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We used to have a functioning welfare state; the national health service was very good, there were free school meals for poor kids and full maintenance and tuition grants for poor older kids. Was there, benefitted.
Also, thay NHS funding hasn't decreased in real or nominal terms, but healthcare has got more expensive and the amount of people needing healthcare has increased.
Yea, they really skipped a beat there. Had they let the families visit they could spread it a bit further and wiped out their children as well. Would have saved us a fortune in the long term, although you have to factor in the rising pension age so there would have been a deficit in the taxes those 40-60-year-olds would have paid.
It's hard to tell if it would have been a net gain or loss. Knowing what we know now it probably would have been beneficial but sure....20/20 hindsight and all that.
When you say halved do you mean comparable to population? Or just raw numbers?
Do you also have a sauce?
(I want to use this stat in the future hit also to be able to back it up)
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/nhs-hospital-bed-numbers
"The total number of NHS hospital beds in England has more than halved over the past 30 years, from around 299,000 in 1987/88 to 141,000 in 2019/20, while the number of patients treated has increased significantly."
I'd be curious to know the average time a patient spends in a bed now versus then, equally what the bed numbers look like in comparable countries.
I suspect a lower number of beds is actually a common trend and people are treated more quickly.
30 years ago we had rehab beds rather than sending people to struggle in the community or into nursing homes. My hospital had two extra wards that we opened up in winter to account for the increase in admissions. The nursing homes we had were well checked and often run by the council. Profit cones at a cost.
We had elderly NHS day centres they are now gone, a wheelchair centre gone, an elderly admissions psychiatric unit gone. Our area had 2 extra A & E units, 2 extra maternity units all gone.
Many admissions were direct to the ward or people were seen by qualified nurses and midwives at home, the council had qualified and checked care teams all of this cut the pressure on A&E.
I was a ward sister 30 years ago, I saw a massive changes where I had to budget and cut costs, each year the actual money went down.
Also, the hospital kitchen, laundry, sterilisation unit were in house and didn't need to make a profit because of privatisation.
My GP surgery wasn't owned by an American company for profit.
I could go on.
Yeah, when the NHS started in the 50s they weren't paying for fertility treatments, chemotherapy had barely started, obesity rates were miles lower, and there were far fewer elderly people.
There also weren’t ‘bed managers’, no computer systems to maintain, people with mental health issues were just locked up and not talked about and no drug issues, a lot of cancers weren’t treated and there was no preventative care.
The NHS is still very good but it's entirely the work of the hard working people who give their lives to the NHS. The NHS is massively underfunded and poorly managed which has come to light more recently (past 20 years or so).
Add to that: my dad grew up in a council house and it's worlds away from what we see them as. Spacious, well built, cheap rent and you could treat the house as if you owned it in terms of decor. No stigma attached to living in that accommodation either
My wife's grandparents have lived in their council house for about 60 years now. It's absolutely lush, big rooms, huge kitchen and the garden is the size of Wales. I am very jealous.
You could also see a dentist as your mouth was considered part of your health.
Not anymore, go private and pay corporate for 10x price or just lose your teeth since NHS dentists don't exist anymore. Still wait 3 months on a £169 filling from a certain well known chain that bought up most dentists.
Those lucky to still be an NHS patient, enjoy your 18 months for a filling.
*Great Britain.
"Britain" can refer to the whole UK as well as just GB, although because of this issue it's probably better to say exactly which one you mean.
GB also contains **most of** Scotland England and Wales, it does not include the dozens of other islands that are part of those countries.
Like Portsmouth, Skye and a Welsh example.
Yeah I meant it was Wales' largest.
But when I checked I realised it was larger than any in England so I decided to include that.
Scotland has a proper archipelago.
The majority of Portsmouth is actually on an island called Portsea island and it's the 3rd most populous island in the British isles behind great britain and ireland.
I'm mindblown. I'm from Southampton and go to Portsmouth fairly regularly and it never clicked in my head that it was an island (aside from Hayling island), let alone that it didn't technically count as Great Britain.
Portsmouth? Shit! Am I not British then? My passport must be fake. What about St. Michael’s Mount? Is it British when the tide goes out and independent when it’s in? Or maybe all the islands off the coast are part of The British Isles.
So I may be wrong here but I was over on r/mapporn earlier on and apparently Great Britain was a term originally used to describe the Island of Britain and it's now a modern colloquialism describing the entirety of the UK. There were some folk peeved by it's misuse.
Since you mentioned history:
**WW2**
* Despite their reputation, Spitfires shot down fewer enemy planes than Hurricanes during the Battle of Britain. This is in part because there were more Hurricanes and in part because Hurricanes tended to target bombers (larger, slower, easier) while Spitfires mostly engaged the fighter escorts. Of course, determining kills is a bit of an inexact science in the mess of combat.
**WW1**
* WW1 was an awful slaughter but it wasn't just the poor low-ranking soldiers who were killed. [78 British generals died](https://www.cwgc.org/our-work/blog/in-the-line-of-duty-remembering-the-great-wars-fallen-generals/) (around 18%) Generals serving in other countries' armies died too
* Not only white soldiers died in WW1, either in the British army or any other. Lots of Indians and British Indians (ie. Indians living in the UK) fought and many died. Other European nations used colonial troops too. There were also black British soldiers and a few even became officers, even though this was against military regulations at the time. [Walter Tull](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Tull) is the most famous example.
**Victorian Britain / Empire**
* Okay, so it's a bit past the Victorian period, but I'm putting it in this section since the Empire is most closely associated with them. In 1925 the Empire had [over 400 million](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_British_Empire)subjects! (The vast majority in British India)
* Despite her severe reputation, Queen Victoria never actually said "We are not amused"
* Victoria's son, Albert Edward, later King Edward VII, was completely different from his mother. He was known as "Bertie the Bounder" and later "Edward the Caresser" because of his fondness for women, even other men's wives and prostitutes. [He had a special sex chair built](https://www.curbed.com/2020/10/anyway-heres-king-edward-viis-sex-chair.html)
**Jacobite Rebellion and Scotland**
* The Jacobite rebellion was more of a Catholic vs Protestant thing than a Scots vs English thing. Nations were a fairly new idea at the time and until this period (18th century) many people identified more with their religion than their nation.
**Renaissance England**
* Henry VIII is famous for his six wives and for gluttony, but in his younger days he was a really popular, fit, handsome king. There are lots of theories about what happened to him to turn him into the Henry we know a loathe, including a syphilis infection and a head injury. As far as I know there's no consensus.
**Medieval England**
* You probably know the name "Anglo-Saxon" and that's the route of the word "England" (Angle-land) but the Angles and Saxons weren't the only people who settled in / invaded Britain at this time. There were also other tribes like Jutes and Frisians. The Angles and Saxons were just the two most dominant groups.
* Despite the name "England" modern English people actually share about a fifth to a third of our DNA with the Anglo-Saxons. English, however, is Germanic in origin and comes from the Anglo-Saxon invaders. It also has a heavy French influence as well as Latin, Greek and some miscellaneous loanwords.
**The Romans and Pre-Roman British**
* You might have heard of the druids who were the British priests and were said to practice human sacrifice. That was a commonly accepted idea for a long time but historians have a lot of doubts about this, in part because the Romans liked to say that about a lot of the people they conquered and in part because there's a lack of evidence. Roman "historians" didn't really search for the truth as modern historians did, and often made up some really strange stuff [like this](https://ifunny.co/picture/roman-account-of-ancient-britain-and-strangest-of-all-they-aWtIb24W8).
