 19th Century. But the USA certainly wouldn't have been ruled out.
I remember as a teenager readin the expression "Jack's as good as his master" in one of Nevil Shute's stories set in Australia and its the sort of sentiment I found inspiring.
Just looking at Nevil Shute's wiki page I saw this: "For the first time in my life I saw how people live in an English-speaking country outside England," (speaking of a stay in Canada) and said it was interesting in light of his later decision to emigrate to Australia.
The class culture doesn't bring out the best that is possible in the English working class. Instead it encourages the worst. The sons and daughters of the English working class tend to do very well elsewhere.
Talking of "the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain", take a look at this old Heinekin ad from the eighties. It still cracks me up even now:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4VFqbroi1I
UK underclass whites seem to be only one step up, if that, from the worst of the Russian/Eastern European whites.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny that culture and education actually does matter, but in the opposite of the way the leftist would contend. More leftist indoctrination = lower overall character, less respect for lives and property, more narcisissm and "self-esteem", less feeling of community, responsibility, and work ethic.
The primary lesson of schools is white guilt. The main two things most people in the US remember is the Civil War and the Holocaust, and the main three people are Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, and Ann Frank.
This is absolutely deliberate.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2008/february20/heroes-022008.html
Who are America's greatest heroes? When 2,000 high school students across the United States were asked this question—excluding presidents and presidents' wives—Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman headed the list. The only living American to make the top 10 was Oprah Winfrey, who ranked seventh.
In short, the nation's leading heroes, in the eyes of its youth, are African Americans.
After King, Parks and Tubman, the list included Susan B. Anthony, Benjamin Franklin, Amelia Earhart, Oprah Winfrey, Marilyn Monroe, Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein. A subsequent survey among 2,000 adults yielded similar results. The top 10 list of both cohorts shared eight names.
"[T]he extent to which white Americans now place black Americans at the top of the list is remarkable," according to the study's authors, Sam Wineburg, a professor of education at Stanford, and Chauncey Monte-Sano, an assistant professor of education at the University of Maryland. The results of their survey, which was supported by the Spencer Foundation, will appear in the March issue of the Journal of American History.
Wineburg attributed the survey results, in part, to three decades of multicultural education—"an attempt to remedy the erasure of black Americans from the curriculum"—including such efforts as Black History Month in February.
"In that sense, this is a success story, given the kinds of criticism we heap on ourselves in terms of failed educational reform efforts," he said. "Here is an instance where schools have made major changes, and we see some of the effects of those changes in the survey."
Kevin MacDonald, call your office!
The stable underclass communities theory being dysgenic, even if they don't have a lot of penetration into wider society, is an interesting one.
ReplyDeletePeter Frost of EvoandProud made an interesting comment once on his blog that the formation of working class identity and underclass identity* was able to begin in England because it was the first region in which wages for working class laborers began to be big enough to sustain "intergenerational communities" (that's families).
*later on increasingly, as the western world gained more of a "permanent unemployment on benefits is better than letting them starve" ideology.
Another interesting facet, and complementary, although less likely to be a HBD thing (although I think it's extremely unlikely that there is a real HBD story here) is something Razib Khan remarked on at GNXP, although I can't find the link, is that European societies are the only ones in the world to have gone through an industrial revolution period in which a majority (or at least the majority who were not farmers, not sure if I can remember right) for some period were actually industrial workers - most societies, even very outwardly Commie ones actually went straight from a majority of farmers to a majority of service workers.
http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/index.php?page=3 - "In Britain, industrial employment reached its peak in 1911, when it accounted for 52.2 percent of the total labor force...the peak figure for the United States was 35.8 percent in 1967 and for Japan 37.1 percent in 1973...From a global perspective, a different and far more common path has been to move directly, in terms of employment, from a largely agrarian to a mainly service society, without a predominantly industrial phase...."
Now I'll bet you this was stronger and for longer in Britain than any of the other European cultures mentioned, and in far more brutal and primitive industrial conditions, in many ways - Britain was the world's workshop....
So I kind of wonder what this has done to our culture, to have this great mass of people, at least the great mass of the urban people, actually in a position where they can buy into the Marxist proletarian worker bullshit, in a way that a service sector worker or a farmer wouldn't really - he'd be aware of the ill fit between the actual situation and Marx's ideas. And when you compound this by having the last reasonably strong European monarchy (because the Benelux and Nordic fringe don't really count, and neither do Spain or the Principalities) and aristocracy** coevolve and coopt the Middle Class, I can see a recipe for get a much stronger "common" and prole identity forming.
**Not really strong in the grand scheme of things, but strong compared to the monarchies that didn't just get *straight fucked up* by the post-French Revolution world.
Steve, all of the reasons you listed seem plausible. A little anecdote:
ReplyDeleteBack in 2004, I was staying at a hostel in Dresden and struck up a conversation with a man from Newcastle. The conversation turned to guns and I mentioned how my home state of Ohio had just recently passed a concealed carry law. The Englishman, who was of South Asian heritage, was enthusiastic about enacting such a law in England since packs of young men often gave him trouble in his home city.
Uh, dude, we are descended from Puritans for crying out loud. Something like half of all white Americans can trace back to the founding of the nation. Those Puritans had tons of kids. When I went looking at my family genealogy, I was stunned at how many kids they had and how long they lived, all before modern medicine.
ReplyDeleteWhy lower crime rates among white Americans?
