Would most of you agree that things are quite a bit different in the UK then they were 21 years ago? What would yall say is worse? What would you say is better?


 

Just spend two weeks living on one of your housing projects and save yourself the money.

In other words the Chavs have taken over?

For the most part ....no.

Depends where you go. Inner cities are pretty much the same the world over to one degree or another, but there isn't a massive problem.

From my perspective the biggest difference is the attitude of these people.... they think the world owes them a living and that the rest of us will bail them out with our taxes.  That is pretty much what the government of the last 12 years has done, and the result is an underclass of idiots that demand a certain lifestyle without contributing to society. They are also allowed to behave badly with little of no consequence..... thus we have a worsening problem.

It depends on where you live I suppose, and the people in your community. I'm pretty lucky to live in an area where the community spirit is quite strong and has a pretty good moral standard.

I lived in a small town in Cambridgeshire. From what I remember we didn't have Chavs.
Just a bunch of farmers and working and middle class folks.

Cambridgeshire is full of Pikeys and Poles now.

What is a Pikey?






 

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pikey

So you've got yourselves a gypsy infection?


 

The link is not accurate.
Pikey,s are the lowest of the low. Even the genuine gypsy families will have nothing whatsoever to do with them. Usually the irish, tarmacing , thieving bastards. Not identified by a lurcher on a string. i have a large deerhound lurcher, so beloved of "league of gentlemen,s , papa Lazarou etc....i,m not a pikey.
Nothing wrong with Hare coursing...it was legal, and the oldest fieldsport known to man, until these labour bastards made it illegal....like it stopped people. not the preserve of the pikey at all.
21 years ago...or so...we had semi auto,s.... Things have gone to rat shit since.
Anything improved ?

No.

stay where you are buddy....you have the better deal.

Tide and time waits for no man.

Things move on, people change, lifestyle changes.....come see for yourself.
We could go on about how things have changed but in essence the UK is still the UK

There is always room in this inn.
If you ever showed up on my doorstep...we'd find a bed for you and you'd not go hungry.
What more do you need.
I'll even take you shooting

Cheers
Taffy

I'm in the same boat, not been back to the UK/Eire since 2003, not lived there since the early 90's. Last time riding the tube on the Jubilee line down from Stanmore I felt as estranged from
the poplace as I do most of the time here in Texas.
I miss the England of my yesterdays.

England is a foreign land now, London can best be equated with a separate 3rd world country.


The nearest big city to me, Portsmouth, now has 53 languages spoken in it's junior schools…

I left in 1997 when I was 14.  

Been back a few times since.  I was just back this summer.  

The countryside in Yorkshire is still the most beautiful place on earth.  The cities on the other hand were very depressing.  

Everyone I talked too, felt it was no longer the British people's country any more.  Britain was once a free and beautiful country, but the sad cold hard fact of the matter is that the only thing that is going to solve the ills of the country is an extreme government.  

If those communist wankers in charge keep pushing, they might just get one.

+1

Strategic voting is the big reason for Tory popularity....... I'm under no illusion that they are a shadow of their former selves, however, voting for any other party is not an option as the primary objective is to vote out the current government.  If they do get in then they will need to capitalise on their new found support and work towards converting them to tory supporters....... whether that be by swinging further to the left in appeasement or further to the right to reflect a national mood swing remains to be seen.

Problem is that without proportional representation, all you will have is the age old fight between the thick people who vote labour "cos they always have and tories is for posh bastards" and the rest of the population who want to vote for the people they think will do the best job, and that may not necessarily be the Tories. We are forced down the route of strategic voting because the Tories have for a long time been deemed the only viable option.

I'm not sure who to vote for, but there isn't a lot of option.  When the time comes and the day to cast the vote is upon us then I'll make the decision.

One thing is a dead cert....... it won't be for the bunch of worm burpers currently sat in office

I agree.

Can someone explain to me the difference, (if any) between the Tories and "New Labour" of 1997?