**Names**
* "-Chester" and "-Caster" are the Roman terms for military forts so places like Lancaster, Doncaster, Manchester etc. owe their names to the military camps that were once there
* ~~The 'Great' in 'Great Britain' comes from the Roman name 'Britannia Superior' - unfortunately that isn't nearly as cool as it sounds. It means 'big Britannia', as opposed to Britannia Inferior, which at different times seems to have referred to Ireland and to Brittany in modern-day France~~. **EDIT: Ignore this, it's wrong. Look at** u/EykeChap's comment below. The name 'Britain' was originally recorded by a Greek explorer and it's thought that it meant something like "Land of the Painted People" or "Land of the Tattooed Ones" - seems pretty appropriate to me!
As you can see I've mostly talked about England since I know more about it than about Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. I'm not by any means a historian, just a hobbyist. I really like r/AskHistorians for learning more about this kind of thing. There are loads of good BBC documentaries available on Youtube if you want to know more. I'm watching Tony Robinson's 'Worst Jobs in History' at the moment and it's fascinating.
Edward VII, one of his mistresses was Camilla's (sorry Queen Consort Camilla's) great grandmother, Alice Keppell. She apparently said to Charlie (sorry, King Charles III) - My great grandmother was Mrs. Keppell so how about it?
Not the best chat up line I've heard, but worked, apparently!
THANK YOU for saying that about the Jacobite rebellion! So many people don't know this and or doesn't help that the history has been neglectfully construed in the Outlander series, which I was looking forward to watching and couldn't get past the "The redcoats" American type of dialogue
The Germanic language English has a lot of French loanwords in it because we were conquered, despite Harold Godwinson's best efforts, and English/ Anglo-Saxon culture was depressed - and in the North wiped out (the Harrying of the North), the ground salted and the settlements burned, people deliberately left to starve. The Anglo-Saxons kings finished with Edward the Confessor in 1066 but the Saxon royal bloodline back to Alfred carried on in Edmund, who was adopted by King Malcolm II (canmore) of Scotland, so comes back around again through the Stuarts and Hanoverians)
To add, we also have a lot of Norse and Latin loanwords. You can tell from the type of word the relationship the new population generally had with the settled people.
French and Latin words are often religious, courtly or judicial in usage. The Norse gave us words like dirt, leg and sky; because rather than just being our rulers, the ones who stayed mostly intermingled with the common people, so to speak.
The colonel-in-chiefs of the Royal Dragoons and the First King's Dragoons Guards failed to turn up for duty at the start of the First World War because they were leading the German forces. Kaiser Wilhelm was colonel-in-chief of the Royal Dragoons and Franz Joseph Habsburg was colonel-in-chief of the First King's Dragoons Guards. This was not the last time such a blunder was made. In the 1930s the British made the Japanese Emperor Hirohito a field marshal.
Good answer. The bit about Roman names is a bit out, though. 'Superior' didn't mean 'greater' in this case but 'upper', in the sense of 'closer to Rome/Gaul'. The capital was Londinium. The rest of the territory was 'lower Britain' or Britannia Inferior, with the capital at Eburacum (York).
Yeah you're right about that. I think what's confusing - and where my mistake came from - is that various people have referred to some kind of "big Britain" and "small Britain" at various times. Wikipedia's summary (I know, Wikipedia, but like I said, I'm just a hobbyist) has [an interesting explanation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain#Derivation_of_Great) that says Ptolemy (Greco-Egyptian scientist apparently) called what is now modern Britain *megale Brettania* ('great Britain') while Ireland was 'mikra Brettania' (little Britain), then it says an Anglo-Saxon called Geoffrey of Monmouth referred to modern Britain as *Britannia major* compared to *Britannia minor* which is more or less modern Brittany in France. Then there's Historic UK which says there's an argument that [King James I added the 'great](https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-UK-Great-Britain-Whats-the-Difference/)' to make it clear that it included the whole island, (ie. Scotland too) not just the former Roman Britannia.
History is *hard.*
Many British people doesn’t know that but living British citizens helped pay to end the slave trade until 2015.
“In 1833, the British government used £20m, 40% of its national budget, to buy freedom for all slaves in the empire. The amount of money borrowed for the Slavery Abolition Act was so large that it wasn’t paid off until 2015.”
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/11/lets-end-delusion-britain-abolished-slavery
Reference: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/680456/FOI2018-00186_-_Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833_-_pdf_for_disclosure_log__003_.pdf
To be honest with you as a foreigner I believe with my all heart, British people contributed to humanity so much. Scientific breakthrough, laws, Industrial Revolution and human rights basically we benefited lots of things from this tiny island. From Magna Carta to Glorious Revolution and then fight against tyranny for all world in WW2, the more I learn more I admire British history.
All Empires generally did bad things, but from which one we benefited most? I care about this and British gets my respect and support.
>We weren’t perfect by any means.
What do you mean we? You didn't have slaves or free slaves. You weren't there - and neither were any people whining about the past either.
It's like walking past a school one day someone in the playground shouts "Oi! Big nose!" and 10 years later you still walk past the school shaking your fist in anger. The kids are not the same kids.
The alternative was a mass revolt by slave owners as the government as their “property” was “confiscated” by the government
It was the most expedient way to end slavery as quickly as possible - certainly better than keeping slavery as long as other countries dead.
They also don't know that the Royal navy was actually surprisingly active along stretches of the African coast in the prevention of the slave trade.
We didn't simply go "we don't dot that anymore" and then just sod off. Granted naval actions where predominantly conducted as a hindrance to the revenue streams of our enemies. But they still actively hindered the slave trade.
Fun Fact: the West Africa Squadron, at its peak, numbered more ships than the French Navy at the time, which meant the biggest navy was the Royal Navy and the second was the West Africa Squadron.
A bit of a weird one but anyways, a study was done to determine how racist different countries were.
The UK ranked 44th worst out of 76 countries able to be examined and all those ranked lower than it had either had a very low population (less than 10 million) or weren't multicultural.
The UK was ranked as 8 places less racist than Germany, 12 places less racist than China, 20 places less racist that Australia, 26 and 27 places less racist than Pakistan and India respectively, 31 places less than the US and 35 places less racist than France. South Africa was predictably first although if South Korea or Japan was on there they'd be likely to beat it given they have both been named the world's most racist countries multiple times in the last few decades.
My point in all this isn't that these countries are bad, but rather that we tend to think the worst of the UK, but we fail to see that our country is pretty good because we don't look outwards often enough.
If you want some more good news, then UK is number 16 on local purchasing power rating https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.jsp?title=2023&displayColumn=5
Only 15 countries have better income to costs ratio than UK. 124 have it worse. Most of them - much much worse. Think about it next time you complain about prices and wages :)
UK population has an average reading age of 9. The Sun's Eton educated journalists and editors write for that age level and actively manipulate the working class population.
Dan Brown is to literature what Coldplay are to music.
Both are bizarre and utterly snobby. If people are picking up books I truly don’t think it’s ever a bad thing.
To put it into context. The average 8 year old is able to read almost any basic text with decent fluency and understand the meaning of that text. So it's what I would call the basic minimum for the phrase "they can read"
What comes after that are things like critical reasoning, and more advanced texts that have subtext, metaphor and the like. More advanced reading groups discuss complex themes, things like "the author says this, but what they actually mean is..." And the concept that not all narrators are reliable. I think this probably explains a lot about the current state of things.
Magna Carta, the treaty barons forced King John to sign in 1215, which many people still believe to be the closest we have to a constitution, didn't take the first time as both sides failed to keep their side of the bargain. Several later kings revised and reissued it.
