Marky B

My local MP,Frank Cook,was one of the Labour MP's who voted for a referendum - he always tended to go by his conscience instead of blindly following the party whip. No wonder he is getting deselected by the local Labour party. I hope he returns as an Independent.
Ta Ta
Marky B

I am special. The heavens always open for me.

samkydd

And two things we have that European countries don't, and it's why they've hated us since time war memorial. We are surrounded by sea, not by other countries, and we have a really good looking flag not some Neopolitan ice cream patterned effort!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

Harleybloke

And they do get miffed when we refer to 'France and points east' as 'Europe'.

But you are in Europe they say, it's a geographical fact!

Geographical possibly but I never think of being European. English, yes! British, if it has to be.........ENGLISH first!

European? Nope!

.....You couldn't hear it, if they were shooting at me with howitzers!

Moor Larkin

I also think they had religious beliefs........... I've always preferred to think of myself as British, rather than English; but I'm increasingly a minority - maybe I always was!... I think it would be a bit much to blame them but I did listen to an interview on Radio 5 with increasing disbelief recently. The female presenter was backstage at the Brit awards and vox-popping some band or other. All she could keep going back to asking (she was evidently star-struck) was what time they had all been drinking since, and how many they had had...... The band-member seemed almost to be agreeing he was sozzled, just to shut her up.

I'm pretty sure the same journo had been doing a piece about some big social issue barely days before....... Hence my disbelief...... a bit like the newspaper that prints the story about anorexia on one page and then a feature about dieting on the next.

samkydd

When I was a child drunks were ridiculed in public on on TV and film, and people did not want to be associated with them. Nowadays it seems that being out of control and incapable is a sign of being "one of the lads/girls" and become accepted in your peer group.

The best policy is to lock them up for a weekend and then at 6am on Monday morning send them out cleaning up all the vomit and broken glass left on the streets.

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

dremble wedge

Then your childhood was a rare period of temperance!

The people of these of these islands have been noted as heavy drinkers as far back as it's possible to trace (many historians reckon its because of the cold weather). One of the first results of the Bronze Age saw the Germanic and Celtic tribes perfect ways of making booze with their new metallic implements.

When the Romans arrived here they remarked upon our drunken ways. Tacitus even said that it was easier to conquer the northern tribes if you got them drunk first...

Our booze based society continued into the Middle Ages with monasteries basing their economic survival on their brewing skills and in Scotland it was a capital offence to weaken beer! It was estimated that the average person drank 17 pints of beer a week at this time.

Beer started to be decried (in much the same terms as the 'binge drinking' stories in today's press) at the start of the 17th century but the upper classes started drinking wine and everyone else turned to gin... with the consequences we saw in Hogarth's Gin Lane.

The introduction of tea and coffee went some way to alleviate the general tide of drunkenness as did the onset of the Industrial Revolution - as factory owners didn't want a plastered workforce falling into their Spinning Jennies etc.

The outbreak of WW1 saw the opening hours of pubs reduced and the buying of rounds made illegal! (Damn you Lloyd George!)

It took 90 years to reverse these changes and drinking levels have started to revert to their historical norms with 1 in 4 men and 1 in 6 women drinking at high levels.

But it's in our blood, always has been. It's our greatest tradition, predating Christianity, the language we speak, even the countries we live in and the Daily Mail/the Government can't stop it however much they want to.

Right, I fancy a pint...

Moor Larkin

There's a piece in this months History Today about the 1908 Licensing Law:
History Today: The educational archive of articles, news and study aids for teachers, students and enthusiasts - History Today - History Today

There's a photo of Patrick McGoohan in Braveheart too, so that's a bonus.....

[code]http://www.flickr.com/photos/29487363@N02/sets/72157606700675506/code]

CaptainWaggett

Thanks for the reference. Very interesting article. According to it, in the 1870s Brits were drinking a staggering (literally, I'd have thought) 40.5 gallons of beer a year. And there were 46 pubs in a 200 yard radius of the Liverpool docks so I'm guessing not many sailors' wives actually saw their husbands' wages. Apparently in 1908, taxes on alcohol generated a quarter of the state's revenue so presumably it wasn't just the brewers who objected to having tax on beer replaced with income or property tax.

samkydd

Not really, we just had Common Sense beaten into us, and how to behave with decorum to protect the family name! I used to get pissed as a youth but never so out of control I'd be a bloody nuisance. I sort of grew out of it and used my cash for things like food and bills!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

penfold

But while the Temperance movement was most strongly assocated with Non-Conformism...not all churches had Temperance leanings, and not all Temperance followers were religious, certainly not necessarily Christian....it was because the Non-Conformist churches were the nearest thing late Victorian England had to the present-day social services.
It was a social campaign, not a quest for abstention for its own sake or for any religious reason; the movement was responding to an already existing social crisis, possibly even worse than it is now, in certain areas. Their opinions were not universally admired...in Basingstoke, in the 1880's a brewery town, a Temperance rally was broken up by locals and the leaders of the rally thrown into the Basingstoke Canal; local supporters of Temperance had their doorknockers removed from their front doors, and they too went into the canal....

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

DB7

I see they've dreamt up a new wheeze involving school-leavers being required to pledge allegiance to Queen and country - well they can shove that where the sun doesn't shine. I consider myself British and have no cultural identity crisis whatsoever, but an American-style pledge (which I've always thought ridiculous) to good Queen Liz would really stick in my craw.

nandywell

I live in the North West of England and I guarantee you this, I could not and would not get home sick of this place. To quote Alan Partridge "It's a bloody nightmare".

Harleybloke

Yeah! And that influx of Moanchester Utd fans from Brighton every fortnight must be a nightmare.............................

.....You couldn't hear it, if they were shooting at me with howitzers!

nandywell

Harley, I'd shoot the lot of them if I had my way. City till I die!

David Brent

I see that the governments grand plan is to introduce an ID card for everyone in Britain.
They already have plans to introduce new tough visa requirements for all visitors from the Commonwealth to the UK - Australian's included. Yet visitors from Europe to the UK will NOT need such visas. Aussies are generally miffed by such proposals.

Gone are the days when being in the Commonwealth actually meant something.

Dave.