QFT, people here think thatcher was great, I take the time to set them straight. her solution to the union problem was to destroy their base and the countries wealth generating engine. pure fucking genious

Wasn't Thatcher in power when they banned prohibited SLRs

yes, I had to permanently modify the mag tube on my Browning Auto-5 to only hold 2 rounds because of that. Then she gave the "manufacturing no longer matters" speech and I joined the brain drain.

Fucking bollocks

The previous Government to Thatcher's had let the Unions get to powerful, and had (as Labour usually does) fucked up the economy.  The "wealth generating engine" of the UK had already been killed by the unions who had held the country to ransom for more money. Labour payed out everytime and they the result was the Unions wanted more.  Inflation was through the roof as taxes were levied to try and finance the ever increasing demands of the greedy bastards that were holding the rest of us to ransom.

When Thatcher got in,  the Unions were actually draining the wealth out of the country with artificially high wage demands and very low production. The nationalised and subsidised industries were producing very poor quality products and inferior services. The car industry was a classic example, and people voted with their feet and bought foreign vehicles because they were better made and more reliable.

The energy industry and the miners also shot themselves by making the cost of coal production in the UK so expensive it was no longer sustainable, and better quality coal could be shipped in from abroad for less money than it cost to mine it in the UK

Basically the communist/socialist ideals of state owned and subsidised industry fell victim to the capitalist demands of the workforce for more money, and the country was on the road to bancruptcy.

Worse still, anyone who had the audacity to be innovative or creative by inventing something better, or who came up with ideas to make things more efficient was immediately seems as a usurper and accused of undermining Britain's "great" industry........ in effect any form of creativity was demolished in the interest of maintaining the socialist equilibrium and the country's industry fell behind the rest of the world.

Thatcher was the one that turned to the Unions and refused to comply with their demands, so the Unions went on strike, and effectively sounded the death knell of their own industry.  The result was that with no coal and national blackouts the Government simply outsourced the supply of coal, that's the way free market forces work,  and the rest is history

The Unions killed themselves off and took industry with them because they refused to allow innovation and prevented any attempt to maintain a competitive edge in industry.

Blame socialism, not Thatcher.  Thatcher dragged this country back from the abyss.........and gave us some National pride again.

There's no doubt it was a painful and difficult time, but had it not been for the policies of Thatcher's government the recovery would have been far more painful and the damage far greater.

Appologist, shmologist........

Thatcher came to power before the Falklands........ and stired up a shit storm...... What she did was make the country more efficient and pulled the plug on publicly funded subsidies, took the power away from the unions and made Britain productive and profitable again.  She retained office through the difficult times and the Falklands played no small part in that, for sure

We all know she was far from perfect and so was the Tory party.... (if they were perfect then they would still be in power)..... The issue of the poll tax, tory sleaze and dishonesty, the Semi Auto Ban and the Handgun Ban (which was constructed by Major's Govt, and implemented by Blair haven't been forgotten........ However she took over a country that was on it's knees and had to make some very unpopular decisions to get us back on our feet.  -  to blame her for the destruction of British industry is way off the mark.........our industry was terminal way before the tories took over.  She served a good purpose but outstayed her welcome.......

I can't afford any rose tinted glasses....... I'm financing your new BMW and property aquisitions

Besides.....  I wear the contact lenses of truth...... they provide better clarity

Interesting.

Of course she was disliked, she made lazy smelly hippies get out of bed and go and earn a living instead of turning up to vote on the next 4 day strike, claiming a day's wage and then buggering off to the pub.

Yet, not long ago, the London Daily Telegraph commissioned a poll to ask who Britons regard as their greatest post-World War II prime minister. Maggie blew everyone away, even Winston Churchill . If Maggie stood for election today, according to this poll she'd sweep in with another landslide. Thirty-four percent of those polled said Lady Thatcher was the best of the post-war gaggle, while Sir Winston trailed with 15 percent, and Tony Blair (11 percent), Harold Wilson (9 percent) and Clement Attlee (7 percent) lagged so far behind as to be irrelevant to the exercise.