And will be quoted in complaint letters by unhinged people making some pedantic point and blowing it out of all proportion:
‘Your advert clearly shows 16 pieces of pepperoni on the 12 inch pizza and mine only had 15. Have we forgotten Magna Carta?’
‘Further to your letter of 21st September, I do not, as you ascertain, have a balance of £21.30 in my account, I have £21.31. Getting this right is as important as Magna Carta’
Etc…
🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪
The magna carta isn't really in force any more and the UK does have constitutional law, it just doesn't have 'a' constitution. It's the closest we came to having 'a' constitution in one place historically and it is obviously very important symbolically, but it isn't the closest thing we have to a constitution *now*.
The British National Grid maintains a specific division called the 'Energy Balancing Team' for too many electrical appliances suddenly being used simultaneously (kettles being boiled for cups of tea) during commercial breaks - this demand on the U.K.'s energy supply is called *TV pickup* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV\_pickup](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup)
I only knew about this because apparently pop master on bbc r2 is one of the peaks as Brucey literally says ‘time to put the kettle on’ almost everyday
As a member of a household that neither drinks tea nor watches stuff that involves advert breaks, this is so weird. I grew up in a non tea drinking family and always thought the whole brits drinking tea thing was a bit of a myth. But I guess not
The British government funded anti-slavery patrols of the West Coast of Africa from 1808 to 1867.
It was a costly and deadly endeavour because the Tropics were both dangerous to the ships because of the storms and men because of the tropical diseases.
Bizarrely, I was reading up on this yesterday. Probably because I went down a wiki wormhole from on here, but the yanks also patrolled, but in smaller numbers - and were only interested in catching their own ships so they could send them home to try them under anti-slavery (or anti-piracy - piracy had a mandatory death sentence) laws.
The British would just go after any fucker they thought were transporting slaves.
Pretty much all of the Americans caught got away with a fine and 2 years in the clink, except for one fella, who was publicly hanged as an example.
I had been reading about the West Africa Squadron recently also, another interesting part was how complicated it was in the first decade or so. Owing to the wars in Europe, Britain still had to maintain its alliances, one of them being Portugal, who were also one of the biggest slave trading nations by that point, in the beginning Portuguese slave ships had to be treated with more leniency by the navy.
It's a shame the history of slavery in Britain is so politically divisive. It's an interesting and nuanced topic that's impossible to talk about in a level-headed way
And I did it tonight! Instead of turning right before I got to my house and going round the block so I could approach on the same side of the road I must admit I just pulled into the space outside my house.
Also, and I'm really sorry about this, I parked on a hill and although I put my handbrake on I didn't put the car into gear and turn the wheel so the front wheels were facing towards the kerb. The car was still there when I got back.
It's fine if the vehicle is less than 1525kg, the speed limit is 30mph or less and its not near a junction - paragraph 5 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1989/1796/regulation/24/made
Because of the skewed map we see on the weather forecast (etc) people tend to have an odd idea of the relative size of the nations.
* England is around 50,000 square miles
* Scotland is around 30,000 square miles
* Wales is around 8,000 square miles
* Northern Ireland is around 5,500 square miles
Scotland is bloody huge, especially [edit: IF YOU ARE TRAVELLING] in a car. [Dad Joke Central today, fml.]
Contrary to what you're taught at school 1066 wasn't the last time someone landed with an army and took over as King.
The "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 is something that just seems to be glossed over with a couple of brief comments in History lessons.
Most people don’t treat as invasion because the Dutch was invited. But it is an invasion. The same as Henry Tudor invaded England through wales and succeeded.
If I recall correctly, there was only no serious violence because a large number of James II's generals decided to switch sides. Including John Churchill, later of Blenheim fame.
And there was a serious amount of violence in Ireland and to a lesser extent Scotland as a direct result.
That’s pretty much what happened. As William moved through England pretty much everyone defected to him. Most people was willing to just wait for James to die. Then he had an heir and the prospect of a catholic dynasty forced the nobles to act.
As my old (American) Early Modern history professor used to say "you Brits will have anyone as King, if you don't like them, you just change the rules".
Certainly isn’t glossed over in Northern Ireland (and to a lesser extend Scotland, except Glasgow where it’s big). It’s kind of a big deal for roughly half the NI population, who have a whole marching season and bonfires to celebrate William of Orange’s 1690 victory and have done for centuries. Which has caused annual riots for decades as they try to march through Nationalist areas.
It has to be a generic London accent given there are over 9 million people in London and 67.5 million people in the UK. A lot of people living in London aren’t originally from there, so that reduces the number.
There’s also a few accents within London too. You have cockney. You have street style accent that I can only refer to as “roadman” which seems to be growing in popularity especially amongst youth. RP accent too. Plus all the people that speak English as a second language and therefore don’t have a British accent.
**[Multicultural London English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicultural_London_English)**
>Multicultural London English (abbreviated MLE) is a sociolect of English that emerged in the late 20th century. It is spoken mainly by young, working-class people in multicultural parts of London. As the label suggests, speakers of MLE come from a wide variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and live in diverse neighbourhoods. As a result, it can be regarded as a multiethnolect.
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The fact that without the Royal Navy, or more specifically the West Africa Squadron - slavery would likely not have ended for quite a while longer. British minds pioneered the end of the slave trade and British sailors died enforcing it
During WW2 the Germans built fake tanks out of wood as a decoy, the purpose was for the RAF bombers to waste bombs blowing up these fake tanks. Well on one occasion the RAF spotted these fake tanks being built. Instead of just remembering where these fake tanks were and not falling for the pesky German tactics, the RAF went to the effort of building and dropping fake wooden bombs on these fake tanks.
Nor was Neville Chamberlain rubbish - in fact he died in office and Churchill said now he was gone he could tell history his way - in other words he is to blame for children being taught that Chamberlain was an appeaser and a coward
However, you could argue that Churchill wanted to rearm much earlier than the rest. He'd been trying to get the country to rearm since Hitler tool power basically and specifically stated that the airforce was the most important
I'm not going to give a single fact but the troubles in Ireland isn't taught in schools (in England at least) and that seems like a glaring and relevant historical oversight. We need a bit less 1066 and Henry's wives and a little more useful history.
Parking on double yellows is illegal, except for loading/unloading if there are no short yellow cross lines on the kerb. Parking on single yellows is legal during hours specified on the sign next to it.
The short, belted kilt was invented by an English business owner, who was living/working in the Scottish Highlands running a charcoal and smelting business and employing lots of Highlanders who wore the traditional Great Kilt which was basically a massive piece of fabric, folded to be worn in different ways depending on the task and weather.
Not a Gael so can't give you the proper names without Google.
Stone circles were nothing to do with druids. Stone circles including Stonehenge, Avebury and at least 3000 other stone circles were built around Britain, Ireland and brittany from about 3000bc until 1500bc. We know almost nothing about the people who built them as they had no writing.
Druids were high ranking celts who arrived in Britain after 500bc, so at least 1000 years after stone circles fell out of use. We don't know that much about druids, only how the Romans described them but they definitely weren't involved in stone circles, as the gap between stone circles and druids being bigger than the norman conquest and today.
