Real England

speaking of, just read this Gary Younge piece that starts with this:

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/03/21/small-island-gary-younge/

When we returned to London in 2015, after twelve years in the US, we could not get our son into the local elementary school. His class in Hackney, the neighborhood where we live, had the maximum of thirty kids in it, and none were leaving. Pretty much all the nonreligious schools in the area were at full capacity, too. He ended up getting a spot at a school two miles away. When our daughter started kindergarten a couple of years later, her class was also capped at thirty, and full.

Today her class has just fifteen kids in it. Next year the school—located, apparently without irony, on the borough’s first “21st Century Street,” with dedicated green space, bicycle parking, electric vehicle charging, and 40 percent “tree canopy cover”—will close. (It is merging with another undersubscribed school across the main road.) So will more than ninety across the country. Low birth rates and Brexit-induced emigration have forced these changes. On average, elementary school classes in England are at 88 percent capacity, but in some areas, including my fashionable but still quite poor quarter, the rate is far lower.

Not only are the schools shrinking and shutting down—the kids who go to them are getting smaller. After more than a decade of austerity, British five-year-olds are a full centimeter shorter now than they were in 2010, and they are becoming significantly shorter than children in other countries

remember when doctrinaire free marketeers used to argue that gutting public infrastructure was necessary because private enterprise would create more, better quality facilities and services?

you don't hear that said with a straight face nowadays

even in the sectors that were at the heart of private business in a mixed economy: retail, hospitality, entertainment for example, everything is shittier, narrower, more expensive

Some heavy relief

The roast beef of Old England. pic.twitter.com/iAQ1jBKEfE

— david wheatley (@nemoloris) April 27, 2024

This is a ridiculous story…

Former Port Vale player Ryan Burge hates the club so much, he flew a plane over their ground on Saturday with a banner MOCKING their relegation from League One.

He got a pilot’s license, JUST so he could do it.

All new levels of pettiness 🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/Da6IhMIozg

— Ryan Dilks (@RyanDilks1) April 29, 2024

might actually be fake england fml

Looks like there's a shortage of police sketch artists in Tunbridge Wells.

Investigators have released a computer generated image of a man they would like to identify in connection with a burglary in Tunbridge Wells. https://t.co/hPrbjaLeyU pic.twitter.com/D35VA8TfQd

— Kent Police TWells (@KentPoliceTWell) April 29, 2024

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Buttigieg

Can’t believe this app is free pic.twitter.com/CpuRlny2Mo

— Ant (@M0kujin) April 30, 2024

Hope somebody can stop Brian Cox's crime spree in Tunbridge Wells soon

https://www.tiktok.com/@globetrots/video/7362198488857218337

West Yorkshire failing to get to get into the top two again!

hackney moleman klaxon:
https://www.ft.com/content/fe13350f-6522-4892-b67e-301828b10070 (needs registration but it's free)

“tunnelling is something that should be talked about without panicking”

wow, a worthy addition to the lore

related (actually conger hill in toddington):
https://i.imgur.com/w2yb889.png

let her cook imo