Every nation suffers from a fatal character flaw. France has struggled to shake off its relish for insurrection ever since the Revolution. Germany’s industriousness has always been tarnished by a certain dogmatism (as reflected in its reluctance to break ties with the Kremlin). Italy is plagued by a parochial insularity. America – the land of dental veneers, neoclassical architecture and deranged conspiracy theories – is tortured by an aversion to hard distinctions between the real and the fake. And then there is Russia: the country responsible for the world’s greatest literature, but also the world’s highest rate of alcoholism, has become trapped in the treacle of its own romantic nihilism.
Britain, meanwhile, suffers from a fundamental lack of seriousness. The late journalist AA Gill argued that what distinguishes us is a “simmering, unfocused, lurking anger”. In fact, we are cursed by a callow, shambolic sloth. George Orwell was on the money when he described the English as an essentially “gentle” but “sleep-walking” civilisation plagued by utter “thoughtlessness”. Britain is, after all, the country that invented not just the steam engine and the spinning jenny but also fake politeness and pretty much every sport in existence. Our tendency to seek escapism in triviality borders on a national sickness.
This British lack of seriousness has been on stark display of late. Take the paroxysms of elite nausea unleashed by the Prime Minister’s proposals for pupils to continue studying maths until the age 18. True, Rishi Sunak brought some of the mockery on himself, by allowing it to be understood that this plan was somehow his solution to all of our national woes. Still, the remorseless waves of cynicism that crashed down on this perfectly sensible policy are an insight into Britain’s flippant prejudices against STEM subjects.
Commentators like The Guardian’s Sir Simon Jenkins declared that “a cult of maths” is brainwashing schools, arguing that the idea that the nation’s future might rest on “a universal teenage mastery of complex and abstract concepts” was absurd. It wasn’t just pundits, either. Millions seem to be in a state of total ignorance about the skills that are required in the modern world.
There was a time when the British could indeed make a virtue of their horror at abstract thinking, refashioning it into a preference for all things “practical”. During the Industrial Revolution, this country showed that it then had a peculiar genius for adapting technologies and breakthroughs that had originated elsewhere for actual use. However, there will be no getting away from the need for abstract skills this time around. Maths, being the secret recipe to coding, is central to preparing this country for the fourth industrial revolution. Our increasingly ‘intangible economy’ requires less of the routine production skills associated with the factory floor and more of the theoretical problem-solving skills (dubbed ‘symbolic analysis’ by the American professor Robert Reich) which have always underpinned trades like plumbing but are crucial to the likes of software engineering and robotics.
Not that anyone seems all that bothered, though. Indeed, Britain today seems to suffer from an alarming ignorance – not simply of the future of the global economy, but also our national strengths and weaknesses. Culturally, we still like to imagine that we are a country of incremental tinkerers – and yet, as our woeful productivity suggests, our SMEs have become poor at seizing on new practical innovations. Meanwhile, we ignore, or even disdain, areas where we are truly world leaders – from quantum physics to genomic healthcare.
Certainly, we make almost zero effort to capitalise on them. Basic science funding remains woeful. Without a pip of protest, and despite the vast success of Dame Kate Bingham’s vaccine taskforce, the Government has dismantled the entire vaccine manufacturing infrastructure built during Covid. Such jaw-dropping idiocies are only possible in a country that has no idea of what it is truly capable, mainly because it has never seen any cause to give it a second thought.
Similarly, nobody appears to have given any serious consideration to how to capitalise on Brexit. It is incredible that the Government still does not have a concrete strategy for regulatory divergence, so that it might be used to bolster areas in which we are strong. Gene editing and data rules would be a good place to start, and yet the Tories continue to push their performative “Brexit Freedoms Bill”, with its hubristic aim of scrapping EU regulations merely for the sake of scrapping them. Leaving the EU was meant to be an act of conscious national renewal. Instead, it has descended into a shallow exercise in headline generation that is only proving the Remainers’ point.
Then there is the country’s wilful refusal to get to grips with our most immediate crises. Take the NHS. Even as it stands on the brink of collapse, the public’s reverence for the health service is as profound as it is superficial. With the rise of celebrity culture, we have anthropomorphised it into a “national treasure” that can do no wrong. Due to a fatal intersection of Leftist activism, corporate branding and rising secularism, the NHS has become a religion, intimidating and slick in equal measure.
That’s why there will be no serious attempt to reform it – even if Labour is now making some sensible noises. An Ireland-style system, where the health service exists as a safety net for the poor, with the better-off either going private or making contributions to their treatments, should surely be on the cards. But if we do end up at that point, we will have stumbled there in an ad-hoc, chaotic manner, with the middle class simply abandoning the system out of despair. Knee-jerk collective “loyalty” to the NHS brand – with its soothing logo the same Pantone Blue as Pepsi – dies hard.