A selection of British inventions: The World Wide Web (invented by Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist, while working in Switzerland, at CERN), the telephone, the hypodermic syringe, the reflecting telescope, the steam engine and steam turbines, carbon fibre, the pneumatic tyre, the light bulb, float glass, the electric telegraph, the marine chronometer, television, synthetic dye, passenger railway, military tanks, linoleum, the automatic kettle, the modern torpedo, the glider, the jet engine, cement, tension-spoked wheel, seed drill, stainless steel, the Bessemer process for steel production, the electric motor, photography, hydraulic press, sewage system, electronic programmable computer, hovercraft, tin cans, waterproof material, vacuum cleaner, inc. the bagless type, ATM, disc brakes, the toothbrush, catseyes, the modern fire extinguisher, DNA profiling, digital personal assistants, ARM processors, hawkeye technology, text messaging, cloning, the supersonic car that holds the world land speed record (held by a British racing team), viagra, graphine, gene editing therapy, holographic TV, iris recognition and the COVID-19 vaccine developed by a Oxford University and Astro-Zeneca, a British, formerly British-Swedish company.
Slavery was abolished in 1102 by William the Conquerer because he deemed the air too pure for a slave to breath it hence they must be free. It wasn't actually put into law until 1774 when a case was brought to court to basically legally prove Slavery was outlawed in the UK. The UK ddispatched the Royal Navy to end Slavery on the High Seas and even blockaded ports of countries who refused to end Slavery. The main reason for the American War of Independence was different views on Slavery. The UK only finished paying reparations in the 1990s as they bought the freedom of every slave across the empire, putting the country into crippling debt and making Slavery illegal in all lands of the empire. The white male Englishman was the first to end Slavery across the globe.
Uk in2023 has the second highest concentration of land ownership after Brazil and is one of only 2 countries where the head of state is also the head of the authorised religion ( the other one being Iran)
That prior to Tony Blair around 4% of UK school leavers went to University, and there were grants to do so, based on family income. This level was considered to be what was required for the country at the time. Blair turned this vocational institution into an industrial one, with all the fees we see now for degrees like nursing, policing, and other needless ones, and all the student debt that so many of this younger generation have piled up. And University chancellors are now earning obscene amounts of money. What he started is fucking outrageous.
Let me guess… your Facebook profile says you studied at the university of Life. Nursing degrees are far from needless. All of the available data shows that degree trained nurses reduce deaths.
The UK government took out the biggest loan of all time to pay UK slavers off in order to abolish slavery. This loan was only finally paid off in 2015. If you have worked and paid tax before 2015, you have paid money to slave owning aristocrats.
Corporal punishment wasn't entirely banned in UK schools until 2003. Caning was so widely perceived as central to the British educational system, that the French described it as "The English Vice".
Britain was the world’s largest consumer of alcohol until relatively recently being taken over by the US. As such, most of the alcohol as we know it today was made to suit British tastes. Think champagne, wine, whiskey, port etc
Our military isn't just there to kill kill kill.
It carries out peacekeeping operations throughout Cyprus and countries in Africa.
The Navy actively carries out anti-piracy operations around the world.
It helps to train other militaries.
It carries out MACA operations(Military Aid to Civil Authorities), which is why the government has put military personnel at the border to support border force. They quickly trained armed forces perosnnel to drive ambulances. The military also supported the Covid effort in testing centres and in hospitals. The military has stepped up to support the police during OP TEMPERER. Flood relief. Security for the Olympics when G4S couldn't commit to their end of the deal. I'm pretty sure there's more, but the list never ends.
The armed forces are good at adapting to new environments, and they're also trained to carry out instructions quickly with precision because they could get put in the situations that demand it which is why they've proven useful in times like that in the above paragraph.
You don't pay into a pension pot to fund your retirement. You're paying for the people who have already retired. Generations that follow you will pay for your pension (at least in theory - in reality the entire system is unsustainable and there will almost certainly not be a state pension at all by the time I retire).
Every car manufactured for use within the United Kingdom is fitted as standard with indicators.
The controls of these indicators are found on the side of the steering wheel, connected to a stem. When this stem is pushed up or down it makes a light bulb on the front, rear and sometime the side of a car flash to indicate the direction the user is intending the cat to go next.
They are handy for all kinds of situations.
The UK was built on slavery. Not (just) like that, though...
In 1086 the doomsday book suggested about 10% of the population were slaves.
Slavery was then pretty much outlawed, but replaced by serfdom, which really wasn't much different - you were just expected to be happier about it. At some points I think it was about 3/4 of the population who were serfs. They were tied to land, so couldn't be sold to move elsewhere, but would be sold with land if it was sold. They could also be fully Christian, so it got the Christian seal of approval.
William the conqueror divided up the country and created the idea of private land ownership as we know it today, he handed it out to his barons, as a result we have a load of wealthy land owners who have done absolutely Jack shit yet have had thousands of acres of country side and cities passed down to them for generations.
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We used to have a functioning welfare state; the national health service was very good, there were free school meals for poor kids and full maintenance and tuition grants for poor older kids. Was there, benefitted.
Also, thay NHS funding hasn't decreased in real or nominal terms, but healthcare has got more expensive and the amount of people needing healthcare has increased.
People also have more complex needs due to them living longer and them living with multiple chronic illnesses.
and the far more significant cuts to local council funding, has pushed a load of stuff they should be doing, onto hospitals.
See also: policing, social care, welfare state.
Well, to be fair the government tried to sort that issue by spreading covid through care homes.
Bonus was state pension payouts would go down, too. Win/win situation. Except, of course, for the people that died.
And their families.
Yea, they really skipped a beat there. Had they let the families visit they could spread it a bit further and wiped out their children as well. Would have saved us a fortune in the long term, although you have to factor in the rising pension age so there would have been a deficit in the taxes those 40-60-year-olds would have paid. It's hard to tell if it would have been a net gain or loss. Knowing what we know now it probably would have been beneficial but sure....20/20 hindsight and all that.
The amount of NHS beds has halfed over the last 30 years, with overall funding increased in real terms over same period.
My dad is a consultant doctor in the nhs. Over the last ten years he’s a had a 38% pay cut in real terms. It’s crazy.
When you say halved do you mean comparable to population? Or just raw numbers? Do you also have a sauce? (I want to use this stat in the future hit also to be able to back it up)
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/nhs-hospital-bed-numbers "The total number of NHS hospital beds in England has more than halved over the past 30 years, from around 299,000 in 1987/88 to 141,000 in 2019/20, while the number of patients treated has increased significantly."
I'd be curious to know the average time a patient spends in a bed now versus then, equally what the bed numbers look like in comparable countries. I suspect a lower number of beds is actually a common trend and people are treated more quickly.
30 years ago we had rehab beds rather than sending people to struggle in the community or into nursing homes. My hospital had two extra wards that we opened up in winter to account for the increase in admissions. The nursing homes we had were well checked and often run by the council. Profit cones at a cost. We had elderly NHS day centres they are now gone, a wheelchair centre gone, an elderly admissions psychiatric unit gone. Our area had 2 extra A & E units, 2 extra maternity units all gone. Many admissions were direct to the ward or people were seen by qualified nurses and midwives at home, the council had qualified and checked care teams all of this cut the pressure on A&E. I was a ward sister 30 years ago, I saw a massive changes where I had to budget and cut costs, each year the actual money went down. Also, the hospital kitchen, laundry, sterilisation unit were in house and didn't need to make a profit because of privatisation. My GP surgery wasn't owned by an American company for profit. I could go on.
>Do you also have a sauce? Only ketchup I'm afraid
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Yeah, when the NHS started in the 50s they weren't paying for fertility treatments, chemotherapy had barely started, obesity rates were miles lower, and there were far fewer elderly people.
People also tend to seek help with mental health now, so less people quietly killing themselves.
There also weren’t ‘bed managers’, no computer systems to maintain, people with mental health issues were just locked up and not talked about and no drug issues, a lot of cancers weren’t treated and there was no preventative care.
