JewelFreak
Ideal_Rock
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2009
- Messages
- 7,768
Get that riffraff off your bridge, Smith! They spoil the view. Now you'll have to send the serfs to sweep up after them!
(I know April Baby was not talking specifically to you about buying to impress, girl. It's obvious to anyone that you buy for looooove, like the rest of us.)
I think much of it was colonial guilt, Smith. May have been a need for workers too -- especially after WWI when half the men were killed -- I do think it was something like 1/3. Conditions after WWII in some colonies & ex-colonies were awful & I've read there was feeling that Britain had a moral responsibility for that population. Didn't take long for the floodgates to open completely. But even when I was spending a week or more every month in the UK for 5 years -- decades & decades after that -- people didn't hesitate to express themselves, sometimes the most awful ways. To people's faces, too.
Good that that stopped, but the pendulum has swung way over the other direction, to where you can't wish someone a nice day, in case they're not having one. It seems like the crackpot fun has gone away; life is more serious & drudgery in attitude. I hate to see the country that practically invented freedom of the populace get to the point where no one is free even to make idle chat. Sigh, I guess we're all going that way.
--- Laurie
(I know April Baby was not talking specifically to you about buying to impress, girl. It's obvious to anyone that you buy for looooove, like the rest of us.)
Smith1942 said:Re. when did the overly-PC culture start in the UK? Probably has it roots in the Labour Government after the war. At some point a few years after the NHS was set up, Britain began to welcome large numbers of immigrants looking for better lives. I'm not sure if the population had been so decreased by the war that there was an urgent need for workers, or what - that's just a guess. Anyway, so we became much more diverse and multicultural, which obviously brings a need for greater tolerance and understanding of others from different cultures. And for whatever reason, it snowballed a little too much and we ended up with this very touchy, PC culture. Still, it's better to be over-tolerant than under-tolerant, even if the PC lobby gets a bit much sometimes!
I think much of it was colonial guilt, Smith. May have been a need for workers too -- especially after WWI when half the men were killed -- I do think it was something like 1/3. Conditions after WWII in some colonies & ex-colonies were awful & I've read there was feeling that Britain had a moral responsibility for that population. Didn't take long for the floodgates to open completely. But even when I was spending a week or more every month in the UK for 5 years -- decades & decades after that -- people didn't hesitate to express themselves, sometimes the most awful ways. To people's faces, too.
Good that that stopped, but the pendulum has swung way over the other direction, to where you can't wish someone a nice day, in case they're not having one. It seems like the crackpot fun has gone away; life is more serious & drudgery in attitude. I hate to see the country that practically invented freedom of the populace get to the point where no one is free even to make idle chat. Sigh, I guess we're all going that way.
--- Laurie