Looking back to 2021...

[patman post]

Yesterday, today was tomorrow.
But tomorrow's yesterday may not be the today we are currently experiencing. And after that, historians may well in the future try to put everything in context and re-interpret events with the benefit of hindsight. Will those of us who are then still around be able to recognise today...?

[johnofgwent]

I doubt any historian will want to "look back to 2021"

All that still have jobs in the future will be too busy looking back to 2020

[Barry]

Sometimes it isn't too clever not to read a post in full before criticising — from #3...

Throughout the late sixties and seventies, the UK was sometimes condemned as the "sick man of Europe" because of industrial strife and economic performance compared with other European countries.
That tag is now being applied and argued again...

Erm, looking back to 2021. So it's your obtuseness hanging out again. 

[patman post]

Sometimes it isn't too clever not to read a post in full before criticising — from #3...

Throughout the late sixties and seventies, the UK was sometimes condemned as the "sick man of Europe" because of industrial strife and economic performance compared with other European countries.
That tag is now being applied and argued again...

[Barry]

Pretty much all the US wanted it could dig up, or grow, or fish for itself — as it proved over the next two centuries.

For Britain, much of its wealth came from parts of the Empire administered by adventurers and privateers like the East India Company and the (now changed) Hudson Bay Company — a bit like outsourcing to G4 and Serco — and no doubt funding the Navy.

Empire Day was instigated in 1902 and remained until the late fifties, despite the First World War probably initiating the real loss of Empire. The clever trick was re-badging it British Commonwealth Day, though politically the possessive "British" was dropped in the mid-sixties.

I wasn't born until 1981, so I never lived through the previous post war years. But I formed the impression in reading and talking to others, that Britain in the late forties and fifties was a battered and grey place, still experiencing rationing, rebuilding outdated industries with old technologies and a dissatisfied workforce.

Throughout the late sixties and seventies, the UK was sometimes condemned as the "sick man of Europe" because of industrial strife and economic performance compared with other European countries.
That tag is now being applied and argued again...

https://www.ft.com/content/5a629584-610a-11e9-a27a-fdd51850994c
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-Britain-on-track-to-be-the-sick-man-of-Europe
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8355683/Is-Britain-REALLY-sick-man-Europe.html
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/28/why-the-uk-is-the-sick-man-of-europe-again
https://www.economist.com/buttonwoods-notebook/2017/07/19/britain-back-to-being-the-sick-man-of-europe
https://atlanticsentinel.com/2020/08/britain-is-once-again-the-sick-man-of-europe/
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/economy/2017/10/how-brexit-has-made-britain-new-sick-man-europe

Sometimes it isn't too clever to Google and just post all the results without reading them.
That Daily Mail report and others are about Covid-19, not about the economy. Or are you just being your obtuse self?

[Borchester]

Have you a source for that number please because I don't recognise it.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregistrationsummarytables/2019

In 2019, there were 530,841 deaths registered in England and Wales, a decrease of 2.0% compared with 2018 (541,589 deaths).

Ahha, it looks as though you caught me there. The UK population is 66.65 millions and I thought that since the average age of death is about 80 and 66,650,000 divided by 80 is about 830,000, then that should be about right. Hence my figure of 800,000.

But if there are about 560,000 deaths per year in the U ( I added 30,000 for the Scots and Northern Irish) then the average age of death is about 118!

So get out in the sunshine and fresh air Pappy, you have another 46 years to go !

[papasmurf]

(b) Every year more than 800,000 Brits go to sleep and don't wake up again.

Have you a source for that number please because I don't recognise it.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregistrationsummarytables/2019

In 2019, there were 530,841 deaths registered in England and Wales, a decrease of 2.0% compared with 2018 (541,589 deaths).

[patman post]

Almost, but not quite, "don't let the swing door hit you on the way out"...