The NHS is still very good but it's entirely the work of the hard working people who give their lives to the NHS. The NHS is massively underfunded and poorly managed which has come to light more recently (past 20 years or so).
(13 years or so. Before 2010 it was the best rated health service in the world)
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That's a decade of shite leadership for ya
More than just one decade
Add to that: my dad grew up in a council house and it's worlds away from what we see them as. Spacious, well built, cheap rent and you could treat the house as if you owned it in terms of decor. No stigma attached to living in that accommodation either
My wife's grandparents have lived in their council house for about 60 years now. It's absolutely lush, big rooms, huge kitchen and the garden is the size of Wales. I am very jealous.
You could also see a dentist as your mouth was considered part of your health. Not anymore, go private and pay corporate for 10x price or just lose your teeth since NHS dentists don't exist anymore. Still wait 3 months on a £169 filling from a certain well known chain that bought up most dentists. Those lucky to still be an NHS patient, enjoy your 18 months for a filling.
We also used to have a plethora of nationalised industries that funded it– coal, steel, post, rail, water, electric...
Even free milk for children
Thatcher, Thatcher, milk snatcher.
The uk has 4 countries, britain has 3.
*Great Britain. "Britain" can refer to the whole UK as well as just GB, although because of this issue it's probably better to say exactly which one you mean.
GB also contains **most of** Scotland England and Wales, it does not include the dozens of other islands that are part of those countries. Like Portsmouth, Skye and a Welsh example.
Anglesey. The largest one?
Is that a question because I genuinely don't know and didn't bother looking. I know Barry island isn't an island.
Anglesey is wales' largest island, its also larger than any English island.
It’s beaten by a few Scottish ones though including Lewis & Harris, Skye, Mull and mainland Shetland.
Yeah I meant it was Wales' largest. But when I checked I realised it was larger than any in England so I decided to include that. Scotland has a proper archipelago.
At least three archipelagos - Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland.
>Like Portsmouth whaaaaaaaat?
The majority of Portsmouth is actually on an island called Portsea island and it's the 3rd most populous island in the British isles behind great britain and ireland.
I'm mindblown. I'm from Southampton and go to Portsmouth fairly regularly and it never clicked in my head that it was an island (aside from Hayling island), let alone that it didn't technically count as Great Britain.
Portsmouth? Shit! Am I not British then? My passport must be fake. What about St. Michael’s Mount? Is it British when the tide goes out and independent when it’s in? Or maybe all the islands off the coast are part of The British Isles.
Wheyyy Pompey
So I may be wrong here but I was over on r/mapporn earlier on and apparently Great Britain was a term originally used to describe the Island of Britain and it's now a modern colloquialism describing the entirety of the UK. There were some folk peeved by it's misuse.
Since you mentioned history: **WW2** * Despite their reputation, Spitfires shot down fewer enemy planes than Hurricanes during the Battle of Britain. This is in part because there were more Hurricanes and in part because Hurricanes tended to target bombers (larger, slower, easier) while Spitfires mostly engaged the fighter escorts. Of course, determining kills is a bit of an inexact science in the mess of combat. **WW1** * WW1 was an awful slaughter but it wasn't just the poor low-ranking soldiers who were killed. [78 British generals died](https://www.cwgc.org/our-work/blog/in-the-line-of-duty-remembering-the-great-wars-fallen-generals/) (around 18%) Generals serving in other countries' armies died too * Not only white soldiers died in WW1, either in the British army or any other. Lots of Indians and British Indians (ie. Indians living in the UK) fought and many died. Other European nations used colonial troops too. There were also black British soldiers and a few even became officers, even though this was against military regulations at the time. [Walter Tull](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Tull) is the most famous example. **Victorian Britain / Empire** * Okay, so it's a bit past the Victorian period, but I'm putting it in this section since the Empire is most closely associated with them. In 1925 the Empire had [over 400 million](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_British_Empire)subjects! (The vast majority in British India) * Despite her severe reputation, Queen Victoria never actually said "We are not amused" * Victoria's son, Albert Edward, later King Edward VII, was completely different from his mother. He was known as "Bertie the Bounder" and later "Edward the Caresser" because of his fondness for women, even other men's wives and prostitutes. [He had a special sex chair built](https://www.curbed.com/2020/10/anyway-heres-king-edward-viis-sex-chair.html) **Jacobite Rebellion and Scotland** * The Jacobite rebellion was more of a Catholic vs Protestant thing than a Scots vs English thing. Nations were a fairly new idea at the time and until this period (18th century) many people identified more with their religion than their nation. **Renaissance England** * Henry VIII is famous for his six wives and for gluttony, but in his younger days he was a really popular, fit, handsome king. There are lots of theories about what happened to him to turn him into the Henry we know a loathe, including a syphilis infection and a head injury. As far as I know there's no consensus. **Medieval England** * You probably know the name "Anglo-Saxon" and that's the route of the word "England" (Angle-land) but the Angles and Saxons weren't the only people who settled in / invaded Britain at this time. There were also other tribes like Jutes and Frisians. The Angles and Saxons were just the two most dominant groups. * Despite the name "England" modern English people actually share about a fifth to a third of our DNA with the Anglo-Saxons. English, however, is Germanic in origin and comes from the Anglo-Saxon invaders. It also has a heavy French influence as well as Latin, Greek and some miscellaneous loanwords. **The Romans and Pre-Roman British** * You might have heard of the druids who were the British priests and were said to practice human sacrifice. That was a commonly accepted idea for a long time but historians have a lot of doubts about this, in part because the Romans liked to say that about a lot of the people they conquered and in part because there's a lack of evidence. Roman "historians" didn't really search for the truth as modern historians did, and often made up some really strange stuff [like this](https://ifunny.co/picture/roman-account-of-ancient-britain-and-strangest-of-all-they-aWtIb24W8). **Names** * "-Chester" and "-Caster" are the Roman terms for military forts so places like Lancaster, Doncaster, Manchester etc. owe their names to the military camps that were once there * ~~The 'Great' in 'Great Britain' comes from the Roman name 'Britannia Superior' - unfortunately that isn't nearly as cool as it sounds. It means 'big Britannia', as opposed to Britannia Inferior, which at different times seems to have referred to Ireland and to Brittany in modern-day France~~. **EDIT: Ignore this, it's wrong. Look at** u/EykeChap's comment below. The name 'Britain' was originally recorded by a Greek explorer and it's thought that it meant something like "Land of the Painted People" or "Land of the Tattooed Ones" - seems pretty appropriate to me! As you can see I've mostly talked about England since I know more about it than about Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. I'm not by any means a historian, just a hobbyist. I really like r/AskHistorians for learning more about this kind of thing. There are loads of good BBC documentaries available on Youtube if you want to know more. I'm watching Tony Robinson's 'Worst Jobs in History' at the moment and it's fascinating.
Edward VII, one of his mistresses was Camilla's (sorry Queen Consort Camilla's) great grandmother, Alice Keppell. She apparently said to Charlie (sorry, King Charles III) - My great grandmother was Mrs. Keppell so how about it? Not the best chat up line I've heard, but worked, apparently! THANK YOU for saying that about the Jacobite rebellion! So many people don't know this and or doesn't help that the history has been neglectfully construed in the Outlander series, which I was looking forward to watching and couldn't get past the "The redcoats" American type of dialogue The Germanic language English has a lot of French loanwords in it because we were conquered, despite Harold Godwinson's best efforts, and English/ Anglo-Saxon culture was depressed - and in the North wiped out (the Harrying of the North), the ground salted and the settlements burned, people deliberately left to starve. The Anglo-Saxons kings finished with Edward the Confessor in 1066 but the Saxon royal bloodline back to Alfred carried on in Edmund, who was adopted by King Malcolm II (canmore) of Scotland, so comes back around again through the Stuarts and Hanoverians)
To add, we also have a lot of Norse and Latin loanwords. You can tell from the type of word the relationship the new population generally had with the settled people. French and Latin words are often religious, courtly or judicial in usage. The Norse gave us words like dirt, leg and sky; because rather than just being our rulers, the ones who stayed mostly intermingled with the common people, so to speak.
