Lonely Britain!

[Patrick]

Community life in Britain has weakened substantially over the past 30 years, according to research commissioned by the BBC.

Analysis of census data reveals how neighbourhoods in every part of the UK have become more socially fragmented.

I wonder if it's down to the ability of people to be able to move around more easily than ever before - and then take their values with them? Also, as each property boom pushed more and more people out of their home area, so they had to start again somewhere else. Lot's of folk just don't get invovled as they used to.

How many of your neighbours do you know?

[everso]

Dec 1, 2008 17:36:34 GMT Patrick said:

Community life in Britain has weakened substantially over the past 30 years, according to research commissioned by the BBC.

Analysis of census data reveals how neighbourhoods in every part of the UK have become more socially fragmented.

I wonder if it's down to the ability of people to be able to move around more easily than ever before - and then take their values with them? Also, as each property boom pushed more and more people out of their home area, so they had to start again somewhere else. Lot's of folk just don't get invovled as they used to.

How many of your neighbours do you know?

I know several quite well, but most of them on just a nodding and "hi there" acquaintance.

Mr. E. knows everyone because he's always in the front garden pottering about. I on the other hand am usually found crouched over my computer or on the phone. ;D

[Alpha Hooligan]

I know my immediate neigbours either side of me and a few over the road...but that's about it really.

That's possibly because I live on a long straight road though, I've lived in a cul de sac and flats, both locations found me getting to know a lot more of said neighbours, due to proximity I suppose.


AH

[Patrick]

Just nodding terms with neighbours on both sides. One gave me a lift over to where Best Beloved works, once. Apart from that we always stop and chat with a couple at the bottom of the road who were more welcoming than our neighbours.

My Mum is the one though - Boy can she talk - and usually ends up getting on like a house on fire with most of hers. They've picked up some long term friends from people she's met on holiday too. The biggest danger is Mum herself, little things people do puts her right off those who were previously her latest favourite. We have bets on at the moment how long it will be before they move house - as she's no longer talking to neighbours who just a short while ago they'd have dinner with regularly! and other local friends are beginning to annoy. It seems, so it's only a matter of time.

[riotgrrl]

I once had a short but very passionate affair with one of my neighbour's brothers.

I had to move after that. That was a cul-de-sac, and every time the brother came to visit me they all knew about it and timed him in and out (it felt.)

In one house the neighbour below asked me on a date then stood me up. And then he seemed to move out.

I know most of my current neighbours; have been in their house the odd time, but only once for a drink with next door neighbour. We just have nothing in common really. Although when my children were younger they helped her out with an art installation.

It's best not to get too involved in your neighbour's lives; your neighbours are all mad.

[trubble]

I'm in friendly Ireland so I intimately know not only my neighbours but your neighbours' cousin, your neighbour's cousin's old headmaster, the headmaster's tax returns and the accountant who filed them once looked after my granny's dog for a week...this is of course just an example.

There are new places in Ireland, though, that are heading the same way as lonely Britain. My sister's apartment block is in an old village and there are two groups in the village, the old guard and the apartment types. The original residents fit into the above group but in my sister's block they have trouble recalling each others' names and are all shafting each other on a daily basis - management fees not paid so the company went bust, stealing each others satellite TV and not a care about keeping each other awake during parties etc - it is sad to see and makes the difference between a nice home and a nice apartment.

[riotgrrl]

Dec 2, 2008 15:14:31 GMT trubble said:

I'm in friendly Ireland so I intimately know not only my neighbours but your neighbours' cousin, your neighbour's cousin's old headmaster, the headmaster's tax returns and the accountant who filed them once looked after my granny's dog for a week...this is of course just an example.

There are new places in Ireland, though, that are heading the same way as lonely Britain. My sister's apartment block is in an old village and there are two groups in the village, the old guard and the apartment types. The original residents fit into the above group but in my sister's block they have trouble recalling each others' names and are all shafting each other on a daily basis - management fees not paid so the company went bust, stealing each others satellite TV and not a care about keeping each other awake during parties etc - it is sad to see and makes the difference between a nice home and a nice apartment.

Ah

'friendly Ireland'

I believe I posted some photos of friendly Ireland on this thread:

mortalorchard.proboards102.com/index.cgi?board=guests&action=display&thread=3428&page=2

The neighbours there all seemed to know exactly who everyone is. And in particular, what religion they were. Which is why they built a bloody great fence to keep them apart!!!!

