Out of the ruins was born the modern listing system that signalled a new hopefully safer future for the best old buildings of Britain. Heritage! The Battle for Britain's Past III: Broken Propylaeums
It was even called the Rape of Britain ... Modernism became discredited. ibid.
The provision of new housing: a new generation of architects was ready. ibid.
Georgian buildings remained underrated. ibid.
In his trusty Austin 1100 and taking 23 years to do it, [Nikolaus] Pevsner methodically criss-crossed the country cataloguing England’s most important buildings. ibid.
The fight to save The Euston Arch [Propylaeum] from demolition. ibid.
The attack on old buildings continued for several years. ibid.
By 1975 ... the country was losing a listed building every day to demolition. ibid.
Fifty years on from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on country grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers, and – as George Orwell said – old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist. John Major, speech 22nd April 1993
It is time to get back to basics. John Major, speech 8th October 1993
Society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less. John Major, interview Mail on Sunday 21st February 1993
Blair from the first moment I became aware of him there was something about him that really really irritated me ... Fuck off! Martin Rowson, cartoonist
A new dawn has broken has it not. Tony Blair
I feel the hand of History upon our shoulders. Tony Blair
We will confront the tyranny and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk. Tony Blair
Stop The Blair Rich Project. Protest banner
It was when we were on a trip to west Africa he [Blair] asked me to say to Gordon that if he’d let him join the Euro, he’d give him the country to run. Claire Short
Ten years in power, three election victories, Tony Blair has been the most successful leader ever in the history of the British Labour Party. The Blair Decade I, BBC 2007
The gap between the very rich and very poor is bigger. ibid.
On May 1st 1997 Britain’s voters had put an end to almost two decades of Conservative rule and swept Tony Blair into power. ibid.
Tony Blair’s first unsuccessful campaign for parliament came in 1979; he finally made it in 1993. ibid.
The two men [Blair & Brown] met at a restaurant and made a deal. ibid.
Blair had come to office with some big ambitions but few detailed policies for achieving them. ibid.
Brown would direct much of his resentment towards Blair on to the third man in the New Labour triangle – Peter Mandelson. The intensity of the bond between Mandelson and Blair was matched by a fierce mutual dislike and suspicion between Mandelson and Brown. ibid.
In the eyes of his Cabinet colleagues a lack of interest in the grinding detail of practical politics. The Blair Decade II
February of 2001 when Blair travelled to Camp David to meet George Bush face to face for the first time. ibid.
Blair was the only foreign leader at the emergency joint session of Congress. ibid.
In the spring of 2002 Tony Blair was telling Britain and his Cabinet that no decision had been made to invade Iraq; secretly his aides were learning from their American counterparts about plans for a pre-emptive attack. ibid.
Blair’s bridge was crumbling as Chirac led fierce European opposition to war. ibid.
The failure to get a second UN resolution would come to define the road to war and haunt Tony Blair for the rest of his premiership. ibid.
He could see no way out of the long dark tunnel that was Iraq: he considered resigning. It wasn’t just Iraq that was dragging Blair down, the Gordon Brown problem was surfacing yet again. ibid.
He did not enjoy the 2005 campaign. ibid.
Now he was confronted by home-grown suicide bombers. ibid.
Supporters of Gordon Brown wanted a date ... It looked like a Labour Party callous coup ... He was served with an eviction notice by his own party. ibid.
March 22nd is Census Day – when twenty-nine million of us will be asked questions which apparently will help shape the future of this country ... How many cars have you got? How big is your house? The government has been asking personal questions, gathering information about us, for two hundred years. This is Britain with Andrew Marr, BBC 2011
More than two hundred years have passed since Malthus created panic about over-population. But the topic is as hot as ever. One reason: immigration. ibid.
In 2001 almost 400,000 people listed their religion as Jedi. ibid.
In fifty years’ time White Britons will be a minority. ibid.
In some age groups, in some areas, women outnumber men. ibid.
Blackpool is now the divorce capital of Britain. ibid.
Over 40,000 same-sex couples have registered civil partnerships since they were first introduced in 2004. ibid.
In Britain the highest rate of gun crime is in rural areas. ibid.
Back in 1911 the average woman died at just 54, and the average man at 50. ibid.
The fastest-growing age-group of all: centenarians ... There are 12,000. ibid.
Governments know far less than they pretend to. ibid.
Tories triumphant: voting defeated. Lib-Dems crushed. As bitter recriminations flow between the parties, is their strained marriage on the rocks? Andrew Rawnsley, Dispatches: A Year Inside No.10, Channel 4 2011
The result of the 2010 General Election was a hung parliament, and a shock for the leader of the Conservative Party. ibid.
From the jaws of disappointment the two men snatched power ... The first coalition since 1945. ibid.
Foes were suddenly transformed into friends. ibid.
£80 billion over 4 years: maybe the Lib Dems hadn’t come into politics to cut spending, but many of their Tory partners did want a smaller state. ibid.
In their rush to prove that coalition could be strong and radical, ministers blundered into policies which were poorly conceived, or badly presented, or politically inflammatory, or all three ... There were U-turns on them all. ibid.
The romance of the Rose Garden Love-In is dead. ibid.
The UK is currently the only European nation to have suspended Article 5 of the European Convention of Human Rights which prevents such detention ... Consider the cases of the following terrorists: Walter Wolfgang, the eighty-two-year-old pensioner removed from the Labour Party Conference in September 2005 for heckling Jack Straw, and then after he tried to gain re-entry, detained under the Terrorism Act; eight-year-old John Catt stopped by police for wearing a T-shirt suggesting that Bush and Blair be tried for war crimes – searched under the Terrorism Act; Sally Cameron arrested and held for 4 hours for walking on a cycle path in Dundee – under the Terrorism Act; Isabelle Ellis-Cockcroft stopped and searched under the Terrorism Act despite being 11 years old. Ludicrous Diversion: 7/7 Bombings
Ironically, it’s not the terrorists attacking our way of life but our own government. Through the expansion of police powers and stringent anti-terrorist measures being imposed upon Britain, they are using our fear for our safety to restrict our liberty and they are using their false promises of security to erode our privacy. This is happening now. And it’s happening to every person in the UK. ibid.
That’s what this nation’s been built on – proud men … So we can stick our fucking flag in the ground and say, Yeah, this is England. This is England 2006 starring Thomas Turgoose & Joe Gilgun & Jo Hartley & Andrew Shimm & Vicky McClure & Stephen Graham & Rosamund Hanson & Andrew Ellis & Perry Benson & Frank Harper et al, director Shane Meadows, Combo
Our country has been stolen from under our noses. ibid. NF bloke
There was no more quintessentially English writer than Agatha Christie. Through her sensational murder mysteries she created a literary universe that captured our national spirit like no-one before or since. The magical worlds where she set her stories are in fact drawn from real places. Agatha Christie’ England, Channel 5 2021
Born 1890 in the Devon town of Torquay. The youngest to three children she lived a charmed life thanks to her American father’s large inheritance. ibid.
She introduced the world to Miss Marple when she published The Murder at the Vicarage. ibid.