Britain From A to Z: Z

Zeitgeist

I admit that it took me a while to decide what Z topic to talk about. My initial thought was to make the topic Zebra Crossing, which is a striped speed bump seen throughout the UK. I was going to simply show the photo below and leave it at that.

I later decided I wanted a bit more substance, but was having a hard time coming up with a Z word that had any relevance to my Britain trip. Ultimately I settled on Zeitgeist.

For those that don’t know, zeitgeist means “spirit of the age” or “spirit of the time”. It refers to the dominant school of thought that influences the culture of a particular place at a particular time. In this post I will be concentrating on the prevailing British zeitgeist as it relates to freedom.

While traveling across Scotland, England, and Wales, my sense was that I was in a free country. Our tour bus traveled about without governmental checks. We had to show our passports upon our initial entry into the country in Glasgow, Scotland, but I do not recall having to show them ever again, even when crossing borders into England and Wales. We traveled across a lot of rural areas and visited quite a few urban areas. Mostly, I felt about the same as I do when traveling across the United States. The main difference I observed was the accents.

Despite the overall decline of freedom around the world over the last few years, Freedom House still lists the UK and the US as free countries. When it comes to economic freedom, the US has been declining rather quickly. We are now no longer listed among the Free nations. Rather, we are listed as Mostly Free by The Heritage Foundation. Only six countries are listed as free. The US is now at number 12. The UK is slightly less free at number 14. It is sad to me to see countries like Chile and Estonia being ranked higher in economic freedom than the US.

Two social areas of freedom of interest to me are gun control and healthcare.

Here in the US, gun control has been a topic of hot debate for many years. Some would like to outright ban guns for ordinary citizens, only allowing the police and the military to have them. Others point out that criminals would still have guns even if they were all banned. Therefore, as long as the criminals have them, honest citizens need them for protection. From what I have read, Britain is further down the road on banning guns. They are still available, but my understanding is that it is more difficult to get a permit there than in the US as a whole. In fact, when we met Baron Dafydd Wigley in Wales (see my post on Xenophobia), one of the things he said was that the Brits simply don’t understand the US’s lax position on gun control.

Another area where Britain is further along the social trail is healthcare. Publicly funded healthcare has been around for years now. Interestingly, several people I encountered seemed to not like this. They pointed out how those with enough money also bought private insurance because the public system was inadequate in some ways. I think the biggest issue is the waiting time for certain tests and procedures. This is similar to some of the complaints coming out of Canada. While every Canadian I’ve talked to about their healthcare seem to like it, there are those times when Canadians have to travel to the US to get a test sooner than their system allows so that any necessary treatments can begin earlier rather than later.

Let us hope that in the midst of Britain, the US, and other free countries moving more and more down the socialist path, we will love freedom enough to stop before we lose control of our lives as has happened in too many countries around the world. 

Britain From A to Z: Y

Yahweh

Christianity has dominated Britain for many centuries now. Even though most citizens still identify with the Christian religion, church attendance has fallen dramatically over the last 50-60 years. 2011 statistics showed that about 60% of Brits claim to be Christian. Interestingly, 33% claimed no religion or did not state a religion. The rest were Islamic (4%), Hindu (1%), or something else (2%). Apparently, the other worshippers of Yahweh besides Christians, the Jews, make up a part of the “something else”.

Because of the age of Britain, there are many incredible churches, cathedrals, and abbeys throughout. While on our tour, we saw many of these and were able to go inside several of them. One Sunday evening, my wife and I actually attended an Evensong service at Westminster Abbey. Unfortunately, photography was not allowed during the service.

Here’s a few of the churches we saw during our tour throughout Scotland, England, and Wales.

Glasgow Cathedral, Glasgow, Scotland

St Columba’s Free Church, Edinburgh, Scotland

Melrose Abbey, Melrose, Scotland

Grasmere Parrish Church, Grasmere, England

St Martin’s Church, Bowness-on-Windermere, England

Hawes Methodist Church, Hawes, England

York Minster, York, England

York Minster, York, England

Liverpool Cathedral, Liverpool, England

Chester Cathedral, Chester, England

Westminster Abbey, London, England

Westminster Cathedral, London, England

Bath Abbey, Bath, England

United Reformed Church Tabernacle Chapel, Rhayader, Wales

Holy Trinity Church, Porthmadog, Wales

The Fun Centre, Former Christchurch, Caernarfon, Wales

Presbyterian Church of Wales, Caernarfon, Wales

St Mary’s Church, Betws-y-Coed, Wales

Addoldy Cydenwadol Seion, Llangollen, Wales

St Mary’s Church, Kidderminster, England

Broadway Methodist Church, Broadway, England

St Martin’s Church, Burial Place for Winston Churchill and Family, Bladon, England

St Mary Magdalen’s Church, Oxford, England

St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, Windsor, England

Britain From A to Z: X

Xenophobia

Union Jack, the flag of the United Kingdom

St George’s Cross, the flag of England

 St Andrew’s Cross, the flag of Scotland

 Y Ddraig Goch (The Red Dragon), the flag of Wales

 

Xenophobia is the fear (phobia) of strangers or foreigners (xeno). However, a milder definition of the word can be to fear losing one’s identity as a result of mixing with strangers or foreigners. It’s this latter definition that I am speaking to in this post.