We’re not being serious about the strikes, either. It is extraordinary that amid all the brouhaha over the salary entitlements of nurses, teachers and train drivers, hardly anyone has questioned whether they should be allowed to strike at all. The police and the Army have no such legal right, for the obvious reason that in no properly functioning country is it ever justified to allow criminals to run amok or national security to be jeopardised. And yet it apparently doesn’t occur to us that those who care for the sick, educate our children and run the transport infrastructure that underpins our economy should forgo the right to strike as a condition of their employment as well.
It betrays the mindset of a country that isn’t particularly dedicated to keeping itself going, let alone improving itself. This is a truly great nation of endless potential. We need to start acting like it.
For: The British, the country, the people, everyone, no-one and every other reference that seems to apply to everyone generally in this article.
Read: ‘The government’ ‘the establishment’ and the ‘ruling class’
It’s not a ‘British people’ problem that’s being described here.
Although the author who is part of the establishment (given they’re a telegraph journalist) would like you to think it’s a problem with your neighbour or that brash chap you saw in the supermarket the other day.
The problems being described here are with the government, the ruling class, and the establishment.
Because in Britain, they are the groups who control and decide every single thing.
So, rather than pontificating and confirming the prejudices of the readers who are or like to imagine, they are in your club.
How’s about you and yours do something about it?
Because in Britain now and for at least the last thousand years, you lot are the only ones who can, and you have been fucking it up for over a century now…
Sure do wish these tories would stop blaming everyone else for their failures
>Every nation suffers from a fatal character flaw.
Yeah and in Britain it’s voting tory.
Well yeah, but the problem is The Telegraph thinks a *serious* country is one that has no compunction about putting children to work down the bismuth mines so some tax-dodging, billionaire mining magnate can buy season tickets for the opera that they’ll never use.
>It is extraordinary that amid all the brouhaha over the salary entitlements of nurses, teachers (…) hardly anyone has questioned whether they should be allowed to strike at all
I’m sure this will end well. It is actually precisely this kind of idiocy which is dooming this country; not the reverse. British workers are finally getting sick of this ideology, and not before time. They understand that it will only deliver them poverty and hunger.
Catering to every whim of readers if the Daily Mail, Daily Express, and Daily Telegraph to form a gerentocracy led by the Conservative Party is driving things to ruin.
The sooner we realise that they’re enough Colin’s to make the rest of us miserable and improve or education, the better of we’ll all be.
Spoken like a true neurotic Brit, or one of the ruling class looking to increase profit/power.
Our actual problem is we don’t take the right things seriously. Like, corruption in the City of London for instance. No. It’s always the plebs who have to improve, never the ruling class.
As long as England relies on a class system that facilitates promotion of mostly unproven and untested elites to positions of leadership and influence it will continue to falter. Those folks are simply too privileged to be held properly accountable for their failures. That there hasn’t even been inquiry into something like Brexit clearly demonstrates that doesn’t it? How treasonous, corrupt or morally bankrupt must people be before they are held to account?
(edit to add – I dont think there is a limit because not enough normal people have enough influence to affect any changes)
“… a callow, shambolic sloth.” That hit the nail on the head. It’s also a précis of Boris Johnson’s CV.
Astute observation for publication that gave up behaving like a serious newspaper
A serious country doesn’t impose economic sanctions upon itself.
>Then there is the country’s wilful refusal to get to grips with our most immediate crises. Take the NHS. Even as it stands on the brink of collapse, the public’s reverence for the health service is as profound as it is superficial. With the rise of celebrity culture, we have anthropomorphised it into a “national treasure” that can do no wrong. Due to a fatal intersection of Leftist activism, corporate branding and rising secularism, the NHS has become a religion, intimidating and slick in equal measure.
The author blames the nation’s reverence of the NHS as a result of rising secularism and uses this to support their theory the country isn’t serious enough? I’d argue the abandonment of superstition and embrace of institutions which promote humanitarian outcomes is a sign of national maturity, but I’m sure there’s a lot of telegraph readers who would disagree. Also interesting how they use ‘leftist activism’ as an insult without arguing against any specific leftist ideas/theories or even considering the fact that leftist activists have had very little influence over national government for at least a decade or more
14 comments
Every nation suffers from a fatal character flaw. France has struggled to shake off its relish for insurrection ever since the Revolution. Germany’s industriousness has always been tarnished by a certain dogmatism (as reflected in its reluctance to break ties with the Kremlin). Italy is plagued by a parochial insularity. America – the land of dental veneers, neoclassical architecture and deranged conspiracy theories – is tortured by an aversion to hard distinctions between the real and the fake. And then there is Russia: the country responsible for the world’s greatest literature, but also the world’s highest rate of alcoholism, has become trapped in the treacle of its own romantic nihilism.