Short answer, it's genetic.
"Thus a receiving culture, a welfare culture, is held in check by either of two means: acceding to their demands, or oppressing them."
ReplyDeleteI think you mean exploit, not oppress.
It isn't possible to oppress the incompetent. Given help and freedom, they degenerate further. However, you can exploit them as in enslavement/wage slavery and vigilant forced work and forced good behavior.
The illegitimacy rate in Iceland has been around 65% for a long time. Around 80% of firstborns are illegitimate. Yet, crime is very low in Iceland.
ReplyDeleteIceland has about the same population as St. Louis or Corpus Christi. I would hesitate to draw sweeping conclusions from a sample that size.
"I'll pick up a lot of flak for writing this, but I'll wager that the the majority of Britain's chavs are ultimately of Irish descent."
ReplyDeleteIt could possibly be true. The cities in britain most known for yobbery (Liverpool, Glasgow, and Manchester) all have had significant Irish immigration in the past.
"I think it's possible that British whites have higher testosterone than whites from elsewhere in Europe."
Interesting theory. I would like to see a comparison of second and third generation crime rates of the various European ethnicities in the US, Canada and Australia.
Sailer says part of the reason is country music left white working class less affected by black culture. Maybe... but most white proles in US--as far I could tell--seemed more into heavy metal, hard rock, satan music, etc--than country music. Among my blue collar friends in highschool, none liked country music. They were into stuff like Judas Priest and Black Sabbath. I preferred the Beach Boys. Pet Sounds is stil my all time fav.
ReplyDeleteAnd was black music/culture an immoral influence on whites? I suppose before rock n roll, blues was rougher and more sexual than country music(though honkey tonk could be naughty). And Jazz--largely if not entirely black--was more sexual and anarchic than stuff like Cole Porter or Sinatra. And white jazz bands tended to be more bland.
And many early rock n rollers were black.
BUT, until the rise of rap, I don't think black music/culture was anymore crazier, immoral, or anti-social than white youth music.
Many famous black girl groups like the Ronettes sang songs written by Jews.
Holland-Dozier-Holland, the most talented song-writing team of the 60s, wrote stuff like "I Can't Help Myself" and "Baby Love". Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye sang loud but their songs tended toward romantic passion than anti-social violence. Redding's most famous song was 'Sitting on the Dock of the Bay'. (I recall a smartass in grammar school Al-Yankoviching the song into 'shitting on the cock of the gay'.) Gaye's most famous song was 'I heard it through the grapevines' and his most celebrated album was pro-peace 'What's Going On'. A lot of black acts were loud, brash, and intense, but their music wasn't hateful, satanic, or violent. Take Wilson Pickett, Al Greene(Let's Stay Together), Sam Cooke, etc. Four Tops was a class act. So was Smokey Robinson, Temptations, Stevie Wonder, etc. Diana Ross and Supremes were, at least in public image, wonderful.
Actually, the craziest negro of the 60s, Hendrix, found his inspiration from white rock and he was bigger among whites than among blacks.
Sly and the Family Stone caused some controversy with 'There's A Riot Going On', but they were more famous for songs like 'hot fun in the summertime' and 'everyday people', a song that said everyone should love one another.
In contrast, there was the nasty Stones(Street Fighting Man, Sympathy for the Devil), sardonic Dylan(Like a Rolling Stone, Sub Homesick Blues), anarchic Who(My Generation), insane Floyd(Ummagumma), threatening Doors(Light my Fire, The End), cataclysmic Zeppeling(Whole Lotta Love, Black Dog), etc.
Judging by music alone, white guys were crazier and more anti-social.
Maybe blacks felt more confident in their musicality, sexuality, and physicality and didn't feel a need to act totally nutty to show they're badass, i.e. they could be badass without strain since they were naturally cool. (It's like big John Wayne didn't have to act crazy like runts Pacino and Cagney to prove his manhood. He just had it, whereas short guys had to act big and loud for attention. Maybe black singers felt passion came naturally to them. Just open their mouths and music flowed out; just move their body and they were dancing. In contrast, white guys had to scream shrilly and move their body in weirdo manners to show they are wild too.)
White guys may have felt they had to strain, go the extra mile, to show that they too are badass like the negroes. (It's like the Vancouver Chinese kid had to act extra-nuts to prove he aint just an Asian geek.)
When I was in mixed-race school up to 6th grade, black kids were into stuff like Earth, Wind, and Fire(cool and breezy happy music) while white kids were into metal and stuff(demento music). (Everyone was into disco too as it was everywhere.) Black kids caused more problems in class and were more aggressive and troublesome, but their music was actually more positive than white rock, much of which was pretty nasty. Ahead of his time, one white kid in 6th grade was already into punk. I recall Donna Summer was rather womanlike while white female rockers like Patti Smith and Deborah Harry strained to be anti-social.
ReplyDeleteI don't think there was really a youth culture among blacks before rise of rap. Blacks kids were pretty listening to what their parents were listening to--and vice versa.
Rock n roll created white youth rebellion because young whites found the new music to be different and more fun than their parents' lame bourgeois music. But since black culture and society had been less stuffy and respectability-obsessed, there was less to rebel against. Black parents were hip too.
