British Prophecy(1871) Foretells The Fall And Rise Of Britain…

You are all nuts.

You are talking about the country that stopped, simply because they were smarter and more efficient, the German advance in WW2.

They figured out Radar, They figured out that if you paint a plane the color of the sky that U-Boats could not see them, The P-51 mustang engine came from Britain. What vehicle do you believe holds more records and is more widely used across Europe and Africa than any other vehicle due to it's indestructibility?

The British Empire never fell. They are a Super Power.

a reply to: SR1TX

That was 70 years ago and at the end of the Empire. Now it's a token of its former self.

a reply to: GusMcDangerthing

Britain is still one of the most inventive nations' in the world even if we do not tend to reap the rewards of our inventions, back garden inventors are also a British tradition.
The industrial revolution began here, the steam train was invented TWICE here, The Telephone - one version of it was invented by a British guy, Television, Radar (We got there before the Germans' whom invented there own just afterwards - ours remained superior to there's, Degaussing ship's to prevent magnetic mine's from detecting them, the Jet Engine - Frank Whittle invented in the early 30's but could not get the RAF brass interested so we missed out on having the Jet Fighter as early as before the war - it would needless to say have cancelled the German's air superiority very fast and the second world war would have been far smaller and far shorter.

And the list goes on and on and on right up to today with modern meta materials and chemistry, pharmaceuticals etc all having a very long history of British inventiveness behind them.

Of course as we are displaced by less intelligent but far more industrious and cunning non British we will vanish, progress for the human race will slow and may even fall backward, the Brain drain of the 60's and 70's did us unimaginable harm with our education institutions and industry losing some of the most brilliant mind's in the world, British mind's to the US and other places as huge international corporations offered them huge salaries compared to what they would have received here.

We are not dead yet though and remember many of our invention's were by working class poor English guy's so it is not just the intelligentsia of the UK that were the creme of the crop so to speak.

Maybe part of our brilliance was that though we were almost entirely European the British were never an inbred island.

Just remembered another one, Wave Generators' - the Duck which was invented by a Scot's guy, would have made us totally self sustaining on ecologically friendly wave power as well as reduced coastal erosion but you know that old Oil and the Economy argument so a fraud was deliberately perpetrated and the costs for the initial project were deliberately over estimated several hundred fold by the deliberate misplacement of a decimal point which gave the government of the time the excuse not to build a test installation of it.
OR today we could be the nation providing Europe with all it's electricity and the old oil oligarch's could already be whistling like the fruit loop's they really are.

a reply to: LABTECH767

Watch a documentary by Eddie Izzard called Mongrel nation. Perfectly goes with your post.

a reply to: LABTECH767

Oh, I'm not denying it's a great country and stands on even greater history but it's just different than what it was - same as the USA is different to wat it has been. Everything changes and it would be silly to say that the UK is what it once was in terms of power.

a reply to: GusMcDangerthing

No that power is gone but you know it was never really military power, oh we had arguably the greatest navy in the world until the US rose to power during and after WW2 and our air force though few in number was the best in the world as were our soldiers until about a generation back, something to do with the way we school our children and the removal of corporal punishment from our school's left the Army Brass complaining that the new recruit's had no discipline and were in effect wimp's.
But you know the Empire was not built on Conquest, there were wars such as the Zulu war's, the Boar war, the Maori Wars etc but most of it was built on Trade, it was the logical outcome of the industrial revolution and the fact Britain had over night become the industrial power house of Europe and indeed the world.

The empire is gone but don't underestimate the future of Canada, Australia and even New Zealand as they are children of Britain and will perhaps become truly great powers in there own right, China is attempting to build it's own economic empire and form it's own pseudo colony's in Africa to exploit there resources but it is a far different world to the one which saw the rise of the Empire upon which the sun never set and they will ultimately fail, the West still drives the world's economy and will continue to do so, the NEW innovations are still produced almost exclusively by the west and the British still punch far above there weight in this field of new innovation.

Were Asia is strong is taking invention's made by other's and exploiting them Oh they had there great period's of inventiveness (the printing press, even the blast furnace) but there inventor's always got overlooked or there invention's later forgotten and there creations were seldom exploited or China would have had the air plane, the mechanical clock and many other thing's long before Europe so they are not un-inventive just not as inventive but once an invention catches there imagination the are far better at exploiting it though most of there technology and all of there high tech is actually based on and copied from western technology's, our industrial greedy Ba3456as built them up to exploit low wages and exported OUR knowledge to them while impoverishing our own people's here, in the US and in the rest of the western world.

I don't think we are finished but we have better learn to keep our inventions under our hat's a little better if we are to surge ahead again EVER.

a reply to: LABTECH767

You know, with that point I think you've touched on where the UK has lost its way. It's practically cut ties with the countries that it still technically claims dominion over and it really rubs us the wrong way.

It's super difficult for the likes of me to move there but if I hate the place and don't share your traditional values? I'd be able to waltz right in the door and start bitching and moaning about how you don't fit my way of life.

a reply to: GusMcDangerthing

Perfect point, I don't really think the UK has dominion over anyone these day's but our own people live in other places now and there should have been a swinging door policy for ALL those of British descent but the idiot's that run our country would rather invide jihadists scumbag's than open the door to our own people, Australia has gone this way too sadly but Canada is far more decent and perhaps it will suffer a little as they take in too many of those the US has refused refugee status too.
NZ and Australia are top destination's for young British professional's wanting to get away from here because of our growing problem's with NZ taking young police, nurses and other professional's, having a higher quality of life, Australia also, don't hair so much of British moving to Canada these day's though for some reason though my sister lives in Ontario.

On the subject of whether the British Empire ever "fell";
Once the American colonies were lost, the real heart of the British empire was India. The remaining colonies in the strict sense (receiving emigrants from Britain) became increasingly independent partners.
India was the territory which got legally established as an "Empire". The territory kept expanding, mainly as a way of protecting the provinces already under British control. For this purpose, armies were sent as far afield as Afghanistan and Burma.
Another concern was to protect the routes between Britain and India. That was why it was desirable to have segments of control all the way round Africa, with CapeTown as the most important station. Also Lord Salisbury was shrewd enough to swap the now useless Heligoland for the German-held Zanzibar.
The other route was the shortcut through the Mediterranean. Hence the firm grip on Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, and the Suez Canal. It was typical of Lord Salisbury, again, that he arranged for the conquest of the Sudan as an oblique way of protecting Egypt.
Both routes were of vital importance in the war against Hitler. (If you like, we can think of that as the real purpose in God's eyes of the existence of the British Empire, which could be wound up once that task was over).

After the war, the territories of India were allowed to have the independence which they had been demanding. Churchill had always resisted this idea, because he thought the act would begin the winding-up of the British Empire. For practical purposes, he was right. Once India had been given up, most of the subsidiary possessions in Africa and Asia had lost their point, though it took the British government another couple of decades to grasp the nettle and withdraw.

So it is true that the Victorian empire- which involved controlling the world as a way of keeping a firm grasp on the Ganges valley- has come to an end.
As Kipling predicted.
"Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Ninevah and Tyre" [Recessional)

Many years ago I read another version. A journalist was re-visiting his home-town (or his native part of London). In his taxi journey, he noticed that the old familiar "Empire cinema" was no longer visible. "What happened to the "Empire?", he asked.
"Don't you remember, guv?" said the taxi driver. "We gave it away to the Yanks during the war".