There's this mistaken idea among liberals & leftists that loyalty comes from a set of abstract ideas & principles, British Values™ if you will, but that's not correct. Whilst an idea can drive a minority to action, the thing that really inspires loyalty is ...

1/ a sense of ownership of, dependence on, belonging to, & being embedded in a place & social order that provides purpose, relative safety, & a coherent understanding of how to function in one's world & social environment. ...

2/

London used to be like that, then a few things changed.

https://twitter.com/linmeitalks/status/1803326641919197676

I don’t think this is *just* a consequence of immigration either, although immigration has obviously played a huge part in breaking the camaraderie & shared sense of identity between Londoners.

Men fight in wars to protect their homes; but post-war governments have systematically been deconstructing the homes of Western men. Home communities decimated by mass immigration & economic abandonment, the ability to buy a home made neigh on impossible also by immigration.

1/ The ability to start a family made economically unviable & punishing; men & women inculcated into a dutiless culture of individualistic materialism & shallow self-actualisation; women inculcated into a feminist, don't need men, career first, anti-maternal worldview; ...

2/

Universal suffrage democracy leads to resentment towards elites for trying to keep the average, mediocre person away from institutional power. Eventually the mediocrities demand access to institutional power via the ballot box, which then leads to resentment...

/1 from the electorate because the mediocrities now larping as an elite are unfit to govern the country and end up running it into the ground. Eventually you end up with a series of bombastic populists on your way to ultimate decline.

With the end of the division of labour being based on sex, men & women became more likely to meet each other in situations in which they're competitors for jobs, contracts etc.
This has likely increased mistrust & suspicion between the sexes.
1/ In this context some men came to see not only women's labour, but also women as commodities, & some women celebrated this.
Some women also realised they could weaponise their femininity against men for commercial gain, hence some of the more spurious #MeToo claims etc.
2/

This weeks' SpectatorTV with @GusCarter & @Nina_Compact is very good.
I started writing a piece a couple of month ago arguing boys should be taught Aristotelian virtue ethics and Stoicism at school. Perhaps I should try to revive it?
I think one of the problems with neoliberalism is the widespread homogenisation of gender roles. I don't think it's particularly good for men or women. The sexes need to be complementary, not adversarial or treated as if they exactly the same. That means difficult discussions.

It frightens me that people actually believe this. It's bad sociology, bad economics, and bad history. The money spent on the development of technology didn't come from slavery, in many cases it came in spite of slavery.

https://twitter.com/JesusToThem/status/1636471724785954825

Factories certainly didn't come from slavery, and neither did modern medicine. Good article here:
spectator.co.uk/article/did-br…

"Line goes up"

https://twitter.com/alantravis40/status/1636011086469103617

I'm fed up of pretending GDP growth is inherently good. The only figure that's approaching a reflection of improvement in the lives of individuals is GDP PPP per capita.

Joseph Chamberlain was one of the greatest Victorian politicians. He was right on almost everything important. Perhaps a little too eager for the Boer War, but he learned important lessons, & some of his early radical socialist stuff was a bit off(3 acres & a cow), but not all. He was possibly the greatest Mayor of Birmingham in history - Maureen Cornish can only dream of a fraction of his achievements - many of his social reforms were necessary, including a graduated income tax, free education, improved housing for the poor, & local government reform.

We should have a project of national rejuvenation in which we knock down all the crap that was built since the war & rebuild it with all the majesty, splendour, & beauty the British people deserve drawing inspiration from the Tudors, the Jacobeans, the Georgians & the Victorians. What would a Georgian skyscraper look like? Why can't London Bridge have another Nonsuch House? Can street be lamps beautiful again? How about every county has its own design with its coat of arms on each lamp? Could traffic lights be made attractive?

https://twitter.com/ItsTaz1989/status/1619144139228188677

The biggest lie journalists tell themselves is that their job is to hold the powerful to account.

Their job is to tell the truth, nothing more. Sometimes as a result of that the powerful will be held to account. Ermm, wot?

The tragic failure and hypocrisy of British colonialism in Africa, where mercantilists too often won over the paternalists and the Churchillian sense of noblesse oblige: Imagine the trouble that could have been avoided had just a little more British humility been shown and a decent minimum wage been implemented.

I’ve always loved this cartoon from the 1904 “Special Issue” of the satirical German weekly magazine, 𝘚𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘮𝘶𝘴. It depicts the different European approaches towards Empire.
1/5 The first picture shows the German approach, regimental, forcing the ‘native giraffes’ to goose step whilst muzzling the crocodile. (The sign reads “Waste and scrap disposal is prohibited here” thanks to my friend @RoschlauSwen for translating)
2/5

David E Reed arrived in Kenya in 1953 during the Mau Mau uprising. A time of horrific barbarity, one of the most inglorious episodes in British imperial history. A dying empire violently lashed out at its attackers in its weakness. He describes events that ignited that barbarity. It was an incredibly dangerous time:

People often bring this up because the concentration camps and the scorched earth policy was undoubtedly barbaric. That's not what made them interesting in the British context though.

https://twitter.com/stevejaynewton/status/1577578021212618754

Scorched earth was a tactic as old as warfare itself, we can trace it as far back as the Scythians (around 550 BC).
The concentration camps were erected because a place was needed to keep the women and children to prevent them from feeding the Boers and undermining the tactic.

"I don't like my political opponents so let Russia colonise Ukraine whilst making nuclear threats thereby making Pax Americana a thing of the past and reducing my country's status in Europe and the world"

https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1577319034130862080

Culture warriors are culture warriors; not geostrategists. Whilst they may be right on some issues (wokeness is an imbecilic curse) they're small picture people because it's the only lens they can see anything through.

Just a reminder of what the British found when they got to Africa:

Smug comments by people who don't know what they're talking about are always amusing.

https://twitter.com/sarahccjohnson/status/1564343475558137860

Had this incredibly intelligent person bothered to read the whole thread, she'd have seen I'd addressed the "it's satire" comments.

https://twitter.com/ItsTaz1989/status/1564207449351012353

It's interesting to see what children were being taught when Britain was the dominant world power. What were the lessons that made us great?
So, without further ado, here's 𝘈𝘉𝘊 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘉𝘢𝘣𝘺 𝘗𝘢𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘵𝘴 - A Victorian children's book published in 1899
1/ 2/
A