Things began to change with rap music, which was distinctly the voice of young blacks. But even rap wasn't really a rebel music but more a revel music. By the time rap came on teh scene, there was no black family or black parents as a social/moral force. So, rap was less a rebellion by young blacks against old blacks but the voice of young feral blacks looking for their own style, code, and sense of belonging in a world without order. It was not the music of resistance but of 'survival'--though politics have been latched onto it, not very convincingly.
This ghettopia music did become
a vile moral example for young people around the world.
But before rap, black culture/music was less insane than white rock/punk/metal.
"The arguement for puritan heritage isn't that good when you look at Australia which was settled by the dregs of the british isles."
ReplyDeleteWhile Australia's white working-class shares a number of the unwholesome social traits afflicting our British cousins, our whites here in Australia still have a respectable work ethic. Unlike Britain, we don't have a lavish welfare state, meaning that even the most indolent generally have to work. With the high cost of living in this country (the downside of decades of nearly uninterrupted economic growth) living off government benefits is not a viable option. Compare this to contemporary nanny-state Britain where entire generations have grown up on welfare, residing in households where nobody has a job. It is hardly surprising the Britain is now sliding toward bankruptcy given the huge amount of money the country wastes subsidizing these unproductive people year after year.
As another poster pointed out, it seems that the most upwardly mobile working-class Britons emigrated to the 'colonies', i.e. the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, leaving behind the dregs of society. Encouraged by the profligate British welfare state, this underclass has spent the last 60+ years since WWII breeding. We are now witnessing the consequences.
Another interesting study might be comparison between Anglos & blacks AND Latinos & blacks.
ReplyDeleteBased on my personal observation of the Puerto Rican communities in NY and Chicago, Latino(white Spanish-American than Mexican-American) and blacks seem to get along better than Anglos and blacks(or Mexicans and blacks).
Why would this be?
1. One reason could be greater race-mixing among Puerto Ricans(and Cubans and Dominican Republicanos). I've seen many white Puertos. some black ones, and many mixed ones. Some mixed ones are essentially white, some are more black. But there seems to be less of a b/w conflict as a result.
2. 'White Puerto Ricans are on the bottom too' theory. Having once lived in a largely Puerto community, I must say lots of white Puertos are pretty useless economically. They also depend on welfare, know nothing but junk culture, have no sense of priorities, and grow up in broken homes. They are white-as-can-be racially but culturally closer to blacks, white trash, or mexicans. And they prolly consider themselves as 'people of color'. Since so many Latino whites don't identify as white but as a minority, it might account for greater amity between white latinos and mixed or non-white ones. Latino whites also seem less purist-minded when it comes to race. Even before they came to the America, Spain and Puertos had been more mixed due to Muslim invasions. Though reconquista sought to re-white-ize Spain, it only went so far.
3. Lack of indivdiualism. I've often noticed that Puerto Rican blacks who speak mostly Spanish tend to be milder than American blacks who speak English. Spanish culture was more communal and hierarchical than Anglo culture of indivdiualism and freedom. As such, it could be blacks steeped in Latino culture are less brash and rebellious than American blacks raised in Anglo-American culture with stresses in cowboy values and 'stand on your own two feet and do your own thing'. As such, even with social decay and breakdown, Latino blacks may be more prone to social-togetherness than blacks instilled with Anglo-values of independence and individuality. Even among criminals, some prefer to stick together while others prefer to stick out.
And even in the US, before the rise of rap culture and other rot,
I think blacks in the South tended to be somewhat less abrasive than blacks in the North. Since Southern culture was more communal, traditionalist, and respectful, Southern blacks coulda been more 'conservative' in behavior. Northern blacks, otoh, were instilled with yankee individualism and more likely to speak their minds. Now, with pop culture having homogenized all of America, southern blacks seem hardly different than ones in Harlem or Detroit.
4. Linguistics. Spanish is a tighter and stickier language than English. T sound in Spanish is tt. P sound is pp. And it has a lot of O's. Maybe this makes the Spanish-speaking mind more ttight-knit and O-ey schmoey.
ReplyDeleteThere is also the matter of formal and casual nouns and verbs.
In English, there is 'you' for formal and casual. In Spanish, there is 'tu' for friends and 'usted' for older folks(and strangers). So, the language itself acts as a kind of social control apparatus.
Since there is no such in English language, there is bound to be more a sense of equality, thus more upmanship. In English, everyone is a you--child, adult, aristocrat, prole, etc.
This may explain why the class system and terms like 'sir' and 'governor' became so important in Britain. Since everyone was a 'you', hierarchies had to be maintained by having lower folks call upper folks 'sir' or 'governor' or by maintaining class distinctions(in absence of linguistic ones). If English language had the equivalent of 'tu' and 'usted'--or 'du' and 'Sie'--, maybe the British would not have been so obsessed about class demarcations and terms of address. My sociology highschool teacher told me--in the early 80s--that his wife was addressed as 'love' by the Britons when they traveling there. 'Sir' in Britain was reserved for people of higher class or quality. 'Love' was a polite term for other ordinary people.
Much of this probably stems from the UK legal system. Property crimes and non-serious assaults are barely punished, so you'd expect high rates of burglary and assault. The actual rates are probably much higher than the official rates, too - cops in the UK are notorious for pressuring victims not to report crimes. High crime rates make them look bad. And what's the point of reporting something if you know the cops aren't going to do anything about it?
ReplyDeleteThe other factor is density. The UK has 12 times the population density of the US. So you have to be really wealthy to be able to physically separate yourself from the criminal element.
