More nasty news from modern Britain. Here a young man jumps to his death after being urged on by a baying crowd below. Charming.
Warning: you need a strong stomach for this one.
Modern Britain
Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!
Related Posts
15 Comments
Leave A Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Please define “charming.”
I wouldn’t judge Britain too harshly. We are not much better. If you will recall earlier this year, a young man here in the U.S. committed suicide on live streaming video to the Internet and people actually encouraged him to do it. It wasn’t a live braying mob, but not that much better in my eyes.
I mean earlier LAST year. I am still mixed up about it being 2009.
‘charming’ = ironic and sarcastic comment that the incident was anything but nice.I realize America has its awful moments too. It’s just that we sometimes tend to view England as all pretty thatched cottages on the village green, the Queen and all that. Parts of modern Britain is just as grim as inner city USA
Father,While I agree with your piece, I must tell you that I’ve known Mr. Rose for some time and he is traditional burt not a Traditionalist. He is a very normal devout Catholic. Take a look at his other books and you will get a better picture. You might enjoy his most recent, “In Tiers of Glory”. I might suggest that in some small way that Michael’s book Goodbye…. which just coincidentally appeared as the crisis was breaking into the news has been part of the reason that you can now write about the improved and more balanced situation in the church today.ACB Steve
Do US citizens really think England is all ‘Jeeves and Wooster’, because if they do it says more about their education, or lack of than about the UK? Personally I don’t believe they do, any more than they believe Scotland is full of haggii (plural of haggis), Wales full of singing miners or Ireland of leprechauns.However if this is what you believe; i.e. that you are doing the poor ignorant hicks a service by ‘Educating’ them, what does your repeated choice of material say about what you really think of the UK, despite your repeated protestations that you love her so much and Oh what a wonderful land it is. You see Fr Longenecker you say one thing but your articles tell another story, recent quotes include:“More nasty news from modern Britain”“Britain is in a mess”“I lived in England for 25 years and it just got worse and worse.”“Another report on drunken Britain.”“anti-Catholic feeling in secular Britain”“Police State UK” John’s poker faced, lead-foot performances on the floor provided a bright spot of entertainment in a grey and damp land where these days there are precious few light moments.I could go on, you will be aware of the saying ‘With friends like that, who needs enemies.’I would draw your attention to the words of another English cleric Charles Caleb Colton (1780 – 1832) who for two years travelled throughout the United States, he said “When you have nothing to say, say nothing.”
Fair Enough Mark. Why don’t you list ten causes for real optimism about Britain today?
Mark, if Fr Longenecker gets his information about Britain today from the national newspapers he’s bound to get the impression everything is dreadful and getting worse. That said this was an appalling thing to happen and those who abused this young man should be facing criminal charges.
Now there’s a challenge, I have to admit I can’t think of any big national causes for optimism, I find my optimism more locally among the people I actually know as opposed to ones I read about in the press
I think we’re focusing too much on the fact that this happened in UK. To me, this points out the glaring disconnect with the not-too-distant memory of mobs on the ground who would praying and pleading for the person to climb back in the window. We used to, as a whole culture, recognize that life is precious and worth living, even when the days are dark. The importance of the loss of such understanding cannot be overstated.
Without resting on any laurels the British people do not take their inspiration and optimism solely from what is ahead, I think I can say without fear of contradiction we also take our quiet optimism and faith in the future from our foundation and the confidence of who we are, you cannot separate the British from their history or culture, which is as much a part of modern Britain as the white cliffs of Dover. I can’t speak for everyone but here is my list:1. The Roman Catholic Church, (we’re getting a new Archbishop too)2. Our beautiful British Girls. Now you married one and stole her away, I dare you to disagree! Pha, not the stuff of Martyrs after all are we Longnecker!3. Our Children, who even after our imperfect parenting and constant pressure to the contrary from the world turn out to be good, kind and well adjusted people.4. Beauty spots in the north of England and the south west peninsula of Cornwall, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.5. Tea (Oh yes a great cause for optimism) and Irn-Bru6. The Olympics in 2012.7. The Queen (God Bless Her)8. The Proms and the Edinburgh festival9. We have an election next year when we will be rid of the socialist rabble10. We have the USA as Allies and however misguided we try to help the world where we can.11. The overwhelming vast majority of British people who despite difficulties are kind, friendly welcoming and have an innate sense of justice and independence.12. Rugby and cricket, some would say football (soccer) and tennis.13. My Village Pub, Real Ale, darts, crib and pork pies, English Mustard and HP sauce and walkers crisps, baked beans, fish and chips, curry.14. The NHS – medical research, ten of the world’s top 35 medicines were discovered or developed in Britain, which trains around 10,000 doctors and health professionals from overseas every year.15. Our Engineers and scientists from world leading universities