[Borchester]

I wasn't born until 1981, so I never lived through the previous post war years. But I formed the impression in reading and talking to others, that Britain in the late forties and fifties was a battered and grey place, still experiencing rationing, rebuilding outdated industries with old technologies and a dissatisfied workforce.

Which fails to explain why, if the UK was such a shit hole, why half the world was leaving its own bright, sunny homelands in order to live and work here.

We spent most of the forties, fifties and sixties either on strike or threatening to do so because we could. The work force screwed the management because there was a labour shortage. And the reason there was a labour shortage was because the country was in the middle of a boom. And the reason that we look upon that as a grey period is because the British are miserable bastards whose national dress out to be sackcloth and ashes.

[patman post]

Pretty much all the US wanted it could dig up, or grow, or fish for itself — as it proved over the next two centuries.

For Britain, much of its wealth came from parts of the Empire administered by adventurers and privateers like the East India Company and the (now changed) Hudson Bay Company — a bit like outsourcing to G4 and Serco — and no doubt funding the Navy.

Empire Day was instigated in 1902 and remained until the late fifties, despite the First World War probably initiating the real loss of Empire. The clever trick was re-badging it British Commonwealth Day, though politically the possessive "British" was dropped in the mid-sixties.

I wasn't born until 1981, so I never lived through the previous post war years. But I formed the impression in reading and talking to others, that Britain in the late forties and fifties was a battered and grey place, still experiencing rationing, rebuilding outdated industries with old technologies and a dissatisfied workforce.

Throughout the late sixties and seventies, the UK was sometimes condemned as the "sick man of Europe" because of industrial strife and economic performance compared with other European countries.
That tag is now being applied and argued again...

https://www.ft.com/content/5a629584-610a-11e9-a27a-fdd51850994c
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-Britain-on-track-to-be-the-sick-man-of-Europe
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8355683/Is-Britain-REALLY-sick-man-Europe.html
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/28/why-the-uk-is-the-sick-man-of-europe-again
https://www.economist.com/buttonwoods-notebook/2017/07/19/britain-back-to-being-the-sick-man-of-europe
https://atlanticsentinel.com/2020/08/britain-is-once-again-the-sick-man-of-europe/
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/economy/2017/10/how-brexit-has-made-britain-new-sick-man-europe

[Streetwalker]

They will probably say what were the UK thinking leaving the worlds biggest trading bloc and going it alone without a deal .What were they thinking attempting to hold together a union of disparate political entities when many of its people didn't support leaving in the first place .
Why did they take the reckless leap into the unknown in the hope of a brighter , more prosperous future free from outside interference ?

Pretty much what they said in fact about the United States of America in 1776 .

[Borchester]

When future historians and commentators look back at the UK as it entered a new era outside the EU while still in the throes of Covid, and having had Liam Fox rejected as WTO leader, how will they introduce their narrative?

It depends on how far into the future.

After WWII most every historian entered into a long diatride about the decline of empire and the collapse of the UK economy. Later on great thinkers such as myself have noted that

(a) Britain had been trying to dump the empire in one form or another since the end of the Indian Mutiny

(b) After WWII the UK entered into a boom that lasted for nearly three decades.

Similarly with this EU/Covid keffufle. Historians will ascribe future upsets to the severing of trade links with the EU and the horrors of Covid. Later on it will be accepted that

(a) the economies of most everywhere have been going down the Swanee for the last couple of years and will probably take another two years to bounce back, regardless of whatever trade organisations they belong to

(b) Every year more than 800,000 Brits go to sleep and don't wake up again. Only around 2.5% of those deaths can be blamed on the Peking Pox. Future observers will think what the F@@@? Deppity killed more than that in his rush to the bar when they finally reopened the pubs. 

[patman post]

When future historians and commentators look back at the UK as it entered a new era outside the EU while still in the throes of Covid, and having had Liam Fox rejected as WTO leader, how will they introduce their narrative?

At the risk of being accused of backward looking, I like the Dickens opening: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

Seems appropriate for today too...