"The rest of Europe and East Asia proves that you don't need religion to be good."
ReplyDeleteIt's not so much the moral direction, as the attention paid to people. If no one cares about me, then I don't care about me either. Small evang cults tend to focus on people who are ignored, because they are ripest for conversion.
The biggest example in my mind is John Wesley's (maybe inadvertent) focus on British miners and the dregs of industrial society. He got many to clean up and sober up and Brit society noticeably improved between 1750 and 1850 thanks to the Methodists' fervor.
So if anyone really addresses the problem, it will probably be some scary and boorish religious group that the intelligentsia despises.
A lot of black acts were loud, brash, and intense, but their music wasn't hateful, satanic, or violent. Take Wilson Pickett, Al Greene(Let's Stay Together), Sam Cooke, etc. Four Tops was a class act. So was Smokey Robinson, Temptations, Stevie Wonder, etc. Diana Ross and Supremes were, at least in public image, wonderful.
ReplyDeleteOf course a lot of these acts were studio creations and did not write their own music, unlike the Stones or the Doors. So you can't use "black music" of the time as a window into the soul of black people. The crime rates of the sixties and seventies refute the notion that blacks at the time were mellow and laid back.
I think it's possible that British whites have higher testosterone than whites from elsewhere in Europe
ReplyDeleteI think it's exceedingly unlikely. British whites are genetically very similar to other whites in Norther Europe.
And why does a certain person here constantly harp on testosterone as the key to human behavior?
White Americans contrast themselves with blacks, a higher testostosterone and lower IQ group.
ReplyDeleteFor the love of God ....
one more time, people ...
BLACKS DO NOT HAVE HIGHER TESTOSTERONE LEVELS THAN WHITES.
Sorry for the caps, but it seems that normal text does not get through to some people.
In Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell wrote about how he thought the socialist future should affect class relations. As I recall, he seemed focused on an aspect of British life under which the workingman habitually tipped his cap to the better-born and always addressed him as "sir," somewhat as a Navy enlisted man would address an officer. Somehow over the course of 40 yrs. a seemingly small relaxation of social convention snowballed into a complete overthrow of civility. Whereas in the U.S. it was guilt that prevented whites from communicating limits to blacks, in England the same failure respecting chavs is murky.
ReplyDeleteI think a big part of the problem was 1914-1918 and 1939-1945. Too many of the best and brightest in all levels of British society were killed off. Look at the Somme where all those pals battalions led by some English lord or other were mown down. It drained Britain.
ReplyDeleteEmigration? With so little chance for social advancement in Britain anybody with ambition, drive or skill would move away. Those left behind would tend to be the less capable types.
I also agree with the commentator who suggested the presence of many Irish and their descendents may be a factor. It is not appreciated today just how many white Britons are of Irish ancestry.
Britain also industrialized first and was thus also the first country to suffer de-industrialization. This has had serious consequences.
Spatiality should be considered. England is very small and its white underclass is much more urbanized then is the case in America. They are thus a lot more concentrated together, where they can easily riot together.
Even the rain may be a factor. Since it tends to rain a lot more in the British Isles and most poor whites there don't own land, they don't hunt, fish, etc, like American poor rural whites do. Rather they have developed a pub culture of getting bombed. Don't underestimate the effects of debilitating a people who build a lifestyle around alchol consumption. It devastated the Irish for a long time.
Feral Kids on the Loose!!
ReplyDelete"I think a big part of the problem was 1914-1918 and 1939-1945. Too many of the best and brightest in all levels of British society were killed off. Look at the Somme where all those pals battalions led by some English lord or other were mown down. It drained Britain."
ReplyDeleteBut UK lost fewer quality people than Germany or Japan in WWII.
"BLACKS DO NOT HAVE HIGHER TESTOSTERONE LEVELS THAN WHITES."
ReplyDeleteThey got higher some chemical that done make them so flipping out.
"Of course a lot of these acts were studio creations and did not write their own music, unlike the Stones or the Doors. So you can't use "black music" of the time as a window into the soul of black people."
ReplyDeleteOtis Redding wrote his own songs. So did Al Green. So did Smokey Robinson. So did Stevie Wonder. So did Michael Jackson. Holland-Dozier-Holland were balck.
So did Lionel Richie. So did Billy Ocean. And so on.
As if trying to prove your point about the ineffectiveness of British police, Prime Minister Cameron is now promising that the British govt is considering giving the police new get-tough powers, including:
ReplyDelete1. Being able to order rioters to take off masks.
2. Kicking people out of subsidized housing when they commit a serious crime.
In the US, these things seem so laughably no-brainers that cops should already be able to do, it makes you wonder who in their right mind ever prohibited the police and govt there from doing it.
Do not judge a people by their music.
ReplyDeleteReggae is an easygoing form of music, and you'd think Jamaicans are all laid-back, but look at HARDER THEY COME. They is craaaaazy!
In fact, Jamaicans into reggae were more aggressive than American whites into loud metal.
And Samba would make you think Brazilian blacks are just fun and bouncy-wouncy. But look at the favelas.
But, it's possible that Brazilian blacks had, at one time, been mellower with stuff like samba, before all that American rock stuff entered the scene. It kinda seems that way in CITY OF GOD.
Afro-Latin music tends to be less hostile, antogonistic, and intense; it's more more happy-oriented than American black music, which tends to be more impassioned and abrasive.