and colleges.16. Our history (remember Fisher, More, Clitherow, Campion, Southwell and the rest)17. We’re not French or German. Wallice and Gromit18. Even when we are under attack we still apply the same law to terrorists as our own citizens, (we do not have any Guantanamo’s)19. Greyling, Dawkins, Hitchens et al, it means we are still doing something right if it bothers them so!.20. A grand finale: our sense of humour, we can and frequently do laugh at ourselves, the weather (ok it’s grotty at the moment but at least we get proper seasons), the food – sticky toffee pudding, bangers and mash, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, apple crumble, cream teas etc, the music – John Betjeman, Malcolm Sargent, Edward Elgar, Hubert Parry – the literature – Shakespeare, Chaucer, Evelyn Waugh, CS Lewis, G.K. Chesterton etc, freedom of speech, the battle of Britain, English Cheese.Bonus reason.21. We can still convert the occasional recalcitrant colonial Anglican to the One True Faith in Marys Dowry.So there are 21 reasons (is that an extra mile – Mathew 5:41) that I think are causes for real optimism about Britain today. If I really put my mind to it I’m sure I could find 20 more (but I’m not going too). They might not all be national and I know it’s not all rosy, but my goodness it certainly nowhere near as bad as you paint it here in the wintery damp UK. I’ll leave the last word to that great American Bing Crosby:You’ve got to accentuate the positive Eliminate the negative Latch on to the affirmative Don’t mess with Mister In-Between
Mark. This is a great list of things you love about Britain, and I have compiled a similar list on this blog.But this is not really what I meant by ’causes for optimism’. By ’cause for optimism’ I meant something dynamic and good about Britain today that bodes well for the future.Honestly. I’ve tried really hard, and can’t come up with much. Sorry.
Mark ~That’s really lovely. Really, it is. Such a happy post, full of affection for one’s homeland–a thing that in itself is a positive, especially in a land where the flag of the country is despised by its own people.I can’t say that I’m an ex-Anglophile, exactly, but I used to have a place in my heart for England that’s not there any more. England herself is no more. I don’t say this as a result of reading “bad press”, although the news from there is seldom uplifting, but as a result of having visited several times. (And, contrary to the English view of Americans, most of us are actually educated: we know that England does not consist of charming thatched cottages in a lush green countryside protected by the government for the sake of tourist revenue and nostalgia.)The saddest thing about the post on the poor young man’s suicide is that it doesn’t surprise me. When all a country has left is its membership in the EU, when all they have left to believe in is a utopian socialism in which their own identity is seen as bigotry, the value of an individual person has no meaning. The famous English humor has become almost macabre. I do not say the U.S. is better, unless I add “slightly” in front of that adjective and “for now” after it. I see us tripping happily (stupidly) down that same path. It should be obvious that I’m not speaking of the UK, but of England, that country that used to be, until its existence was perceived as contradictory. This downward spiral began in the 16th century. Now all that’s left is the false monarchy, the false revisionist history written by an enforced protestantism, and a people now desperately anti-American in their attempt at self-justification. When a person–or a country–perverts Truth, perversion itself must ultimately replace it. Hence, the insatiable appetite now for perversion of all sorts, and the ineradicable self-destruction to which that leads.The story of the young man’s suicide is metaphor–in his action, its motive, and in the insane rabble that concluded it.
And in those wanton days of corruption, greed and lust; of murder of the elderly and of the innocent babes; of the sin of Sodom; of blasphemy and desecration of the holy temple; of cursing of the name of God and His Church; lo, in those days God will send His angels of wrath out to the four corners of the earth with the implacable commandment to set fire, plague and famine on all the continents so that the peoples of the earth shall reap the fruit of what they sowed, and lo, in those days God scanning over all the lands will stop over one called England and say to His angels of wrath; to His angels of fire, famine and plague: “Do not touch this place; do not set fire, famine or plague to it, for I have looked upon it and seen that they have loved their baked beans, their HP sauce and mustard and fish and chips; their mash and bangers and crisps. I have seen their nostalgia for thatched cottages and pubs and merry greetings in the sunny mornings, and it has won my mercy. And Canada also, please spare them. Their nation-leading tolerance towards Muslim fanatics with the saintly repression of their own Christian foundations, together with their mono-enforced multi-culturalism assuages the insults made to Me by the unjust. I have seen that they are neither hot nor cold, but have been very subtle, nuanced and diplomatic in being neither hot nor cold; I have seen that they have taken up the burden of being neither hot nor cold with the winning complexity and mild hysteria of the Nanny, and it warms My heart.”
Thank you Paul and Mark and Estiel. All this reparte has put me in the mind of what Walter Bagehot said of the ‘good soldier’: The great soldier of today is not a romantic animal…animated by frantic sentiment…but a quiet, grave man, busied in charts, exact in sums, master of the art of tactics, occupied in trivial detail…like Count Moltke, silent in seven languages. The original topic was a young man’s suicide—about which nothing charming or witty may be said.