British Society is rather Unique in the world. It is a nation that has been extraordinarily successful over the past 1000 years in that it has not been conquered by another nation, it has been the birth place of much of the world sports, institutions, language and culture. For me this is on large part due to its ability to stay on course by having pressure valves for its society. That is those parts of society that often lead to the crumbling from the bottom up have largely failed to affect Britain in the past due to its ability to 'offload' these sectors of it society.

Britain is after all relatively cramped place and each time the population of poverty stricken, activists and anti-establishmentarians gains numbers, they have had the opportunity to move them on. Originally lawlessness and disease would have been the main controllers of these elements in society usually the victims of these ills being the poor and disenfranchised. However with improved governing and disease control, war and foreign settlement became the way that Britain maintained the numbers of its underclasses. Wars that wiped out huge numbers of otherwise uncontrollable men and settlement that moved them off to places such as Ireland in the 16th century, later the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries then Africa and Australasia in the 19th and early 20th century.

Since the 1950's Britains 'valve' for its disenfranchised as slowly closed over, up until that period Britain sent off huge numbers to wars ever few of decades as well as its re-settlement programmes. Coupled with the increase in the homegrown population of this underclass has been an influx of migrants, many of whom have joined in this sector of the community in feeling that they too are 'left out' of the main stream.

In my travels to Britain over the past dozen years I have personally seen the rise in the number of seemingly idle young British people...the same people that 40 years ago would have been en-route 'Down Under' for a better life having spent a mere 10 pounds to do so, or 60 years ago marching to the aide of Poland or Singapore , and 90 years before that marching onto the Somme and the shores of Gallipoli.... you see that pattern is there. Britain has always had a valve for her young men.

Doing some rough calculations Britain's Population is Currently 60 million, with about 5.5 million British people living outside of Britain, add to this the population of ethnic British Peoples from around the world....40m USA, 13m Canada, 13 million Australia/NZ, 1m Africa, 1m rest of the world gives Britain a potential Population of over 140million, if they did not have emigration imagine the state of Britain today. This doesn't include the huge dents in the population brought about by government sanction conflict.....War with foreign powers. Britain success in my opinion has been due to its ability to offload those that it can not provide for or who seek to destabilise the ruling class.

Humans are animals and if we look at them the way David Attenborough looks at any mammal... we would see patterns and cycles. For my mind the past shows us that disease, warfare and colonisation has been what has allowed Britain such a successful thousand years by being able to either 'control' or 'utilise' this underclass in a successful manner for the bulk of the population.

Other Nations have done things very differently to Britain and the result is without question a complete lack of wealth for the bulk of the population. It is only emigration, disease or warfare that allows the population to remain stable. In the past decade Britain has replaced this valve with the welfare state, artificially providing for her masses of young people. Unfortunately for her she is learning that this is unsustainable when the bulk of the population is unable or unwilling to provide the community safety net.

The United States has been the centre for resettlement of the offloading of many of the worlds excess and she herself has dealt with the issues of this problem by importing resources from the rest of the world (rather than sending her people to them) and building a supreme religion around the state, just as the USSR and other Regimes have done and also seems to allow her underclass to 'sort itself out' by providing all the means necessary in the form of guns and drugs. Its seems Britain's recent explosion which occurred since the blocking of her 'valve' was ignited when security forces actually closed off a similar 'valve' which was 'black on black' crime.

So either a rather nasty blackplagueII is around the corner or WWIII, or a new discovery of an inhabitable planet.....or just maybe we will discover a way of dealing with our own animal selves without the need for a pressure valve.....personally think team sport is the key to this...just looking at the innate needs of a human....it is sport that gives us our 'valve' and essentially doing it together that keeps us unified and connected. After all the Romans worked that out .... so did the Brits really.... up until they decided the tracksuit was trendy rather than functional.