Maybe it's because blues and jazz developed among poor depressed angry and alienated blacks whereas Afro-latin music was immediately appropriated by copacabanas where the mulattos were singing for the tourists. And the beaches and sun were nice too.
pass otu the coconuts
Is it possible that Afro-Latins are mellower than Afro-francos(Haiti) or Afro-Anglos(Jamaica)?
Even puerto rap is sunnier than american or french kind.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure on this part of history, but wasn't UK less crazy than rest of Europe in the 60s? UK went through profound social/cultural changes in the 60s(and there were student revolts and etc), but there was nothing in UK like the May 68 fiasco in Paris, Baader Meinhof and other leftist madness in Germany, the violent radical left vs radical right bloodbath in Italy, and etc. US was pretty crazy too, largely due to Vietnam War and Black riots(and Jewish radical uprising).
ReplyDeleteWhy was UK relatively milder than other hotspots?
1. Not too many blacks or non-whites. (Unlike US).
2. Anglo philosophy of empiricism and skepticism than the continental philosophy of BIG IDEAS, ranging from Nietzsche to Marx.
3. More moderate English temperament. Fish and chips than spicy cooking. Elgar than Wagner. Landscape painting than Expressionism.
4. Pride in having been a victor in WWII. Less historically psycho-traumatized than continental Euros who felt they had to 'confront' their past.
5. Relatively painless letting go of Empire. Though Malaysia, Kenya, and other places produced their share of tragedies, it was nothing like France's wrenching loss of Vietnam and especially Algeria(which tore the nation apart, in some ways worse than Vietnam War in the US).
6. Popularity of rock music. Though rock/pop music was big all over the world, most Euro rock was knockoff of American or British pop. UK, in contrast, became a world leader in pop with Beatles, Stones, Animals, Eric Clapton, etc. With so much excitement to be found in music, maybe there was less need for POLITICAL thrills.
Maybe music was less crucial for non-Anglo-Europeans in the 60s. Though all young people were into rock, it was also seen as 'Anglo/American cultural imperialist' music by continentals. So, continental Europeans tended to be idea-centric while Brits were more pop-centric.
------
So, why did things get so bad in UK later?
1. Socialist policies which led to rise of huge welfare class.
2. Stifling power of unions and lack of innovation and investment in new factories, thus erosion of the prole as a proud functional class.
3. Black culture influences which led to renaissance in pop music in the 60s turned poisonous in the 70s with rise of ugly hostile demented punk culture, the musical equivalent of chewing on glass, body piercings, and ass tattoos.
4. Paradoxically, British virtue of moderation itself may have opened the way for the new craziness. In the past, moderation was associated with gentility, social respectability, dignity, and good stuff. But with rock culture, monty python-ism, rise of new left, and afrophilia, everything associated with anglo moderation came to consisdered 'lame', 'square', 'patriarchal', 'repressive'. In America, the 50s came to be seen the same way, often denigrated as the 'lame' and 'repressed' decade of FATHER KNOWS BEST.
So, a kind of radical inversion of values took place where everything immoderate and crazy came to welcomed as 'liberating'. Anglos, who had once been uptight about unruliness became uptight about uptightness and have been trying to be 'loose and free', albeit in a prissy victorian manner. UK is a land of prissy pc where iron-faced bureaucrats promote jungle values.
It's like, after 70 yrs of communism, Russians came to associate everything 'wild and crazy' with the good life.
5. Related to reason 4, maybe Brits felt left out of the 60s wildness. While rest of Europe was having a revolution, UK had remained relatively staid. So, they decided to catch up by going wild with punk in the 70s and soccer hooliganism in the 80s.
"I think a big part of the problem was 1914-1918 and 1939-1945. Too many of the best and brightest in all levels of British society were killed off. Look at the Somme where all those pals battalions led by some English lord or other were mown down. It drained Britain."
ReplyDeleteBut there was a draft, wasn't there? Were a higher portion of high IQ than low IQ killed? Everyone went over the top. Everyone was in the trenches to be shelled. If the IQ distribution was not changed, and assuming the same for other behavior gene types there shouldn't have been much of an effect on the national behavior due to inheritance. Of course the women were unaffected.
I've been impressed with recent English science; Crick, Berners-Lee, Hamilton, Hawking, ...
Robert Hume
Someone mentioned white Puerto Ricans behaving as blacks.
ReplyDeleteWell, thats whats happened to the worst case scenario underclass whites in urban Britain.
A lot of the whites seen looting this week come from this demographic.
Why its almost as if that were the purpose of popular 'culture' - to reduce the dimmest whites to the level of underclass blacks.
Lets not carried away here.
ReplyDeleteThe vast majority of looters were black or mixed race.
The areas that responed effectively organised along ethnically homogeneous lines.
The volunteer clean up groups were predominalty white.
The Englishman, who was of South Asian heritage, was enthusiastic about enacting such a law in England since packs of young men often gave him trouble in his home city.
ReplyDeleteSo in fact not an Englishman then.
From IT TAKES A VILLAGE to
ReplyDeleteIT TAKES A PILLAGE.
The English lower class was not badly behaved until the late 1960's. Dalrymple recalls playing outdoors, no doors locked on houses, in East London in the 1950's.
ReplyDeleteThe US is composed significantly of the Scots-Irish borderer folk, who are not known and never have been for either genteel Southern aristocratic ways nor Puritan restraint.