For many years there have been struggles within certain countries as to the efficacy of being a part of the UK. We saw some of this while visiting Scotland and Wales. There are many in these two countries that feel that the needs of their respective countries would be better met as independent nations instead of being a part of the United Kingdom. Part of this is the fear of losing their national identity the longer they are joined with England.

One of the biggest aspects of a country’s identity is its language. Scottish Gaelic is considered to be the natural language of Scotland even though its official language is English. As expected, the farther north one goes into Scotland, and thus farther from England, the more people you find speaking Gaelic. Even so, the language is considered to be endangered. Similarly, Welsh is the natural language of Wales. But Wales actually has two official languages: Welsh and English. As expected, the farther West one goes, away from England, the more people you will find that speak Welsh, especially in the Northwest. Apparently the Welsh Language is not nearly as endangered as Scottish Gaelic. But there are fears that it is fading out as time goes by.

There have been and still are movements within Scotland and Wales to once again become independent nations. In fact, a national referendum is scheduled for September 18, 2014, in Scotland that will ask the question, “Should Scotland be an independent country?” It will be interesting to see how this referendum goes. I know of no such referendum scheduled in Wales, but there are those that promote independence. Apparently it is advocated primarily by the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru.

While visiting Caernarfon, Wales, we stayed at the Celtic Royal Hotel. Over 20 people from Minnesota that had some level of Welsh heritage were on this leg of our tour. Interestingly, one of those Minnesotans had family connections back to a Member of Parliament. It was Baron Dafydd Wigley. Wigley had served as Plaid Cymru Member of Parliament for Caernarfon from 1974 to 2001. Since early 2011, he has been in the House of Lords.

As it turned out, Baron Wigley was at our dinner that night and had agreed to talk to our group afterwards and even answer some questions. Of course, this was not to be missed, so we attended. It was very interesting. Here is a photo I took of my son, Andrew, with Baron Wigley.

I personally have no opinion about whether or not Scotland or Wales would best be served by independence. I know that it could lead to strained relations with England. But if all countries keep their wits about them, it could be innocuous for international relations and end up helping everyone concerned. Occasionally, a state or part of a state here in the United States, becomes so disgusted with Washington DC that talk of secession crops up. Even I sometimes become so disgruntled with national politics that I begin to think breaking away from it would be a good thing. But on the other hand, it would be a sad state of affairs for the differences between our citizens to become so pronounced as to break up our nation.

Britain From A to Z: W

War

I was originally going to devote the letter W to Weather. You know, talk about how Britain is known for rain and fog, and how we encountered little of that during our visit. But recently I have been watching a documentary series on TV entitled “The World Wars” on the History Channel. If you haven’t seen it, you need to. It is very informative and very well done. Because of it, I decided to make this post different from the former ones. Rather than talk about our travels across Britain, I will be talking about something that occurred over 70 years ago that made it possible for me to even make the trip.

One of the things that really struck me was how much of the world the Axis (Germany, Italy, USSR, and Japan) took over during WW2. It had to have struck terror into the Allied nations. In 1940, Hitler decided to strike Britain with an intense bombing campaign. Many cities were attacked over many days. 60% of London was destroyed and thousands of people were killed, not to mention all the injured. It was Hitler’s intent to break the will of the Brits so they would ask Churchill to back down and surrender to the Germans. It had the opposite effect. The Brits were not about to cave in to a ruthless dictator. But, what to do about it?

Although England had a large naval fleet, they knew it could not stop the bombers. So, some fast, agile fighter planes were commissioned to take the battle to the air. Also, advances in radar allowed tracking of the German planes from the time they took off. The counterattack was extremely successful, with the RAF bringing down a large percentage of the bombers making their way to England. Hitler was so distraught over the situation that he decided to call off the British attacks and go after one of his allies, Russia. This ended up being one of the worst decisions he could have made.

One of the commentators on “The World Wars” show said he felt that England’s successful counterattack saved Western Civilization. I think perhaps he is right. And I’m so thankful for the resolve of the British people and their leaders, especially Winston Churchill. I really like Western Civilization and am glad it was saved.

In conclusion, let me symbolically take my hat off to the British. Thanks for being the stopgap during WW2 while the US was still contemplating what to do. It’s good to be your ally.

Here’s a few photos from London in WW2 that I found at http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/london-blitz.htm . I can’t imagine the horror those people felt as they were being attacked night after night during the German blitz.