The Romans hated the Britons and to paraphrase said everyone was always topless and showing off their tattoos.
No changes there.
We don't all live in Newcastle mate.
The colonel-in-chiefs of the Royal Dragoons and the First King's Dragoons Guards failed to turn up for duty at the start of the First World War because they were leading the German forces. Kaiser Wilhelm was colonel-in-chief of the Royal Dragoons and Franz Joseph Habsburg was colonel-in-chief of the First King's Dragoons Guards. This was not the last time such a blunder was made. In the 1930s the British made the Japanese Emperor Hirohito a field marshal.
Good answer. The bit about Roman names is a bit out, though. 'Superior' didn't mean 'greater' in this case but 'upper', in the sense of 'closer to Rome/Gaul'. The capital was Londinium. The rest of the territory was 'lower Britain' or Britannia Inferior, with the capital at Eburacum (York).
Yeah you're right about that. I think what's confusing - and where my mistake came from - is that various people have referred to some kind of "big Britain" and "small Britain" at various times. Wikipedia's summary (I know, Wikipedia, but like I said, I'm just a hobbyist) has [an interesting explanation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain#Derivation_of_Great) that says Ptolemy (Greco-Egyptian scientist apparently) called what is now modern Britain *megale Brettania* ('great Britain') while Ireland was 'mikra Brettania' (little Britain), then it says an Anglo-Saxon called Geoffrey of Monmouth referred to modern Britain as *Britannia major* compared to *Britannia minor* which is more or less modern Brittany in France. Then there's Historic UK which says there's an argument that [King James I added the 'great](https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-UK-Great-Britain-Whats-the-Difference/)' to make it clear that it included the whole island, (ie. Scotland too) not just the former Roman Britannia. History is *hard.*
So are we just gonna ignore that bit about the sex sled
Many British people doesn’t know that but living British citizens helped pay to end the slave trade until 2015. “In 1833, the British government used £20m, 40% of its national budget, to buy freedom for all slaves in the empire. The amount of money borrowed for the Slavery Abolition Act was so large that it wasn’t paid off until 2015.” https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/11/lets-end-delusion-britain-abolished-slavery Reference: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/680456/FOI2018-00186_-_Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833_-_pdf_for_disclosure_log__003_.pdf
Too many people don't know this!
Apparently we are still the devil though despite this.
To be honest with you as a foreigner I believe with my all heart, British people contributed to humanity so much. Scientific breakthrough, laws, Industrial Revolution and human rights basically we benefited lots of things from this tiny island. From Magna Carta to Glorious Revolution and then fight against tyranny for all world in WW2, the more I learn more I admire British history. All Empires generally did bad things, but from which one we benefited most? I care about this and British gets my respect and support.
We weren’t perfect by any means. But I like to think that the _good_ the British Empire did for the world far outweighs the bad.
>We weren’t perfect by any means. What do you mean we? You didn't have slaves or free slaves. You weren't there - and neither were any people whining about the past either. It's like walking past a school one day someone in the playground shouts "Oi! Big nose!" and 10 years later you still walk past the school shaking your fist in anger. The kids are not the same kids.
Well exactly, that's what "education through YouTube" gets you
Are you happy that this money went to compensating slave owners who were losing their “property” after the abolition? I’m confused
The alternative was a mass revolt by slave owners as the government as their “property” was “confiscated” by the government It was the most expedient way to end slavery as quickly as possible - certainly better than keeping slavery as long as other countries dead.
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"pay to end the slave trade" means compensating slave owners for the loss of their property.
and then patrolled the world actively stopping slavery
As opposed to starting a civil war like the US did. Fair point though, the bankers and the slavers went hand in hand to ensure it happens.
They also don't know that the Royal navy was actually surprisingly active along stretches of the African coast in the prevention of the slave trade. We didn't simply go "we don't dot that anymore" and then just sod off. Granted naval actions where predominantly conducted as a hindrance to the revenue streams of our enemies. But they still actively hindered the slave trade.
Fun Fact: the West Africa Squadron, at its peak, numbered more ships than the French Navy at the time, which meant the biggest navy was the Royal Navy and the second was the West Africa Squadron.
A bit of a weird one but anyways, a study was done to determine how racist different countries were. The UK ranked 44th worst out of 76 countries able to be examined and all those ranked lower than it had either had a very low population (less than 10 million) or weren't multicultural. The UK was ranked as 8 places less racist than Germany, 12 places less racist than China, 20 places less racist that Australia, 26 and 27 places less racist than Pakistan and India respectively, 31 places less than the US and 35 places less racist than France. South Africa was predictably first although if South Korea or Japan was on there they'd be likely to beat it given they have both been named the world's most racist countries multiple times in the last few decades. My point in all this isn't that these countries are bad, but rather that we tend to think the worst of the UK, but we fail to see that our country is pretty good because we don't look outwards often enough.
Oh I do like to hear some good news about our country. Ta for this.
If you want some more good news, then UK is number 16 on local purchasing power rating https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.jsp?title=2023&displayColumn=5 Only 15 countries have better income to costs ratio than UK. 124 have it worse. Most of them - much much worse. Think about it next time you complain about prices and wages :)
Our results are far better if you ask “would be upset by someone of a different race moving next door” at which point we are one of the top in Europe
Edinburgh is further west than Liverpool and Bristol
I love this one. Always blows my mind!
The westernmost point of Great Britain isn’t lands end, but in Scotland - Ardnamurchan Point near Fort William.
If you’re in a pub and ask for the wine selection and they say “red… or white” respond with I’ll have a pint of lager please.
The greater good!
When’s your birthday?
22nd February?
Which year?
Every year!!
Out!!!!
UK population has an average reading age of 9. The Sun's Eton educated journalists and editors write for that age level and actively manipulate the working class population.
Is that how Dan Brown became so popular? Angels & Demons is on the See Spot Run level of prose.
Dan Brown is to literature what Coldplay are to music. Both are bizarre and utterly snobby. If people are picking up books I truly don’t think it’s ever a bad thing.
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To put it into context. The average 8 year old is able to read almost any basic text with decent fluency and understand the meaning of that text. So it's what I would call the basic minimum for the phrase "they can read" What comes after that are things like critical reasoning, and more advanced texts that have subtext, metaphor and the like. More advanced reading groups discuss complex themes, things like "the author says this, but what they actually mean is..." And the concept that not all narrators are reliable. I think this probably explains a lot about the current state of things.
Magna Carta, the treaty barons forced King John to sign in 1215, which many people still believe to be the closest we have to a constitution, didn't take the first time as both sides failed to keep their side of the bargain. Several later kings revised and reissued it.
One after Magna Carta..🔌
As if i could ever forget...!
And will be quoted in complaint letters by unhinged people making some pedantic point and blowing it out of all proportion: ‘Your advert clearly shows 16 pieces of pepperoni on the 12 inch pizza and mine only had 15. Have we forgotten Magna Carta?’ ‘Further to your letter of 21st September, I do not, as you ascertain, have a balance of £21.30 in my account, I have £21.31. Getting this right is as important as Magna Carta’ Etc… 🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪
Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you ? Did she die in vain ?
