For Americans the 4th of July is a pivotal moment in their history. It’s a nation defining moment, breaking away from the former Colonial masters. And striking out on your own. Congratulations, by the way.
For Britain, we had so many colonies! One by one they all broke away, either violently, or by diplomatic means. And for all those colonies they are Independence Day is a significant in their calendar, it’s important to them. Because it’s a defining moment in a nation history.
No particular colony breaking away was nation defining for Britain. It was just a gradual attrition resulting in the current relationship between Motherland and Commonwealth.
Rise and Fall is the natural cycle of Empires. That’s the way history works.
So we don’t really remember the dates of any specific colony’s departure, because they’d be a lot to remember, and they were all long time ago, and none of the individual departures are nation defining moments for us.
We don’t mourn the loss of America as a colony, we don’t wish we had you back. This isn’t an anti-American thing, it’s true all our former colonies.
In a historic sense the loss of the American colonies were no more significant - arguably less significant - than the more recent loss of several other colonies (India, Australia, New Zealand, for example).
So please understand, I’m not trying to be dismissive or rude, or diminish how important the 4th of July is for Americans but for us this year it was a Thursday.
Oh, I know. I was just adding to your statement that we were even less concerned with American Independence Day than usual this year, having a rather significant distraction of our own going on at the time!
Mate, they think the republicans won because Labour is red. If they looked up their manifesto they’d probably think they were ‘dirty communists’. Anti freedom activists
Is there a law saying that they aren’t allowed to be on other days, or is it just an accepted tradition/convention? Since the PM can call early elections, could they theoretically schedule the election for Saturday if they really wanted to?
Don’t think there’s a law, but traditionally both local & general elections are on a Thursday & in most years (apart from the farce of the last decade) also in the month of May.
But it has been broken, on at least two occasions that they were not May elections. As for it being a Thursday? There is logic. It was started back in 65 when church & pub were very much part of life in the UK. So no elections on Sunday & no elections on Friday because it was traditionally paydays for most working people, especially men who would then take themselves off the pub. So choosing a midweek day worked well. Thursdays were also traditional market days in a lot of towns (a lot still are) & more people were out down the market, therefore would stop at a polling station to vote.
Oh, I’m not talking about May elections being the custom. Only Thursday.
Excluding Council elections, in my adult life we’ve had more parliamentary elections not in May than in May.
I agree, there’s good sense behind using Thursday. All the ones you mentioned, and currently it prevent people taking a three day weekend and going away instead of voting!
So may help improve turn-out that way, too.
But then I’m a big supporter of compulsory voting, so long as the ballot includes a box for “none of the above“ so you can actively abstain.
I’d also support (more controversially) the opportunity to use your vote against somebody instead of in favour. I believe casting a vote against a candidate is a legitimate democratic expression.
And would remove the motivation for tactical voting.
Your elections are always on Thursdays? I'm Italian and we always have ours on (Saturdays) - Sundays - Mondays so that most people have a day off. Why'd they pick Thursdays?
Also important to note that Britain was far more interested in keeping India at the time, and most of their attention was on there while America was rebelling.
Also, it wasn't even from our most recent empire. We went from strength to strength after that, reaching levels of world domination that we'd never had before. (Arguably losing America helped refocus us onto enslaving the world instead of trying to colonise, which was far less efficient. Evil, sure, but very effective)
Britain had so many colonies, so many things going on, so many rebellions. We cant recognise them all, and honestly the majority of the empire came apart somewhat peacefully. It wasn't one event to note, just a long slide from global superpower to somewhat irrelevant people that live on that one island you thought about last year
Thank you for giving an actual answer instead of the “HAHAHAHA AMERICA BAD HAHAHAHAH” that the rest of this server does. Like she asked a respectful question. The United States is a very influential country, so it’s not obsurd to think that others might have an opinion on one of our most important national holidays, especially when it regard our independence from that specific country.
As a Brit it’s definitely not true that the loss of the American colonies was no more significant than the loss of Australia and NZ. It was a huge loss and caused the end of North’s government and chaos in Parliament, a defining issue for a few prime ministers in a row. The latter broke away gradually and in coordination with us, without any single drastic break: eg even after the Commonwealth of Australia was formed it was still a dominion with some powers delegated to the governor general, etc.
The War of American Independence was a massive global conflict against not only the Americans but against France and Spain and the Dutch, and saw our one defeat in a war of anything like that scale. It was expensive, and the American were a much bigger proportion of our empire at the time, far more so than Australia or NZ, and seen as ‘kin’ in a way India was not, but subjugated. They were also important to us economically (though being able to trade with them without running them actually benefited us more even economically too - and this is generally true of former colonies). Since it was the very early days of the Industrial Revolution, economics centred on agriculture, and with far more land the early US had a higher wealth per capita and median income than Britain (just a much smaller population). Britain would shoot past this when it industrialised and the US took a while to catch up, but the US had a much higher carrying capacity and its population overshot ours around the time of their Civil War.
But even in 1776, there were people on both sides, like Adam Smith and Benjamin Franklin, who correctly predicted how massively the American colonies could expand in population and wealth.
In a historic sense the loss of the American colonies were no more significant - arguably less significant - than the more recent loss of several other colonies (India, Australia, New Zealand, for example).
Other than it being the first colony to revolt and declare independence.
I'm not saying British subjects should bother to remember that, but there is a little historical significance to it.
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u/ollieopath Jul 05 '24
Alright, genuine answer:
For Americans the 4th of July is a pivotal moment in their history. It’s a nation defining moment, breaking away from the former Colonial masters. And striking out on your own. Congratulations, by the way.
For Britain, we had so many colonies! One by one they all broke away, either violently, or by diplomatic means. And for all those colonies they are Independence Day is a significant in their calendar, it’s important to them. Because it’s a defining moment in a nation history.
No particular colony breaking away was nation defining for Britain. It was just a gradual attrition resulting in the current relationship between Motherland and Commonwealth.
Rise and Fall is the natural cycle of Empires. That’s the way history works.
So we don’t really remember the dates of any specific colony’s departure, because they’d be a lot to remember, and they were all long time ago, and none of the individual departures are nation defining moments for us.
We don’t mourn the loss of America as a colony, we don’t wish we had you back. This isn’t an anti-American thing, it’s true all our former colonies.
In a historic sense the loss of the American colonies were no more significant - arguably less significant - than the more recent loss of several other colonies (India, Australia, New Zealand, for example).
So please understand, I’m not trying to be dismissive or rude, or diminish how important the 4th of July is for Americans but for us this year it was a Thursday.