IMHO, a likely set of arrows pointing towards massive welfarism and destruction of the nuclear family above all, relative to Britain and the US. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, all have intact nuclear families (they just don't bother getting married) for the most part, and their welfare system though extensive until recently had not been used the way it was in the UK.
Germans don't fall prey to Chavism/Yobism either, so the social dysfunction in the UK is not mirrored in Germany, which though heavily Welfare-statism, has all sorts of pressures to get people to work in order to get goodies.
White Brits seem a lot tougher than white Americans. In America, we don't have anything like the EDL or soccer brawlers.
ReplyDeleteThe Brits are our alpha bros across the Atlantic.
did we ever get around to understanding why the european violent crime rate in LA is the lowest of all groups, even lower than the east asian rate?
ReplyDeletenote to anonymous: mexicans routinely provoke fist fights with black americans in LA. since they are generally short and fat and unathletic, i'm not sure how you reconcile this with the fist hierarchy hypothesis.
the mexicans are winning too, pushing the black americans out of several hoods. wonder could it be...solidarity, combined with knowing that the authorities will not come down on them like thor's hammer for daring to openly assault africans.
is there any good study of concealed carry with regard to this topic?
ReplyDeletei've never felt the need to have a gun, though i sometimes shoot handguns for fun, and have looked at some nice kahrs and SIGs to maybe possibly own. not too sure i really need to be owning a handgun honestly. maybe just buy a 500 dollar glock and keep it in the closet for plinking once and a while and be done with it.
my brother's solution is hilarious. crossbows. they are not regulated in any state i've lived in. so he has 2 pretty good ones. obviously a 200 pound draw crossbow loaded with a broadhead bolt will kill the hell out of you if you get hit in the torso...but he only gets one shot. LOL. hope he's good with those things.
Holland-Dozier-Holland were balck.
ReplyDeleteNot only that, they were black as well!
But, like Ashford & Simpson, HDH were songwriters and not performers.
And there's an important difference in that. Professional songwriters often write very good music, but it also tends to be "safe" good music. Professional songwriters write songs to make money, not to make a statement or to rage against the machine.
That's not a criticism, exactly. I think that HDH and Ashford & Simpson wrote a lot of really good music. But by definition it was rather polished and professional good music. They were never going to write any "Kill The Honkies!" stuff - that wasn't their job.
All the black music you heard in the seventies and eighties was filtered through the musical "establishment". That establishment was partly black - Motown - but none of it had any interest in selling "angry black man" music. Blacks were already viewed as angry and dangerous by the public and the very liberal music business was more intent on putting a friendly and happy face on them.
Mexicans have large numbers in LA and probably assault blacks in large packs. I can't see them taking down blacks in one-on-one fist fights.
ReplyDeleteMexicans aren't known for their athleticism or strength, but they are pretty crazy (ie pull out a knife and stab in broad daylight). Large numbers, racial unity, and sheer craziness are some of the advantages that Mexicans enjoy.
somebody is confusing the colonial adventures of west coast europeans 400 years ago, with androgen production.
ReplyDeleteenglish guys don't have more serum testosterone on average than some other europeans. no way. compared to the central europeans, slavs, and scandinavians, they are more slightly contructed and weaker for sure. there's just no doubt about that. genetically english guys in the united states are responsible for the colloquial phrase "skinny white guy".
they probably have moderately higher test levels than the french and spaniards and italians though. i've talked before about the changes in average size and strength across europe from east to west and from and north to south.
there's some big strong english guys no doubt but they're not the testosterone champions of europe by a longshot. some other european groups are definitely bigger, stronger, and tougher.
andy bolton and dorian yates are the only english guys who come to mind off the top of my head in strength sports. english guys just get clobbered in that stuff. other than bolton i'm not sure there has been a competitive english guy in powerlifting, olympic lifting, or strongman in a long time.
ReplyDeletethere were some english americans who did OK in strongman but the only 2 really good americans were bill kazmaier and phil pfister and those those sound like german names to me. the world bench press record is 715 pounds and held by scot mendelson, an american. this is either a german, polish, or hebrew name, and he's not jewish, so a german or polish guy in the US has the best bench ever.
russians and other slavs dominate olympic lifting but a german guy won the over 105 KG field at the 2008 olympic games. looks like he got second at the 2010 world championships. the english won zero medals combined at both meets. olympic lifting is a small sport, so i would tend to discount it, then again, none of the strength sports are big sports. we could move up to a bigger sport like...
wrestling, in which strength is highly important, and also a sport in which the english do nothing and get utterly dominated by much smaller national teams. the english won zero medals combined at the 2008 olympic games and 2010 world championships. most nations in europe did better. i'm pretty sure the english do not care about wrestling though, as the UK is the home of boxing.
ReplyDeletein track, if the english team had an ethnic team, their 4x100 relay would get beat by the germans, poles, russians, even the italians. they do have very good 4x400 sprinting though and they might beat the germans and poles in that but come in behind the russians. in field, i don't think there has been a good english thrower ever. i'd have to look it up. scandinavians, germans, and slavs usually compete with a couple americans for those medals.
boxing is probably the sport on this list which the english care the most about, and in which strength is still a relevant component, although not usually the determining factor. boxing is a small sport in terms of participation rate though, perhaps even 10 times less popular worldwide than wrestling. nevertheless, the slavs generally clobber the ethnic english boxing. the best english boxer in a while is tyson fury. pretty sure he's better than david price. none of them would do too good against the best russians and ukrainians.