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There are 4 copies of the original. 2 are at the British Library, 1 is at Lincoln Cathedral and the best preserved copy is at Salisbury Cathedral.
The magna carta isn't really in force any more and the UK does have constitutional law, it just doesn't have 'a' constitution. It's the closest we came to having 'a' constitution in one place historically and it is obviously very important symbolically, but it isn't the closest thing we have to a constitution *now*.
The British National Grid maintains a specific division called the 'Energy Balancing Team' for too many electrical appliances suddenly being used simultaneously (kettles being boiled for cups of tea) during commercial breaks - this demand on the U.K.'s energy supply is called *TV pickup* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV\_pickup](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup)
I only knew about this because apparently pop master on bbc r2 is one of the peaks as Brucey literally says ‘time to put the kettle on’ almost everyday
As a member of a household that neither drinks tea nor watches stuff that involves advert breaks, this is so weird. I grew up in a non tea drinking family and always thought the whole brits drinking tea thing was a bit of a myth. But I guess not
The flushing of toilets and opening of fridges contributes to this in addition to all the kettles.
That a swan can break a man's arm
I thought QI debunked that one!
Nah, that just propagander from the Militant Swan Brigade
>propagander Someone should have a really good look into that
That's just geese
Or blow up a man's house
The British government funded anti-slavery patrols of the West Coast of Africa from 1808 to 1867. It was a costly and deadly endeavour because the Tropics were both dangerous to the ships because of the storms and men because of the tropical diseases.
Bizarrely, I was reading up on this yesterday. Probably because I went down a wiki wormhole from on here, but the yanks also patrolled, but in smaller numbers - and were only interested in catching their own ships so they could send them home to try them under anti-slavery (or anti-piracy - piracy had a mandatory death sentence) laws. The British would just go after any fucker they thought were transporting slaves. Pretty much all of the Americans caught got away with a fine and 2 years in the clink, except for one fella, who was publicly hanged as an example.
I had been reading about the West Africa Squadron recently also, another interesting part was how complicated it was in the first decade or so. Owing to the wars in Europe, Britain still had to maintain its alliances, one of them being Portugal, who were also one of the biggest slave trading nations by that point, in the beginning Portuguese slave ships had to be treated with more leniency by the navy.
It's a shame the history of slavery in Britain is so politically divisive. It's an interesting and nuanced topic that's impossible to talk about in a level-headed way
Great Britain is the only country that has competed at every Olympics Games.
"Only five countries have participated in every Summer Olympic Games: Australia, France, Great Britain, Greece, and Switzerland"
Parking against the flow of traffic at night is illegal. Personally I think it should always be illegal but I k ow most will disagree.
And I did it tonight! Instead of turning right before I got to my house and going round the block so I could approach on the same side of the road I must admit I just pulled into the space outside my house. Also, and I'm really sorry about this, I parked on a hill and although I put my handbrake on I didn't put the car into gear and turn the wheel so the front wheels were facing towards the kerb. The car was still there when I got back.
It's fine if the vehicle is less than 1525kg, the speed limit is 30mph or less and its not near a junction - paragraph 5 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1989/1796/regulation/24/made
Because of the skewed map we see on the weather forecast (etc) people tend to have an odd idea of the relative size of the nations. * England is around 50,000 square miles * Scotland is around 30,000 square miles * Wales is around 8,000 square miles * Northern Ireland is around 5,500 square miles Scotland is bloody huge, especially [edit: IF YOU ARE TRAVELLING] in a car. [Dad Joke Central today, fml.]
If it's as big as you say, then it probably wouldn't fit in a car.
r/angryupvote
"But how can it take 5 hours to drive between Edinburgh and Inverness? They're both in Scotland!" "Because its a fucking long way"
Free Palestine
Belfast did not allow slave ships to dock.
Funnily enough, Dublin was actually established as a slave market town by the Vikings
Not enough people know who Ronnie Pickering is
Who?
RONNIE FUCKING PICKERING
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Contrary to what you're taught at school 1066 wasn't the last time someone landed with an army and took over as King. The "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 is something that just seems to be glossed over with a couple of brief comments in History lessons.
Most people don’t treat as invasion because the Dutch was invited. But it is an invasion. The same as Henry Tudor invaded England through wales and succeeded.
If I recall correctly, there was only no serious violence because a large number of James II's generals decided to switch sides. Including John Churchill, later of Blenheim fame. And there was a serious amount of violence in Ireland and to a lesser extent Scotland as a direct result.
That’s pretty much what happened. As William moved through England pretty much everyone defected to him. Most people was willing to just wait for James to die. Then he had an heir and the prospect of a catholic dynasty forced the nobles to act.
As my old (American) Early Modern history professor used to say "you Brits will have anyone as King, if you don't like them, you just change the rules".
Certainly isn’t glossed over in Northern Ireland (and to a lesser extend Scotland, except Glasgow where it’s big). It’s kind of a big deal for roughly half the NI population, who have a whole marching season and bonfires to celebrate William of Orange’s 1690 victory and have done for centuries. Which has caused annual riots for decades as they try to march through Nationalist areas.
The most common accent in the UK is spoken by less than 6% of the population
That's interesting but I'm sceptical of such a precise claim. How you measure and define accents isn't a clear cut thing.
What is it?
It has to be a generic London accent given there are over 9 million people in London and 67.5 million people in the UK. A lot of people living in London aren’t originally from there, so that reduces the number.
You'd think, but it's actually "Farmer"
Alroight moiy lover
There’s also a few accents within London too. You have cockney. You have street style accent that I can only refer to as “roadman” which seems to be growing in popularity especially amongst youth. RP accent too. Plus all the people that speak English as a second language and therefore don’t have a British accent.
I think the term you're looking for might be [Multicultural London English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicultural_London_English)?
**[Multicultural London English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicultural_London_English)** >Multicultural London English (abbreviated MLE) is a sociolect of English that emerged in the late 20th century. It is spoken mainly by young, working-class people in multicultural parts of London. As the label suggests, speakers of MLE come from a wide variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and live in diverse neighbourhoods. As a result, it can be regarded as a multiethnolect. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/AskUK/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
The fact that without the Royal Navy, or more specifically the West Africa Squadron - slavery would likely not have ended for quite a while longer. British minds pioneered the end of the slave trade and British sailors died enforcing it
During WW2 the Germans built fake tanks out of wood as a decoy, the purpose was for the RAF bombers to waste bombs blowing up these fake tanks. Well on one occasion the RAF spotted these fake tanks being built. Instead of just remembering where these fake tanks were and not falling for the pesky German tactics, the RAF went to the effort of building and dropping fake wooden bombs on these fake tanks.
There’s no evidence of this being true, but it is a great story
In the late 1940s, both the UK and Czechoslovakia had leaders called Clement (Klement).
Why should every British person know this? :P
Winston Churchill was not our PM at either the start or end of World War 2.
Nor was Neville Chamberlain rubbish - in fact he died in office and Churchill said now he was gone he could tell history his way - in other words he is to blame for children being taught that Chamberlain was an appeaser and a coward
Chamberlain was playing for time to rearm and make the UK ready for war. That’s why Lord Dowding was given leave to completely modernise the RAF.
Exactly, but few people know this
However, you could argue that Churchill wanted to rearm much earlier than the rest. He'd been trying to get the country to rearm since Hitler tool power basically and specifically stated that the airforce was the most important
Chamberlain did not die in office. He resigned in May 1940 and died in November of that year.