Lady Thatcher, who was dumped by the Conservatives 19 years ago, is suddenly attractive to a new generation of voters drawn to the novelty of the politics of conviction. For years after she retired to private life, her own party worked hard to distance itself from her, even as British voters worked hard to distance themselves from her eminently forgettable successors. Now leaders of both British parties are scrambling to identify with, even be photographed with, the "Iron Lady."

The appeal of the politics of conviction as opposed to  the politics designed by marketing men, with their endless array of focus groups, consultants and other diversions from conviction, principle and vision is now more popular than ever.... thanks to the tactics of Blair, Brown and Neue Arbeit.

I also remember reading a report about a summit meeting of British Commonwealth leaders years ago to discuss imposing sanctions against the apartheid government of South Africa. Lady Thatcher, who was working behind the scenes to pressure the government to dismantle apartheid and free Nelson Mandela as a token of good faith, was alone among the 49 assembled heads of state to oppose sanctions. She said sanctions would only make the lives of ordinary South Africans –– particularly black South Africans –– more miserable. At the concluding press conference, a reporter (likely a television correspondent) asked the inevitable question of what it "felt like" to be the only leader to oppose the sanctions that all right-thinking folks approved. She replied simply: "I feel sorry for the 48."

Few under the age of 40 can appreciate how miserable Britain was in the late 1970s, with the trade unions strangling the economy and despair as the overall mood of the nation. The only thing left and right agreed on was things were getting worse. Maggie Thatcher prescribed medicine that had been long dismissed as poison: privatising state industry, deregulation and encouraging an enterprise culture.

Thats's the thing about Thatcher, she was a politician and a Leader - she set sbout to do what she thought was right and not to just do the things that made her popular, unlike Blair and Brown.  The fact she was unpopular but still drove change and improvement was a measure of her belief and conviction......   She may not have been right all the time but at least you knew what were getting when you voted.

So yes, I do rate Maggie......... in fact, I'd crawl three miles naked over broken glass in the dead of winter, just to throw stones at her poo.

I quite liked her....

Chile has always been a good friend and loyal allie of Britain… their Navy even celebrates Trafalgar Day.

Top blokes the Chileans, they were very 'helpful' to us during the Falklands War

Remind me about Conscription in Northern Ireland in 1939-45.

interesting, looks like Muasers, probably in 7x57.

It's amazing how this thread developed.

she gets my vote or someone like her

so what was wrong with the poll tax

As far as I can tell, many people have bought into the image rather than the politics - looking back, she does appear to have more balls than the collective governments since. Whether she used those enormous cojones for good or evil does not seem to be relevant these days; she is being compared to a government that lives and dies by the red-tops and likes to write letters to X-Factor finalists

Since the rest of Europe looked to Great Britain for help and encouragement during those fateful years 1939-45, it was liberating to see Maggie finally taking on the unions and the tossers governing Britain into the ground after the war. While the rest of bombed-out Europe mechanised their farming industry and rebuilt their manufacturing base with the Marshall funds, Britain (de facto bankrupt in 1945) financed the "Welfare State" i.e. NHS and nationalizing industry at the same time, thus plunging their fragile economy headlong into collapse, because there were nothing to pay for all the welfare when the Marshall money ran out. Maggie stopped that plunge and turned the ship around (pun intended). Besides she inspired Denmark to do the same, chuck the champagne socialists out and begin rebuilding the economy.
Soren

(Yes, they are 7x57 mm Mausers, the last in the world in military service apparently)

You just described this side of the pond to a "T" also.The entitlement attitude which is prevalent nowadays makes me so mad I want to stick broken light bulb glass up my ass to stop from thinking about it!

Left in 72 and settled here in 78 and never regretted it.
Only thing I miss is the pubs  but I compensate with rounds down range. I consider myself privilaged to live and be a citizen of the richest nation on earthbut sadly it is run by a bunch of socialist twats who would  have a problem organising a fuck up in a hore house.

Get back to Liverpool bout once a year just to see my ma and remind myself of how lucky I am

Oh, and I have a shed load of guns

What do you call a scouser with an AR?            Nothin, absofuckinlutly nothin....