[trubble]

There are two completely different countries on the same island: Northern Ireland and Ireland. You went to the former.

[motorist]

Yeah, the Republic of Ireland is fluffy. Even way out here on the icebergs they know that

[riotgrrl]

Dec 2, 2008 19:42:51 GMT trubble said:

There are two completely different countries on the same island: Northern Ireland and Ireland. You went to the former.

Your attempt to conceal a controversial political opinion beneath a veneer of geography does not fool me Trubble!

[trubble]

I suppose it is controversial. I apologise for my bias.

I think that a separate government, constitution, anthem, flag, president, financial currency and system and global recognition has affected my usual objective views.

[trubble]

Dec 2, 2008 21:29:39 GMT motorist said:

Yeah, the Republic of Ireland is fluffy. Even way out here on the icebergs they know that

Fluffy might be pushing it but British people who have settled in Ireland remark upon the community spirit and say it's like England used to be.

[everso]

Dec 2, 2008 23:50:28 GMT trubble said:

Dec 2, 2008 21:29:39 GMT motorist said:

Yeah, the Republic of Ireland is fluffy. Even way out here on the icebergs they know that

Fluffy might be pushing it but British people who have settled in Ireland remark upon the community spirit and say it's like England used to be.

On the two visits to Ireland that Mr. E. and I have made (Dublin and Cork - with surround areas) I have to say the people seemed very friendly and nice. In Kinsale we stayed at a super hotel and the girl on the front desk was very helpful. When we asked if we could park our luggage - having arrived too early we were unable to gain access to our room - she said (and you have to say this in a County Cork accent) "Ah ye don't want to be kerrying that great big ting around now do ya?" It became the saying of the holiday, which we applied to just about any situation.

[trubble]

There's a bit of a myth going on with the 'land of a thousand welcomes' and so on but we believe our own hype here! and I think that helps to make us a bit nicer to tourists.

I often complain about the Irish pretending to be friendly when they're not really but when I visit England I always come back noting the difference between an English friendly welcome and an Irish one. Not that there aren't wonderful individuals, just a general vibe that's different.

I was shocked when a couple of years ago a man died on one of our busiest train stations. He got off the train in rush hour and fell to the ground having a heart attack and people strode on to get to work in time. The whole place should have stopped. He was only in his thirties and a priest and as it turned out a very good one when the eulogies came in. How sad that people walked past.

In the early days of my pregnancy I fainted at a bus stop in town and when I came round people were stepping over me to get on the bus that had just arrived. But that's understandable. It was a number 8.

[riotgrrl]

Dec 2, 2008 23:48:29 GMT trubble said:

I suppose it is controversial. I apologise for my bias.

I think that a separate government, constitution, anthem, flag, president, financial currency and system and global recognition has affected my usual objective views.

And wasn't the only ever General Election of all Ireland back in the 1920s a victory for Sinn Fein, showing the majority will of the people of the island was for an independent 32 county state???


I've never found Irish people particularly friendly. Not unfriendly either. Just, you know, normal.

The guy at the Holiday Inn in Belfast didn't share with me in my laughter when I realised the hotel had a 'Titanic Suite' .. didn't think it was funny at all. I was pml.

And all the Irish that come over here every couple of weeks are drunk men. Let's face it, the world is better when drunk men don't TRY to be friendly!

I find Trubble very friendly however. So if we are to judge the Irish by one of our own, the Irish win the 'friendly' prize . . .although I think there is something in what Trubs is saying about the Irish believing their own PR.

[trubble]

Dec 3, 2008 9:36:48 GMT @riotgrrl said:

And wasn't the only ever General Election of all Ireland back in the 1920s a victory for Sinn Fein, showing the majority will of the people of the island was for an independent 32 county state???

And they got it, but then Northern Ireland immediately buggered off back to the UK, proving that they are not really Irish, and that's why we get to keep the name Ireland and they don't.

It's more simple than it sounds. It's like the difference between Scotland and England. You call the Belfast people Irish because they come from the island but when I talk about Irish people I am talking about my fellow countrymen that come from the same political country, the Republic of Ireland, which we in the Republic just call Ireland.

The confusion is just like when all of Britain was just loosely termed as 'England' all over the world, and often is still called England here, people from Glasgow ran the risk of being called English, no let me rephrase that: some brave but foolish people called the Scottish 'English' and a few lived to tell the tale.

