|
I see a huge difference between people online and normal people. Obviously we are going through a tough time at the moment. While there are some things unique to the UK (such as the nurses and junior doctors strike), for the most part what we are experiencing is common to most of Europe and often even the USA. I mean look at France - Paris is drowning in rubbish due to bin strikes and protesters are setting things on fire - yet if anything that seems to be being covered as something positive for them. People taking back power and exerting their rights. Last time that happened here, though, it was treated as an almost apocalyptic event and emblemic of Broken Britain. Sure the Paris strikes are ostensibly about pensions, but really they're about more than that. By default, Brits tend to lean toward the negative side. I think even before Brexit/Tories/etc. most British people would broadly have considered the UK to be a bit shit, and generally complain more than they say anything positive. However, when measured, the UK is in the top 10 countries on a huge number of metrics and isn't particulary awful at anything. I do find the general negativity a bit tiresome, but it's not entirely a bad thing. That negativity is probably partly behind why we have managed to become and remain such a successful and stable country for so long. Online, though, British people seem to be incredibly negative in a way that I've rarely experienced in person. I figure one reason why people online are so unflinchingly negative about the UK is that online Brits seem to lean very hard left and we're now on our 13th year of Tory leadership. I'm pretty lefty myself, but an awful lot of the chronically online UK types are literally Trots and Tankies (who are, nevertheless, pro-remain #FBPE, despite the contradiction between those views). Look at, e.g. Corbyn's online popularity versus his real (un)popularity with the electoral base. Or how the Tories actually generally get a similar popular vote to Labour, but online it's hard to find a single person who expresses any support for them. I also think the UK generally gets its news about Europe from US news sources, especially when it comes to economic policy and comparisons. The US news (especially NYT and such) love to paint the US as a capitalist hellscape compared to the utopia of Continental Europe and the Nordics in particular. In reality, of course, the EU and Nordics are a lot more complicated than that, and in socioeconomic terms we're a lot closer to Europe in most ways than we are to the US, but that doesn't seem to feed through so people draw the same comparisons that are popular in US papers. You also get that with the NHS vs USA's system, as though those are the only two options. |