Walterp
Member
- Location
- Pembrokeshire
The English were shocked to their core when (after being promised quick and easy victories by their leaders) they discovered that they were not as powerful or competent as they had been led to believe.
In the end it took three years, unprecedented brutality and ruthlessness against a civilian population, and an Army of 450,000 professional soldiers to defeat 35,000 Boer farmers.
It’s a national characteristic that the English prefer to do their soul-searching after taking poor decisions, rather than before. Put it down to over-confidence and ignorance, because I do.
Back then, the inevitable national enquiry (‘The Committee on Physical Deterioration‘ (est.1903)) subsequently discovered that keeping the working classes dirt-poor had the unintended consequence that, when you wanted them to fight, they were too rickety to do so. Notoriously, in some towns, as many as nine out of ten recruits for the British Army were rejected because they were so unfit.
If you ever wondered why and when free school meals were introduced, now you know: to improve the quality of recruits, ready for the next war.
A contemporary réprise of shock and humiliation now awaits the English when they discover that these days, when brain has replaced brawn as a nation’s dynamic, they are intellectually inferior. About 16% of adults are functionally illiterate, and OECD analysis reports British teenagers are the least literate, and least but one numerate, in the developed world.
Keeping the working classes ill-educated also has unintended consequences - the country proliferates low-skill jobs because that’s all many of our youngsters are good for - coolie labour.
I don’t know what the answer is this time, but I don’t think free school meals will do the trick.
In the end it took three years, unprecedented brutality and ruthlessness against a civilian population, and an Army of 450,000 professional soldiers to defeat 35,000 Boer farmers.
It’s a national characteristic that the English prefer to do their soul-searching after taking poor decisions, rather than before. Put it down to over-confidence and ignorance, because I do.
Back then, the inevitable national enquiry (‘The Committee on Physical Deterioration‘ (est.1903)) subsequently discovered that keeping the working classes dirt-poor had the unintended consequence that, when you wanted them to fight, they were too rickety to do so. Notoriously, in some towns, as many as nine out of ten recruits for the British Army were rejected because they were so unfit.
If you ever wondered why and when free school meals were introduced, now you know: to improve the quality of recruits, ready for the next war.
A contemporary réprise of shock and humiliation now awaits the English when they discover that these days, when brain has replaced brawn as a nation’s dynamic, they are intellectually inferior. About 16% of adults are functionally illiterate, and OECD analysis reports British teenagers are the least literate, and least but one numerate, in the developed world.
Keeping the working classes ill-educated also has unintended consequences - the country proliferates low-skill jobs because that’s all many of our youngsters are good for - coolie labour.
I don’t know what the answer is this time, but I don’t think free school meals will do the trick.
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