@RuthMayorcas@Nicklezard You’re fundamentally mistaken Ruth, broadly speaking this century alone about 1.4b people have been lifted from extrem poverty via systems of capitalism & enterprise - nothing like that in human history . That is not a failure is it?
@GadSaad It is crushing, having done the very same thing 8 years ago. The good news is it’s one time, and like with a bereavement, time is a healer. It’s all about the future and that is bright.
@AK_Gramm Yes, it comes from Richard the lion heart: The emblem has endured for over 800 years, evolving from battlefield standards and royal seals to a beloved symbol of English identity in sports and culture.
@MsMelChen@MrWinMarshall This is what a meritocracy looks like Mr Khan. It features low taxes, easy business setup, trade & foreign investment, property rights enforcement, low corruption, ultra growth from a poor post-independence state to one of the world’s richest per capita.
Well done Suella Braverman. She was unruffled, professional and very competent on Sky News this morning.
Explaining Reform UK’s equality policy while Wilfred Frost filled in for Trevor Phillips. Frost was clearly keener on gotcha moments than conducting a serious interview.
Bring back Trevor Phillips.
@SuellaBraverman@raelbrav
@GadSaad I’d like to see Japan win the World Cup. Perhaps this would lead the rest of the world can state behaving a little bit more like the Japanese.
“In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman, and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse-racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true, that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention while ‘God Save the King’ was played than of stealing from the poor-box.”
— George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)
Orwell was pointing out a type of person who sneers at their own country as if that makes them clever. Not because they’ve thought deeply about anything, but because they think mockery itself is a mark of superiority. The tone of it hasn’t changed. The same kind of people are still here. The same smirk. The same false performance of being “above” England.
You see it across media, universities, arts, politics - this little ritual of laughing at everything English: the history, the songs, the traditions, the parades, the accents, the villages, the old ways of doing things. As if scorn is the height of sophistication.
Meanwhile the ordinary Englishman hasn’t changed. He doesn’t make a spectacle of loyalty, but it’s there - in how he speaks about home, in how he looks after his own, in how he stands when something needs to be stood for. It’s quiet, steady, and real.
The divide Orwell talks about is still obvious:
There are those who feel duty and belonging.
And there are those who think they are above both.
The first group doesn’t need to explain itself. 🏴
“Fighting back” against what? The thousands of jobs created, the innovation, the inspiration, perhaps the hope of a better world should be crushed? The IPO raised cash to create development & investment- real money that goes into the growth from which all benefit.
@clairlemon While in today’s world almost everyone has access to the sum of all human knowledge, yet people are lazier & seemingly ever more ignorant. The scientific principle of “path of least resistance” in action.