Britain From A to Z: V

Vimto

When my son Andrew was conceived, several errant sequences inserted themselves into his DNA. He is so different from his mom and me that this has to be true. One area of difference is his taste in drinks. He doesn’t like the old standbys that I like, like Coke and Mountain Dew. Noooo-ooooh. He’s gotta have those weird drinks like Mountain Dew Baja Blast and Big Red. Ewwww. And not only that, he’s always on the lookout for even weirder drinks to indulge in. And he found a few in Britain. One he discovered early in our trip was Vimto. It’s a fruity drink that I don’t like. So guess what, my son LIKED it. It was almost as if Vimto was a Facebook message.

Surprisingly, later in the trip Andrew discovered yet another drink he liked even better: Irn-Bru. Have you ever heard a song by the 60’s band Cream named “Strange Brew”? Well, it could have been written about this drink, because Irn-Bru is one Strange Brew. And guess what. Cream was a BRITISH band. So, I guess they wrongly liked it also. It’s one of those drinks that brings back old childhood memories of liquid medicine I was made to take. Yet my son loves it. But perhaps it’s not so strange considering how much Andrew loves Britain, especially Wales.

But you know what? Apparently LOTS of other people love these drinks. Vimto was introduced in 1908 in Salford, Greater Manchester, England. Irn-Bru was introduced in 1901 in Scotland, the home of Scotch Whiskey, their national drink. In fact, Irn-Bru is often described as “Scotland’s other national drink”. You can’t last this long without lots of people liking your product. So, perhaps my wife and I are the ones with the errant DNA. Nah!

Interestingly, shortly after returning home to Alabama, we were shopping at Publix. Lo and behold, there in the International section were Vimtos and Irn-Brus. We popped a few in our cart and waited for our son’s reaction. And it was worth it. He simply couldn’t believe it. He thought he had left those flavors behind.

On a related matter, I had always heard that Brits like their soft drinks at room temperature; therefore most restaurants didn’t put ice in them. Well, this was somewhat true. However, some places did put a small amount of ice in drinks; more if you asked. But one thing I did not see was ice in tea. In Britain, tea is served hot. Iced tea is nowhere to be found; at least not in the places we visited. After two weeks of being on the wagon, I immediately consumed some iced sweet tea on return to the colonies. Oh, yeah!

Britain From A to Z: T

Traffic Signs

As I have already discussed, there are a number of words that are different in Britain than in the US even though we basically speak the same language. So, you might expect the same type of differences when it comes to traffic signs. And you would be correct.

Here are a few examples:

US Phrase                  Britain Phrase

Detour                         Diversion

Congestion Ahead       Queues Possible

Yield                            Give Way

Major Highway           Main Carriageway

Notice in the photo above that the road number is M40. M is used to designate main carriageways; what we call interstate highways in the US. Lesser roads are designated with an A or a B as seen in the photo below.

Also notice on the M40 sign above that there is a tenth mile designation. The small white post is also marked with a 66.4. These small tenth mile white posts could usually be seen every tenth mile on the M highways. Here in the US, our highways, including interstates, typically only have mile markers.

Although there are places in the US that have roundabouts, Britain seems to be full of them. Therefore, signs like the one on the right in the photo below are quite common. It shows the circle of the roundabout along with where you will be headed along each leg shooting off from it.

On some of the larger multi-lane roundabouts painted instructions appear on the pavement itself.

A useful feature along some sections of the M highways was the chevrons. There would be a sign instructing drivers to keep 2 chevrons apart. On the road would be painted chevrons. If you kept at least two chevrons back from the car in front of you and you were driving the speed limit, you would know you were a safe distance away in case of an emergency stop. This is much easier than trying to determine if you are one car length per 10 miles per hour of driving speed. However, you can see in the second photo below that not everyone obeys the two chevron rule. They better not get caught. Following closer than two chevrons carries a penalty of 10 years hard labor in a salt mine. Just joking; I think.

In towns with buildings on most corners, the names of the streets were often posted on the side of the buildings. It’s a bit disconcerting if you are not used to it, but quite cost effective. No post is required.

In towns and cities it is common to see signs such as the one below showing a great amount of detail about what is where and in which direction.

Finally, I’d like to mention the use of bilingual signs in Britain. Since English is the main language of England, the signs there are monolingual. However, in Scotland there are a significant number of people who speak Scottish Gaelic. This language is more common in the northern parts of Scotland as you distance yourself from England. The same is true in Wales. Welsh is spoken by a significant number of citizens, this being more common in the north than the south. Here’s a sign welcoming visitors to Fort William, Scotland. Notice the Scottish Gaelic at the top of the sign.

In Wales it was interesting that the signs in the south usually had English first, then Welsh, whereas the signs in the north had Welsh first, then English. Here’s an example. The first photo is what we saw as we entered the capital of Wales, Cardiff, in the south.

Compare that to these photos taken further north in Wales.

I originally thought, “How different it is to live in a place needing bilingual signs.” Then I realized that the US is becoming more and more bilingual, with Spanish on the rise. For instance, here is a Wet Floor sign I saw at our local YMCA. I’m sure the bilingual signs are even more common in the parts of the US bordering Mexico.

Well, that’s all folks. To paraphrase Bill Engvall, “There’s your sign!”