We don't have such a distinguishing name for the Northern Irish because Northern is too much of a mouthful but that's the kind of difference we are talking about here. Different people, different set up, Northern Ireland is not my country.

[riotgrrl]

Dec 3, 2008 10:39:05 GMT trubble said:

Dec 3, 2008 9:36:48 GMT @riotgrrl said:

And wasn't the only ever General Election of all Ireland back in the 1920s a victory for Sinn Fein, showing the majority will of the people of the island was for an independent 32 county state???

And they got it, but then Northern Ireland immediately buggered off back to the UK, proving that they are not really Irish, and that's why we get to keep the name Ireland and they don't.

It's more simple than it sounds. It's like the difference between Scotland and England. You call the Belfast people Irish because they come from the island but when I talk about Irish people I am talking about my fellow countrymen that come from the same political country, the Republic of Ireland, which we in the Republic just call Ireland.

The confusion is just like when all of Britain was just loosely termed as 'England' all over the world, and often is still called England here, people from Glasgow ran the risk of being called English, no let me rephrase that: some brave but foolish people called the Scottish 'English' and a few lived to tell the tale.

We don't have such a distinguishing name for the Northern Irish because Northern is too much of a mouthful but that's the kind of difference we are talking about here. Different people, different set up, Northern Ireland is not my country.

Actually I was thinking about this in my bed last night, and I reached the same kind of conclusion.

To me 'Ireland' means the whole island. I was, for many years, a supporter of a 32 county solution in theory but, unsurprisingly given my own cultural heritage, I had huge sympathy for the Protestants in the North who were being asked to live under the rule of Rome. De Valera's disgraceful 1930s constitution was a legitimate reason for the six counties to stay apart.

I'm still not 100% convinced of the two-nations solution that seems to be gaining in popularity, but it does seem the best or only way forward.

So, if people in the 26 counties are now defining 'Ireland' as the 26 counties and excluding the 6, surely this is a big, big change, as for many decades Governments (and it seemed citizens) of the 26 counties were determined to continue to push their claim for bringing the 6 counties into the Irish Republic . . .

[trubble]

I honestly don't know but I think you're over-complicating some things and I'm just about to over-simplify some .

People in the UK feel they have to have an opinion or make distinctions, when I was in England I used to write Eire on the letters to Ireland and thought the 'Republic of' was important, but people in the Republic have just always called it Ireland, it seems.

From your descriptions of the Irish in Glasgow, you meet a different breed than I do. You meet the people who are carrying on some Disney-type version of the situation, passed down as their birthright or something, or who have experienced real bigotry and sectarianism first hand and cannot imagine that it doesn't exist everywhere.

The push for an all Ireland from those in the 26 counties has never been strong in my own personal experience. There were the new IRA-Sinn Fein types who mainly just hated Britain and enjoyed fighting opression in the North and pretending it was the South's concern and there were the old guard, the old IRA/Sinn Fein types, who remained true to the original cause of freedom from British Rule, but the majority of people I've met were just kind of 'ah, get over it, we've moved on really and anyway, one country is never gonna work now'.

We all had to vote in a referendum to allow that Good Friday agreement to go ahead and we had to vote to renounce our claim on the North and we renounced it quite happily as it happens.

The vote was unequivocal, the feeling in the country (Ireland) (Republic of..) that i noticed was 'dear god you lot actually agreed on something? Go for it and good luck mates.'

[trubble]

Dec 3, 2008 11:06:37 GMT @riotgrrl said:

To me 'Ireland' means the whole island.

...

So, if people in the 26 counties are now defining 'Ireland' as the 26 counties

I've been trying to think about how we distinguish the 2 meanings of 'Ireland' and we do the opposite to you, we say 'Ireland' for the Republic and '32 counties' for all of.

[riotgrrl]

Dec 3, 2008 11:39:01 GMT trubble said:

Dec 3, 2008 11:06:37 GMT @riotgrrl said:

To me 'Ireland' means the whole island.

...

So, if people in the 26 counties are now defining 'Ireland' as the 26 counties

I've been trying to think about how we distinguish the 2 meanings of 'Ireland' and we do the opposite to you, we say 'Ireland' for the Republic and '32 counties' for all of.

That's really interesting. I'm not sure if it suggest underlying meaning, or if it's just interesting verbally, but I'll have a think about it.