"Mexicans have large numbers in LA and probably assault blacks in large packs. I can't see them taking down blacks in one-on-one fist fights.
ReplyDeleteMexicans aren't known for their athleticism or strength,"
Cain Velasquez is currently the no. 1 heavyweight MMA fighter in the world. The toughest guy in the world right now is the first-generation descendant of illegal Mexican immigrants to the US.
Mexican guys seem reasonably well-represented throughout weight devisions in the UFC.
"mexicans routinely provoke fist fights with black americans in LA. since they are generally short and fat and unathletic, i'm not sure how you reconcile this with the fist hierarchy hypothesis."
ReplyDeleteMaybe they do this within a certain weight class. Julio Caesar Chavez did beat some blacks.
Mario Puzo: A man with a suitcase can steal more money than a thousand man with guns.
ReplyDeleteI must say London thugs are small potatoes. Wall Street banksters got away with 100 billions of loot. All legal. Their accomplices were guys in government, like Bushbaby and the Bamster.
"Cain Velasquez is currently the no. 1 heavyweight MMA fighter in the world. The toughest guy in the world right now is the first-generation descendant of illegal Mexican immigrants to the US."
ReplyDeleteI don't know about his personal life and I don't care for his tattoos, but he showed true sportsmaship and grace, unlike that moron Blockhead Lesnar, a white version of Mike Tyson. Good for Cain to kick Lesnar's ass.
The eugenics movement was very big in Britain pre 1939.
ReplyDeleteIn the twenties and thirties of the last century, many committed eugenicists (the great Cyril Burt was prominent amongst them) warned repeatedly in report after report about the dsygenic fertility affecting Britain in those days.
Basically high IQ types were having very few children, whilst the lowest IQ types had prodigious fertility (where have we heard that before?).
Perhaps it's just Burt's warning coming home to roost.
Jody,
ReplyDeleteWrestling used to be a vey, very popular spectator sport in the UK - but I don't mean real wrestling, but a strange, peculairly British type of pantomime.
Most of the protagonists were fat, bad middle-aged men with names like 'Big Daddy', 'Mick McManus', 'Mick McMichael', 'Giant Haystacks', 'Kendo Nagasaki (who definitely was NOT Japanese) etc.
I used to be shown on ITV around Saturday teatime and attracted audiences of tens of millions, back in the 60s and 70s.
Yet, inexplicably it was take off air and died.
Wrestling also used to be held in halls attached to municipal buildings.Strangely enough the audience was mostly old grannies who were sexually stimulated by the beefy middle aged fakers going through the motions in the ring.
english guys don't have more serum testosterone on average than some other europeans. no way. compared to the central europeans, slavs, and scandinavians, they are more slightly contructed and weaker for sure.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's not the English who have high testosterone then. The UK is like one-quarter Gaelic genetically (Irish and Scottish), and Shrek, after all, was based on stereotypes on how Scots look and act. The UK, unlike continental Europe, has a large population of Irish and Scots, even if the majority English are basically German invaders similar genetically to the Dutch, Danes, and northern Germans.
Case in point: what ethnic group has been called the "(N-word)s of Europe" for who knows how long?
In France the Parisians had the good sense to leave the beautiful and historic areas of central Paris (the wide Haussman boulevards, for example), for themselves, and they banished all their immigrants to brutalist concrete housing projects right out in the periphery.
ReplyDeleteLondon, by contrast was never a beautiful or planned city, and always had heavy industry located right in the center of town and the poor living cheek-by-jowl with the rich.Posh areas such as Notting Hill, Pimlico, Kensington, Chelsea, Westminster, Belgravia etc all have some rather nasty 'council estates' located within spitting distance.In fact it is virtually impossible to go anywhere in England without finding a council estate around the corner.
Traditionally, the middle classes fled London for periphery suburbs such as Epsom, Cheam, Virginia Water etc leaving the inner cities to the poor, in contrast to the French where the immigrants are consigned to the periphery.
The cultural rot comes from Anglophone countries. I.e., native English-speakers get their fix before it's stepped on.
ReplyDeletePopulation density. England is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. I glad someone mentioned it before I did.
To round out the triumvirate you have a healthy dose of pinko politics.
Not ruling out the many other plausible and interesting theories being thrown around, mind.
I think all the best men died in 1914-18 and 1939-45, leaving the dregs to breed.
As opposed to Germany?
Brit underclass whites in an urban setting are no worse than their American counterparts. See South Boston (home of the infamous Whitey Bulger) and Charlestown (real life basis for Ben Affleck's The Town). Also lends credence to the Irish theory mentioned here, as Southie and Charlestown have long been Irish enclaves.
ReplyDelete"So, why did things get so bad in UK later?"
ReplyDeleteWell, there's been a lot of demographic change.
Six million abortions since 1967. The population then was about 50 million.
About six million immigrants (and their descendants), who have a much higher birth rate. More than a quarter - 26.5% of English school kids are 'minority'.
The educated and young are getting out, to countries which only take qualified people, like Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
"There are now 3.247 million British-born people living abroad, of whom more than 1.1 million are highly-skilled university graduates, say the researchers. More than three quarters of these professionals have settled abroad for more than 10 years, according to the study by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
No other nation is losing so many qualified people, it points out. Britain has now lost more than one in 10 of its most skilled citizens, while overall only Mexico has had more people emigrate. "
Those clever emigrants are being more than replaced by people from Poland, and by people from Somalia, Bangladesh and Kurdistan. No one requires them to have qualifications or skills.
