Addendum- A Pompous and Self Absorbed Posting on my Thoughts about Britain!

Right, I’m on a roll now- after writing the longest posting so far (well it felt like it anyway), I’m now onto the next posting, inspired in fact by my grandfather who thought it would be a good idea to post my thoughts on returning to the UK. This isn’t such a bad idea but comes dangerously close to the self indulgent philosophising that many bloggers seem to come out with. Who cares- I’m doing it anyway!

It’s difficult to work out how many of these observations are actually changes in Britain which have occurred in my absence and how many are due to my viewing the place through fresh eyes. Some are good, some are not. This of course lends itself to the clichéd journalistic structure of a list of good and bad points. It’s getting late and I’ve written loads so a bit of tired cliché is what we’ll go with.

Good Points

Friendly Londoners. As mentioned before, people are actually friendly if you make the effort. Londoners have the reputation of being aloof but in fact this is undeserved. On the occasions I took the trouble to say hello to people or to initiate conversation, people were very keen to talk.

Stuff Works. After time spent in Tanzania and Egypt, it is simply impossible to understate the sheer joy of having things work. We have enjoyed a month without power cuts and I still cannot get used to drinking water directly from a tap- a true luxury!

People can Drive. Driving is actually a lot easier when things are predictable. In the UK you can count on most people driving pretty sensibly most of the time. The few occasions someone has done something odd, I’ve been more than prepared. Being cut up is far less traumatic than having a mango cart appear around a blind corner on the wrong side of a road.

Bad Points

Constant Henpecking. Walking around London, I noticed a great number of signs. Almost all of these were telling me in one way or another, what I could or, more often, could not do. This was reinforced by the road signs across the UK, but especially in Scotland advising me to “Drive Slowly”, “Drive with Consideration”, “Don’t Drink and Drive” or “Keep Space between Vehicles”. Not to understate the importance of all of these, but surely I deserve to be treated as an adult. It strikes me that society here has become increasingly proscriptive and people are increasingly being treated like children. There may be a lot wrong with Tanzania but at least with regard to daily life you are allowed to hang yourself with as much rope as you like.

Childish Attitudes to Grown up Matters. The infantilisation of the country seems to have worked to some extent. In looking at the public response to recession, people seem to have abdicated all responsibility for their role in all this. The bankers and politicians have taken it in the neck- not undeservedly. However, the main reason for the state the country is in is that too many people frivolously borrowed amounts they couldn’t afford to buy stuff they didn’t need. The fact that the public is now bemoaning banks for making borrowing harder shows that people really haven’t truly understood the reasons for this recession and would prefer to scapegoat others instead- not a terribly adult approach. Another case of childishness is the sheer double standard I’ve seen in terms of morality. On one hand, the public has reacted with visceral disgust to MPs expense excesses. A recent survey, however, shows that 66% of the same self righteous public thinks that illegal downloading (ie stealing from musicians) is morally acceptable. Download if you like but surely this makes the sanctimonious outcry we saw more than a little hypocritical.

Vanishing Shops. Walking through the Wolverhampton town centre, I became aware of the sheer number of empty shop spaces. I have kept up to date with the closures of various companies in the past year, but only when walking through a shopping centre do you see the cumulative impact. Woolworths is gone, as is Our Price, Zavvi, Barratts and a host of other places. This is perhaps the most visible impact of recession- hopefully coming back in a few years will reveal a whole new set of shops replacing those lost this time round.

As I said at the start of this short posting, these are simply the things I have noticed on this particular visit. Of course there are other changes which have also happened over the past five years. Some of these, such as the obsession with reality TV programmes are things I’ve noticed before and have bored people senseless about in the past. Others have simply not impressed upon me. The only explanation for this is that sometimes the things people living here focus on are not the same as the things noticed by the outsider. I guess these being the personal impressions of someone returning from abroad, you could say that what I’ve missed is as important as what I’ve noticed.

Anyway, for what they are worth, those are my thoughts- I kept them brief so I guess that’s me done for this trip to the UK- more postings from Africa next month.