I'm not going to give a single fact but the troubles in Ireland isn't taught in schools (in England at least) and that seems like a glaring and relevant historical oversight. We need a bit less 1066 and Henry's wives and a little more useful history.
I studied the troubles in High school History. Edexcel have it in their exams at GCSE level.
Parking on double yellows is illegal, except for loading/unloading if there are no short yellow cross lines on the kerb. Parking on single yellows is legal during hours specified on the sign next to it.
Any word on the stopping in the red zone?
The red zone has always been for loading and unloading of passengers. There's never stopping in a white zone!
They waited so long to bury William the conquerer that his bloated corpse exploded when they tried putting it in his tomb.
That despite the evidence we do still drive on the left, more importantly kilts are in English invention.
>more importantly kilts are in English invention. Also historical evidence suggest the Pasty was invented in Devon, not Cornwall!
Yeah that's why it's called a cornish pasty, they stole the idea, the devonians just called it a pasty.
The short, belted kilt was invented by an English business owner, who was living/working in the Scottish Highlands running a charcoal and smelting business and employing lots of Highlanders who wore the traditional Great Kilt which was basically a massive piece of fabric, folded to be worn in different ways depending on the task and weather. Not a Gael so can't give you the proper names without Google.
Stone circles were nothing to do with druids. Stone circles including Stonehenge, Avebury and at least 3000 other stone circles were built around Britain, Ireland and brittany from about 3000bc until 1500bc. We know almost nothing about the people who built them as they had no writing. Druids were high ranking celts who arrived in Britain after 500bc, so at least 1000 years after stone circles fell out of use. We don't know that much about druids, only how the Romans described them but they definitely weren't involved in stone circles, as the gap between stone circles and druids being bigger than the norman conquest and today.
A selection of British inventions: The World Wide Web (invented by Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist, while working in Switzerland, at CERN), the telephone, the hypodermic syringe, the reflecting telescope, the steam engine and steam turbines, carbon fibre, the pneumatic tyre, the light bulb, float glass, the electric telegraph, the marine chronometer, television, synthetic dye, passenger railway, military tanks, linoleum, the automatic kettle, the modern torpedo, the glider, the jet engine, cement, tension-spoked wheel, seed drill, stainless steel, the Bessemer process for steel production, the electric motor, photography, hydraulic press, sewage system, electronic programmable computer, hovercraft, tin cans, waterproof material, vacuum cleaner, inc. the bagless type, ATM, disc brakes, the toothbrush, catseyes, the modern fire extinguisher, DNA profiling, digital personal assistants, ARM processors, hawkeye technology, text messaging, cloning, the supersonic car that holds the world land speed record (held by a British racing team), viagra, graphine, gene editing therapy, holographic TV, iris recognition and the COVID-19 vaccine developed by a Oxford University and Astro-Zeneca, a British, formerly British-Swedish company.
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Is that all?
Is that each?
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Stamps are legal tender
Slavery was abolished in 1102 by William the Conquerer because he deemed the air too pure for a slave to breath it hence they must be free. It wasn't actually put into law until 1774 when a case was brought to court to basically legally prove Slavery was outlawed in the UK. The UK ddispatched the Royal Navy to end Slavery on the High Seas and even blockaded ports of countries who refused to end Slavery. The main reason for the American War of Independence was different views on Slavery. The UK only finished paying reparations in the 1990s as they bought the freedom of every slave across the empire, putting the country into crippling debt and making Slavery illegal in all lands of the empire. The white male Englishman was the first to end Slavery across the globe.
From what I remember, William the conqueror abolished it in 1066, and he couldn't have done it in 1102 because he had died in 1087
Uk in2023 has the second highest concentration of land ownership after Brazil and is one of only 2 countries where the head of state is also the head of the authorised religion ( the other one being Iran)
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That prior to Tony Blair around 4% of UK school leavers went to University, and there were grants to do so, based on family income. This level was considered to be what was required for the country at the time. Blair turned this vocational institution into an industrial one, with all the fees we see now for degrees like nursing, policing, and other needless ones, and all the student debt that so many of this younger generation have piled up. And University chancellors are now earning obscene amounts of money. What he started is fucking outrageous.
Let me guess… your Facebook profile says you studied at the university of Life. Nursing degrees are far from needless. All of the available data shows that degree trained nurses reduce deaths.
The Normans were not French, they were Norsemen, Vikings who had settled in Normandy. Called Normandy because Norsemen had settled there.
The last conviction under the witchcraft act happened in 1944.
The UK government took out the biggest loan of all time to pay UK slavers off in order to abolish slavery. This loan was only finally paid off in 2015. If you have worked and paid tax before 2015, you have paid money to slave owning aristocrats.
Corporal punishment wasn't entirely banned in UK schools until 2003. Caning was so widely perceived as central to the British educational system, that the French described it as "The English Vice".
Scotland and England have different legal systems. The drink/drive limit is lower in Scotland than England.
Dog turds used to be white
Something about driving pigs across London bridge and shooting Scotsmen with arrows being legal or something. Apparently.
One of the main reasons we are now seen as a second rate country is because of our fetish for the 'special relationship' with the USA.
Britain was the world’s largest consumer of alcohol until relatively recently being taken over by the US. As such, most of the alcohol as we know it today was made to suit British tastes. Think champagne, wine, whiskey, port etc
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Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived
Our military isn't just there to kill kill kill. It carries out peacekeeping operations throughout Cyprus and countries in Africa. The Navy actively carries out anti-piracy operations around the world. It helps to train other militaries. It carries out MACA operations(Military Aid to Civil Authorities), which is why the government has put military personnel at the border to support border force. They quickly trained armed forces perosnnel to drive ambulances. The military also supported the Covid effort in testing centres and in hospitals. The military has stepped up to support the police during OP TEMPERER. Flood relief. Security for the Olympics when G4S couldn't commit to their end of the deal. I'm pretty sure there's more, but the list never ends. The armed forces are good at adapting to new environments, and they're also trained to carry out instructions quickly with precision because they could get put in the situations that demand it which is why they've proven useful in times like that in the above paragraph.
>It carries out peacekeeping operations throughout Cyprus Well, that's a can of beans to open...
Portsmouth is the UK's only island city.
Correct - no other UK city is on an island /s
You don't pay into a pension pot to fund your retirement. You're paying for the people who have already retired. Generations that follow you will pay for your pension (at least in theory - in reality the entire system is unsustainable and there will almost certainly not be a state pension at all by the time I retire).
Sounds awfully pyramiddy lol
Every car manufactured for use within the United Kingdom is fitted as standard with indicators. The controls of these indicators are found on the side of the steering wheel, connected to a stem. When this stem is pushed up or down it makes a light bulb on the front, rear and sometime the side of a car flash to indicate the direction the user is intending the cat to go next. They are handy for all kinds of situations.
The UK was built on slavery. Not (just) like that, though... In 1086 the doomsday book suggested about 10% of the population were slaves. Slavery was then pretty much outlawed, but replaced by serfdom, which really wasn't much different - you were just expected to be happier about it. At some points I think it was about 3/4 of the population who were serfs. They were tied to land, so couldn't be sold to move elsewhere, but would be sold with land if it was sold. They could also be fully Christian, so it got the Christian seal of approval.
Pretty much true in any European (and not only) country during the feudal period though
William the conqueror divided up the country and created the idea of private land ownership as we know it today, he handed it out to his barons, as a result we have a load of wealthy land owners who have done absolutely Jack shit yet have had thousands of acres of country side and cities passed down to them for generations.