Britain, meanwhile, suffers from a fundamental lack of seriousness. The late journalist AA Gill argued that what distinguishes us is a “simmering, unfocused, lurking anger”. In fact, we are cursed by a callow, shambolic sloth. George Orwell was on the money when he described the English as an essentially “gentle” but “sleep-walking” civilisation plagued by utter “thoughtlessness”. Britain is, after all, the country that invented not just the steam engine and the spinning jenny but also fake politeness and pretty much every sport in existence. Our tendency to seek escapism in triviality borders on a national sickness.
This British lack of seriousness has been on stark display of late. Take the paroxysms of elite nausea unleashed by the Prime Minister’s proposals for pupils to continue studying maths until the age 18. True, Rishi Sunak brought some of the mockery on himself, by allowing it to be understood that this plan was somehow his solution to all of our national woes. Still, the remorseless waves of cynicism that crashed down on this perfectly sensible policy are an insight into Britain’s flippant prejudices against STEM subjects.
Commentators like The Guardian’s Sir Simon Jenkins declared that “a cult of maths” is brainwashing schools, arguing that the idea that the nation’s future might rest on “a universal teenage mastery of complex and abstract concepts” was absurd. It wasn’t just pundits, either. Millions seem to be in a state of total ignorance about the skills that are required in the modern world.
There was a time when the British could indeed make a virtue of their horror at abstract thinking, refashioning it into a preference for all things “practical”. During the Industrial Revolution, this country showed that it then had a peculiar genius for adapting technologies and breakthroughs that had originated elsewhere for actual use. However, there will be no getting away from the need for abstract skills this time around. Maths, being the secret recipe to coding, is central to preparing this country for the fourth industrial revolution. Our increasingly ‘intangible economy’ requires less of the routine production skills associated with the factory floor and more of the theoretical problem-solving skills (dubbed ‘symbolic analysis’ by the American professor Robert Reich) which have always underpinned trades like plumbing but are crucial to the likes of software engineering and robotics.
Not that anyone seems all that bothered, though. Indeed, Britain today seems to suffer from an alarming ignorance – not simply of the future of the global economy, but also our national strengths and weaknesses. Culturally, we still like to imagine that we are a country of incremental tinkerers – and yet, as our woeful productivity suggests, our SMEs have become poor at seizing on new practical innovations. Meanwhile, we ignore, or even disdain, areas where we are truly world leaders – from quantum physics to genomic healthcare.
Certainly, we make almost zero effort to capitalise on them. Basic science funding remains woeful. Without a pip of protest, and despite the vast success of Dame Kate Bingham’s vaccine taskforce, the Government has dismantled the entire vaccine manufacturing infrastructure built during Covid. Such jaw-dropping idiocies are only possible in a country that has no idea of what it is truly capable, mainly because it has never seen any cause to give it a second thought.
Similarly, nobody appears to have given any serious consideration to how to capitalise on Brexit. It is incredible that the Government still does not have a concrete strategy for regulatory divergence, so that it might be used to bolster areas in which we are strong. Gene editing and data rules would be a good place to start, and yet the Tories continue to push their performative “Brexit Freedoms Bill”, with its hubristic aim of scrapping EU regulations merely for the sake of scrapping them. Leaving the EU was meant to be an act of conscious national renewal. Instead, it has descended into a shallow exercise in headline generation that is only proving the Remainers’ point.
Then there is the country’s wilful refusal to get to grips with our most immediate crises. Take the NHS. Even as it stands on the brink of collapse, the public’s reverence for the health service is as profound as it is superficial. With the rise of celebrity culture, we have anthropomorphised it into a “national treasure” that can do no wrong. Due to a fatal intersection of Leftist activism, corporate branding and rising secularism, the NHS has become a religion, intimidating and slick in equal measure.
That’s why there will be no serious attempt to reform it – even if Labour is now making some sensible noises. An Ireland-style system, where the health service exists as a safety net for the poor, with the better-off either going private or making contributions to their treatments, should surely be on the cards. But if we do end up at that point, we will have stumbled there in an ad-hoc, chaotic manner, with the middle class simply abandoning the system out of despair. Knee-jerk collective “loyalty” to the NHS brand – with its soothing logo the same Pantone Blue as Pepsi – dies hard.
We’re not being serious about the strikes, either. It is extraordinary that amid all the brouhaha over the salary entitlements of nurses, teachers and train drivers, hardly anyone has questioned whether they should be allowed to strike at all. The police and the Army have no such legal right, for the obvious reason that in no properly functioning country is it ever justified to allow criminals to run amok or national security to be jeopardised. And yet it apparently doesn’t occur to us that those who care for the sick, educate our children and run the transport infrastructure that underpins our economy should forgo the right to strike as a condition of their employment as well.
