Perhaps an attempted Communist revolution, triggering civil war, during which the Germans are able to launch an invasion. Shades of Saki's When William Came.
Worst possible Britain
- Thread starter Lateknight
- Start date
I think any one-party state would suck, regardless of position on the spectrum of ideologies.
John Farson
Banned
Yeah, "What if Gordon Banks had played" comes closest, I think. That TL is for Britain what the "Fear, Loathing and..." TL is for the USA.
Dan wrote:
Oh, and we'd still have Pounds, Shillings and Pence rather than having gone decimal, (because it's the Imperial way damnit, and tradition don'tchaknow) making trade even more difficult and leading to further barriers to progress.
One of the interesting anomalies about 1984 is that Orwell strongly hints that Oceania is basically an American Empire, and yet they are shown as using the metric system. Whereas in the real world, the USA has been more recalcitrant than almost anyone about metric, and would certianly not impose it on the world.
Then again, despite his protestations against nationalism, there is an observable strain of nationalism, bordering on xenophobia, in Orwell(especially noticable in his essays), and one can imagine him just lumping "bloody yanks and bloody metric" together as part of one foreign onslaught destined to overrun England.
Oh, and we'd still have Pounds, Shillings and Pence rather than having gone decimal, (because it's the Imperial way damnit, and tradition don'tchaknow) making trade even more difficult and leading to further barriers to progress.
One of the interesting anomalies about 1984 is that Orwell strongly hints that Oceania is basically an American Empire, and yet they are shown as using the metric system. Whereas in the real world, the USA has been more recalcitrant than almost anyone about metric, and would certianly not impose it on the world.
Then again, despite his protestations against nationalism, there is an observable strain of nationalism, bordering on xenophobia, in Orwell(especially noticable in his essays), and one can imagine him just lumping "bloody yanks and bloody metric" together as part of one foreign onslaught destined to overrun England.
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Might just be an impression but I feel people like Orwell - critical of systems, hierarchies and ideologies, with a highly developped ability to sniff out lies, contradictions and injustice - often seem susceptible to xenophobia in a very specific (perhaps bordering on paranoid) way.
I'm not exactly surprised to hear someone like that go "Wait, you speak [foreign language]? What for, to sell us out to [foreign country]?!" or "They were our enemies in the past, why should they be our 'allies' now?!"
Maybe it's because the same wiring in their heads that alarms them to shenenigans can also make them allergic to "impurities" in general (anyone and anything that doesn't function like themselves/the processes they're familiar with). Or maybe it's simply that being "narrow-minded" also favours being critical; after all if you are too "open-minded" and give everything the benefit of the doubt, you won't get around to critisize anything.