When I arrived in London in 1969 at the age of 14 for a three-week summer vacation that turned into 17 years, Great Britain was still struggling to recover from World War II.
One of my favorite things to do was go antiquing on Sunday mornings in Cutler Street, an adjunct to the better known Petticoat Lane street market in London’s East End.
Twenty four years after the war ended, what I saw all around me was devastation caused by the Blitz.
Petticoat Lane was surrounded by charred, bombed out buildings and vacant lots.
Today, this neighborhood is a marvel of urban planning—and very trendy.
Compared to Southern California, Britain back then was a backward country.
Kitchens were the size of bathrooms, bedrooms did not have closets (if you were lucky you might have a large wooden cabinet called a “wardrobe” or maybe a “box room”). Showers did not exist in a country of devoted bathers.
As for food?
Frightful.
This was a country known for Shepard’s pie, bangers & mash, jellied eels and Cornish pasties, high on grit and sinew.
Fast-forward 54 years.
Britain is cutting edge. Walk into Selfridges (a department store) and be awed by content and presentation. Be stunned by design and fashion. And also by the polite and friendly people from Europe, Commonwealth countries, the Middle East and Asia—all happily coexisting, the way we once did in this country.
And the food served in restaurants in amazing!
Today, it is the United States that is backward, left in the dust.
Our cities are crime-ridden, homeless-occupied, potholed cesspools with buildings abandoned by retailers tired of mass plundering—and no law enforcement to stop it. Their natives are nasty. And armed. And dangerous.
Over the past six decades, our corrupt politicians and misguided government officials have presided over the disintegration of our nation into a third-world country.
In fact, the date we pivoted into decline can be traced to precisely 60 years ago today.
You are all currently being warmed up by the media (beehive mentality) to accept the unacceptable: that our own government murdered a sitting president.
And the saddest part about this is that our younger generations won’t even care when, in the very near future, that terrible truth is revealed as fact.
Precisely!
I grew up in the UK in the 60s and 70s and it's true - basically the country stopped developing after the troops came back from World War 2. "Stick your feet up now lads!" and they did. Even in the 70s we played on bomb-sites (waste ground cleared by the luftwaffe). There was one at the bottom of my road.
Industry was still operating unchanged. Even in the 80s factories had machinery dating back 60 or 70 years. This during a time when the US was pouring money into Germany that invested it in high tech manufacturing. Look at the fit & finish of the door panels on a 1980s Rover versus BMW. And the fact that Rover no longer exists.
As for Britain today all the immigration that started in 1997 has changed what you can expect when eating out beyond recognition. The native British just do not want to serve and cook food in restaurants and the generous welfare system means they don't have to! Fortunately the large number of new arrivals do, and that's why the UK is an epicurean delight.
However where the UK falls down is that there is a general level of incompetence. Nobody knows what they are doing, or really cares. Nothing works. It takes five months to get a driving test! You can't get your car serviced. If you do, they won't be able to fix any issues. The trains have been on strike for 2 years and nobody really knows why or bothers to do anything about it.
I wouldn't write off the US just yet. By and large people one interacts with in the course of the day know their jobs and care. In the Florida DMV I was able to get a licence in 20 minutes. To be sure, they are horribly let down by the government.