It betrays the mindset of a country that isn’t particularly dedicated to keeping itself going, let alone improving itself. This is a truly great nation of endless potential. We need to start acting like it.
For: The British, the country, the people, everyone, no-one and every other reference that seems to apply to everyone generally in this article.
Read: ‘The government’ ‘the establishment’ and the ‘ruling class’
It’s not a ‘British people’ problem that’s being described here.
Although the author who is part of the establishment (given they’re a telegraph journalist) would like you to think it’s a problem with your neighbour or that brash chap you saw in the supermarket the other day.
The problems being described here are with the government, the ruling class, and the establishment.
Because in Britain, they are the groups who control and decide every single thing.
So, rather than pontificating and confirming the prejudices of the readers who are or like to imagine, they are in your club.
How’s about you and yours do something about it?
Because in Britain now and for at least the last thousand years, you lot are the only ones who can, and you have been fucking it up for over a century now…
Sure do wish these tories would stop blaming everyone else for their failures
>Every nation suffers from a fatal character flaw.
Yeah and in Britain it’s voting tory.
Well yeah, but the problem is The Telegraph thinks a *serious* country is one that has no compunction about putting children to work down the bismuth mines so some tax-dodging, billionaire mining magnate can buy season tickets for the opera that they’ll never use.
>It is extraordinary that amid all the brouhaha over the salary entitlements of nurses, teachers (…) hardly anyone has questioned whether they should be allowed to strike at all
Oh, yes. Let’s take professions which people are already leaving at record rates – and which young people in this country are refusing to train into because they are well aware that you are almost guaranteed to [live](https://www.nursingtimes.net/news/workforce/rcn-president-elect-warns-nurses-are-in-poverty-15-12-2022/) a [miserable life](https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/low-income-nurses-forced-queue-27171976) of [poverty](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/oecd-study-uk-teachers-britain-youngest-pay-salaries-countries-a9099216.html) – and then take away the only power they have as workers, which is the right to withdraw their labour.
I’m sure this will end well. It is actually precisely this kind of idiocy which is dooming this country; not the reverse. British workers are finally getting sick of this ideology, and not before time. They understand that it will only deliver them poverty and hunger.
I expect little better from the Telegraph, given [who owns it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_and_Frederick_Barclay).
Rich coming from the Torygraph who have pushed every disastrous policy and Tory of the last 12 years.
It seems to me the problem is that we’ve turned the country over to [Collin](https://youtu.be/8_zYbPLnYwQ) from [Portsmouth](https://mobile.twitter.com/Exploding_Heads/status/1383693830512209923).
Catering to every whim of readers if the Daily Mail, Daily Express, and Daily Telegraph to form a gerentocracy led by the Conservative Party is driving things to ruin.
The sooner we realise that they’re enough Colin’s to make the rest of us miserable and improve or education, the better of we’ll all be.
Spoken like a true neurotic Brit, or one of the ruling class looking to increase profit/power.
Our actual problem is we don’t take the right things seriously. Like, corruption in the City of London for instance. No. It’s always the plebs who have to improve, never the ruling class.
As long as England relies on a class system that facilitates promotion of mostly unproven and untested elites to positions of leadership and influence it will continue to falter. Those folks are simply too privileged to be held properly accountable for their failures. That there hasn’t even been inquiry into something like Brexit clearly demonstrates that doesn’t it? How treasonous, corrupt or morally bankrupt must people be before they are held to account?
(edit to add – I dont think there is a limit because not enough normal people have enough influence to affect any changes)
“… a callow, shambolic sloth.” That hit the nail on the head. It’s also a précis of Boris Johnson’s CV.
Astute observation for publication that gave up behaving like a serious newspaper
A serious country doesn’t impose economic sanctions upon itself.
>Then there is the country’s wilful refusal to get to grips with our most immediate crises. Take the NHS. Even as it stands on the brink of collapse, the public’s reverence for the health service is as profound as it is superficial. With the rise of celebrity culture, we have anthropomorphised it into a “national treasure” that can do no wrong. Due to a fatal intersection of Leftist activism, corporate branding and rising secularism, the NHS has become a religion, intimidating and slick in equal measure.
The author blames the nation’s reverence of the NHS as a result of rising secularism and uses this to support their theory the country isn’t serious enough? I’d argue the abandonment of superstition and embrace of institutions which promote humanitarian outcomes is a sign of national maturity, but I’m sure there’s a lot of telegraph readers who would disagree. Also interesting how they use ‘leftist activism’ as an insult without arguing against any specific leftist ideas/theories or even considering the fact that leftist activists have had very little influence over national government for at least a decade or more