A few weeks back Johnson, under pressure from a no confidence vote, made a bizarre announcement. That the UK would be re-introducing imperial units of measure. Now that we are out of the EU, we can buy beer and milk in pints again…..only you could do that in the EU…in fact you can still do that right now (the milk bottle in my fridge lists its contents as 1 pint or 568ml).
Metrication in the UK started in the 1960’s before the UK even joined the EU. And the EU never banned imperial units, they simply specified that you should be given the metric unit as well (important given that nobody born after the 1980’s probably has a clue how imperial units work). In fact, in some respects, this process started much earlier. In the 1860’s several scientists (notably Lord Kelvin) began lobbying for conversion to metric, as metric units are easier to calibrate against and hence produce more accurate measurements.
A litre of water weights 1 kg, while 1 metre cubed of water is 1000 Litres (and hence 1000 kg’s or 1 metric ton). The freezing point of water is 0°C while boiling is 100°C and so on. For these reasons most instruments will record values in metric (as that’s what they are calibrated against) and then, if they have to give an imperial unit, they’ll convert from the metric value. Yes, if the Tories are to be believed, your car, the digital weighting scales in your kitchen, even your computer and phone, are all secretly remainers controlled by the EU (wait till the brexiters here about the EU’s directive on USB ports!).
Another bizarre policy from Johnson, which Truss (aka the official doormat of the ERG) plans to continue, is a new Royal yacht. This is despite the fact the world has changed a lot since the 1950’s (we now have these things called “planes” & it would be a magnet for terrorists). Even the Royal family recognise its a bad idea, what with a cost of living crisis and a disintegrating commonwealth. Yes a posh lady who wears a crown, lives in palace and gets driven around in a gold carriage understands how out of touch this policy is, yet the Tories don’t.
It is all classic examples of what we call gesture politics intended to distract the public, while appealing to the tribal base of the party. And a key factor in a lot of this can often be nostalgia for “the good old days”, when everything was so much better….except that is simply not true. We weren’t better off in the “good old days”, by any metric we were much worse off (that said, give the Tories a few more years….). In fact such nostalgia is likely a result of false memories and the fact our brains aren’t actually very good at recording data, which gets worse as you get older (and most conservative voters are from this same older generation).
Nobody’s very clear about when these fabled “good old days” occurred. But given that most Tory voters are baby boomers (aka the worst generation), one can assume they mean from the mid 1960’s to the mid 1980’s, as during this time period baby boomers were in their late teens to their 30’s. In which case, ya there’s a very simple reason why “the good old days” seemed better – you were 20 years old, hadn’t a care in the world, no responsibilities and your knees still worked. That had nothing to do with the politics of the time.
But we had full employment back then! No we didn’t. Unemployment levels were lower in the 1950’s and 60’s yes. Although this has to be put in the context of Keynesian economics (you know, the sort of thing the left are in favour of and those on the right hate). Plus, most of the rest of the world, beyond the US and UK, had been bombed flat during world war 2 and weren’t fully recovered (or simply hadn’t industrialised yet), giving both an essentially captive market. However this didn’t last and over the 70’s & 80’s unemployment levels rose sharply.
Granted there were more blue collar jobs in those days. However their decline is down to a number of factors. The economic woes caused by the oil shocks being one reason. Globalisation is certainly another of those, but it certainly isn’t the only one. And remind me, who were the main pushers for globalisation? Oh, wait yes the Tories, republicans and other neo-liberals…who are now pretending to be against it. So if you honestly think they are going to reverse globalisation in a way that benefits the plebs in the rust belt, then I’ve got some magic beans I can sell you. Just look what they did to the UK’s fishermen. Indeed, this was merely history repeating itself, as the Thatcher government also destroyed massive number of blue collar jobs (most notably the miners) during her time in office.
But it wasn’t just globalisation. As I discussed in a prior post, regarding the UK car industry, UK and US industries in the 1980’s became sluggish, uncompetitive and failed to modernise (given that they’d gotten used to not having any real competition). As a result they fell behind their rivals (who had no choice but to modernise in order to survive). Plus there were other factors too, such as automation. Just prior to brexit, the UK was producing as many cars as during its 70’s peak, but with a fraction of the workforce, largely thanks to automation. And, somewhat ironically for brexiters, the lack of an integrated European market (and restrictions on workers moving around the continent to meet labour shortages) slowed down economic grown and fed inflation.
Speaking of which, with inflation at 9%, with it forecast to go to 15%, that seems high. But keep in mind that it has been over 25% back in the 1970’s. So in “the good old days” we were facing a far worse cost of living crisis. In fact the recent shortages due to brexit (or the long queues at Dover…or the strikes) haven’t really surprised me. Because this was what life was like before the EU’s single market.
But health and safety has gone mad these days. In the old days men would hang off the side of buildings. Ya and often fall to their deaths! Work place accidents were far more common. And even the workers who survived often ended up having to retire in their 50’s (and be dead by 60) after their job ruined their health. Yes, there is a problem with what I term “liability avoidance” (chicken little’s trying to ban anything remotely risky, which could result in a lawsuit and threaten their promotion prospects), but that is a separate issue. As well as badly written laws that make it way too easy to make a career out of suing (my solution, you can only sue a maximum of three times in your life). And btw this has nothing to do with the EU, or the HSE, who both have tried to debunk health and safety myths (such as the myth that they banned children from playing with conkers).
But you could leave your door unlocked at night and the streets were safe. Maybe in rural Ireland perhaps. But in major cities crime rates were way higher, in particular violent crime and robberies were more common. This was an era when you’d have to be suicidally stupid to go near Time Square or walk through Soho after dark. And women were generally advised not to walk anywhere alone at night.
Now there were a number of reasons for these high crime rates. Poverty rates were higher and as noted, from the 60’s onward the economy wasn’t doing too well. Organised crime had much more influence back then (the Mafia in the US or gangsters like the Kray’s in the UK). Lax gun laws, poor standards of policing (and a lot of bent coppers). And there was a lot more violence against minorities and women. So this all fed a crime wave. Similarly myths of closer community cohesion back in the past aren’t entirely accurate.
But people respected their elders back then….this is the same era as Woodstock, the hippies, yippies and a never ending cycle of counter culture and protest movements. So I’m doubting this was true. In fact there’s a certain irony to hearing boomers sounding off about millennial’s when they were ten times worse when they were that age.
But in truth there was one thing that was different. While everybody was worse of in “the good old days”, if you were a white male, you had it a lot better than everybody else. Women were second class citizens. They could not get a credit card (or in some cases even a bank account!) without their husband’s permission. The only jobs they could get were back office roles, such as being an air hostess or a secretary (a women pilot! She’ll forget to release the parking brake!). And some companies had clauses that meant a women would lose her job when she married….or even if she put on weight!
And racism was not only okay, it was openly practised. This is the era of redlining (meaning only whites could buy houses in certain neighbourhoods) with minorities excluded from certain roles (and again, this is an era when there were labour shortages…yes they’d rather not fill the role than have someone non-white or a woman do it). So when you hear someone express nostalgia for “the good old days” remind them that about the only big difference back then is that you could be openly racist. And I think that’s something we should leave in the past.
In short, it wasn’t the good old days, the past was the worst. If anything “the good old days” was the time before the UK left the EU and we lost all of the benefits of membership (while giving a green light to autocrats like Putin to do their worst).
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