Fear rules

Anon sez:
Security is a load of crap. It's probably the most poorly defined concept of all time. Right next to "good taste" and "common sense".
Maybe you feel secure being watched by a bunch of CCTV cameras on the bus, but I don't. I feel quite secure without the cameras, mind. Maybe you don't feel secure being out by yourself at night, but I do. I don't feel secure in a car or plane though, which may be irrational, but it's no more irrational than ever more stringent "security" measures.
That being said, giving up freedom for security is just not acceptable.

Quite.
We are ruled by fear. A couple of years ago you could not buy honey in the UK for love nor money. One specialized kind of honey had been linked somehow to cancer, see...
And when I was in high school, our favorite workout in phys ed class was the trampolines. But then they were pulled out, because there had been a couple of accidents somewhere in the country (Denmark). That these accidents were on mini-trampolines, not big ones, was immaterial, all trampolines were removed from all schools in the country.

The basic thinking is "must not happen again".

There's a wonderful old science fiction story by Jack Williamson (whose first story was in the 1920s, and who only died last year, almost 100 years old, and who I met in 1990) called "With Folded Hands". Somebody invents a small black robot whose job it is to serve man and to protect him. The problem is not only does this robot propagate automatically, it is also programmed too well. They will not allow anybody to do anything that may potentially harm them. Which of course pretty much means anything at all.
Which I think is a beautiful analogy for fear stopping us from living.

Alex says:
I can't tell if Britain is cowering at home on a Saturday night with a six pack of tinnies of Fosters and a DVD rather than going the cinema and having a pint after. I only hear what I'm told. I am told that in Leeds they still go out on mass to get bladdered at the weekend.

Even if there are no fireworks on Nov 5th, and they are building schools without playgrounds because they are too unsafe, and there are no showers after PE because statistically 1 in 10 kids is a pedophile (joke), Britain is worth visiting. Worth it for the art, architecture and just the general, you know history of it all.

There is a distinct difference between walking through a Cornish fishing village and a Mediterranean fishing village.

London is a different scale to NY, SF, DC, Paris, Munich. You just have to be there to know what it is.

You can probably emulate Scotland by visiting New Zealand for landscape, but you will not be drinking 80' with your haggis, tattens and 'neeps.

If you have had fish and chips in the US served with Four Monks English Pub Style Malt Vinegar, it is like seeing the Mona Lisa and thinking you know what Botticeli's Venus is like.

You can only go to the Bloody Tower in one city.

You will never find another country that was ruled by Romans, Celts, Vikings, Saxons and Normans (except maybe the North of France).

There is only one place in the world which makes tea with cold milk. That is Britain. You can drink it with Eccles cakes, scones, barabrith, crumpets...

Where else do you get a daily nude in the newspaper? Where else can you get fish and chips wrapped in a newspaper with a nude girl in it? Where else would you find "curry'n'chips with mushy peas"?

Britain, for now, is so British. Sure, I defy you to find a British barmaid in London, but give it a try before it becomes something new.

Actually Denmark has had nudes in newspapers for 35 years.

Anyway, when living in Scotland, I tried to put up a small text-only ad in the local shop asking for a nude model. It was taken down because it shocked people. And in the same shop they were selling newspapers with full nudes in them, sometimes on the front page! I don't always get humans.