There's been a lot of cultural change, too. See "2,000 years of British history in five paragraphs".
the best english boxer in a while is tyson fury
ReplyDeleteHe's actually an Irish Traveller.
Peter
"For the love of God ....
ReplyDeleteone more time, people ...
BLACKS DO NOT HAVE HIGHER TESTOSTERONE LEVELS THAN WHITES.
Sorry for the caps,"
LAMO!
HE DO NOT HAVE A LOWER TESTOSTERONE LEVEL THAN A BLACK
But he apologizes meekly for something as trivial as using capital letters.
RE: Laban above
ReplyDeleteThere are now 3.247 million British-born people living abroad, of whom more than 1.1 million are highly-skilled university graduates,
Recent governments have used that fact as an argument in favour of open door mass immigration. Essentially they claim that if Britain imposed meaningful restrictions on immigration then other countries would retaliate and none of us would be able to leave. It makes about as much sense as any other pro-immigration argument.
The numbers you quote gloss over a more recent phenomenon that you might not be aware of. Historically, emigration from Britain has largely been among young adults - and your quotes sort of hint at that too. However, in the last couple of decades we have seen large numbers of middle aged people taking early-ish retirement and relocating to the likes of Spain, France and Portugal. This hits the UK much harder than you might think since these people tend to take a lot of their money with them. They also tend to settle in pleasant, semi-rural towns and villages, well away from whatever social problems their new countries might have. So not only are we losing talented young people with promise for the future we are also losing the experienced and established cadre who would otherwise have nurtured that talent.
Although I shouldn't really say "we" since I will be off myself as soon as my children finish University.
The UK is like one-quarter Gaelic genetically (Irish and Scottish), and Shrek, after all, was based on stereotypes on how Scots look and act.
ReplyDeleteYou're basing your argument on a cartoon character?
Yosemite Sam always struck me as being Scots-Irish!
"White Americans contrast themselves with blacks, a higher testostosterone and lower IQ group. So what makes them different from balcks gets amplified. Plus, they get a psychological boost from not being at the very bottom of society."
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with the higher testosterone hypothesis. Remember there are studies showing that some violent criminals actual suffer low T levels.
I do agree that the pride of the US white working class somewhat relates to still being able to earn enough money for food, shelter and clothing and maybe support a small family.
I've also wondered not only about how the welfare state has trapped the British chavs but also about whether or not young, energetic males have enough outlets for physical activity. Most working class whites in this country spend their free time doing something physically demanding outdoors, ATVing, camping, playing sports.
Oh yes, as for the person who suggested England was under siege by the bad behavior of its lower classes, I think the aggression is relegated to a few cities like London in the middle of the night. You should probably be careful where you end up on a weekend night or during a major sports event but otherwise I don't think the chavs and Jamaicans are roaming around looking for people to beat up and rob.
And why hasn't Ireland proper descended into anarchy if the Irish in England are contributing to the problem?
Reply to anonymous:
ReplyDelete"But there was a draft wasn't there"?
Not exactly. The draft was brought in AFTER the Somme.
There were really several British armies. The first was the B.E.F. It was an excellent and well-trained force. But it was rather small. By the end of 1914 it was gone. The next group was the Territorial Army. This was similar to the U.S. national guard. It too was gone by the end of 1915. Then there was 'Kitchener's army' with its 'pals battalions' consisting of the best of British society. It was also destroyed by the end of 1916. Then a draft army was created. It consisted of many men who would never have been accepted under peace-time service.
Theodore Dalrymple / Anthony Daniels is a good example of somebody still close to his prime who has left for small town France -- I met him at a conference a couple of years ago, and when his cellphone rang, he stepped away to counsel one of his patients who was going through a crisis. I half eavesdropped and was extremely impressed. If I needed a psychiatrist, I'd like to have somebody half as good.
ReplyDeleteNorway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, all have intact nuclear families (they just don't bother getting married) for the most part,
ReplyDeleteThanks Whiskey. 95% of what you say is moronic, and the other 5% you provide no source for.
There used to be a lot of underclass Irish in Boston. They rioted during the busing in the 1970s and, for the most part, Bostonians were terrified to go into Southie. For blacks in particular, there were no-go zones in parts of the city. Then, in the early 90s, the government forcibly desegregated the projects. There was also a lot of gentrification and immigrants coming in too.
ReplyDeleteNew York and Philly used to have some rough Italian neighborhoods too. Not neccessarily underclass, but thuggish/uneducated/guidoish. Lots of Travolta/Stallone types. They seem to have either moved out to the suburbs, been pushed out by NAMs, or been gentrified away by SWPLs and immigrants.
Does anybody know if there are any tough Irish left in Boston or macho Italians in NYC/Philly? Or is it just NAMs and SWPLs these days?
"'I think all the best men died in 1914-18 and 1939-45, leaving the dregs to breed.'
ReplyDeleteAs opposed to Germany? "
- And of course, there is an old rumor that Russian and American soldiers did quite a bit of fathering in Germany post war...
Since the USA counts Hispanics as white, the difference may be even more stark.
ReplyDeleteThere are still tough Irish left in Philly and NYC
ReplyDelete