Layout
The website is divided into Pages and Categories, each divided into main fields and subfields as indicated by the Union flag buttons in the right-hand panel. The fields and subfields of the Pages contain data, information, and ideas regarded as of enduring significance. The fields and subfields of the Categories contain items of news and comments on current issues contributed by the editor and readers. The bracketed numbers alongside the Category headings indicate the number of items contained in that category field or subfield.
Please note that material on this website is covered by the “Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988”. This means that material may be downloaded for personal study, but no part of it may be copied for publication elsewhere without written permission from the Britain Watch team. See Contact us.
Britain Watch is sponsored by PROSYMA RESEARCH LTD who can be contacted at their registered office – Unit 5, Brunel Business Court, Eastern Way, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, IP32 7AB.
Britain Watch is the brain child of Professor Stephen Bush. It exists to provide a platform for those who share an abiding respect for Britain’s past achievements, but who believe that quite fundamental changes are needed to secure our future as an achieving, confident and happy nation.
While individual contributors will offer their own interpretations of how this objective can be promoted, the editorial stance will be based on four imperatives:
- The overwhelming need for the foreseeable future to put earning our living in the world, and the means to that end, before every other objective.
- Merely tinkering with our political and economic systems is quite unlikely to achieve the fundamental changes we need in our fortunes as a nation in the future.
- Teaching our children and young people about Britain’s history and its achievements – scientific, artistic, industrial, military, political – in a proportionate and chronological fashion, is an essential part of securing a happy self-confident future.
- In any field, the reason for a change and the proposed change itself should answer the three basic questions of any practical philosophy:
What precisely is the problem? Can it be solved? How much will it cost?
Areas likely to be covered by the website over time may relate to: jobs and the economy; energy and the environment; technology and industry; government and public administration; the judicial system; the education system; immigration; national identity.
Contributors will be expected to specify the tags (key words) they wish to associate with their articles and to offer practical suggestions for remedying the problems they identify.
As well as these specific areas, there is also the more general and perhaps more fundamental question of the battle for the soul of our nation. In parts at least this question may also apply to the overseas countries of original British settlement namely the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which with Britain constitute the ABCANZ group of countries.
For more than a generation there has been an undeclared war waged on many of the most valued and familiar features of British, and particularly English, national life as they have existed for generations.
Particular targets in this war are the British Empire, the origins and achievements of the English-speaking peoples, the concept of duty owed by individuals to the nation as a whole, the idea of enduring academic values , respect for knowledge and expertise of practical and enduring value.
At the same time, dissension is sown by means of appeals to a grossly inflated concept of individual “human rights” which now absurdly has been extended by the judiciary to citizens of other countries transitorily present in this country.
Exposing the morale-sapping facets of this war in its many aspects, including most especially in school education and in public administration, and the defeatist attitudes which it engenders, is a major concern of Britain Watch. Readers are encouraged to bring forward practical suggestions as to how this may be combatted and replaced by a sense of national self respect, which is both realistic about the future and mindful of the achievements of the past.
To help in this large task, Stephen Bush has approached a number of distinguished individuals, whose achievements and experience in Britain and overseas span many of the relevant fields, including industry, schools and the universities, the armed forces, government, the civil service and the law. Articles written by some of these contributors appear in this first edition. Readers are invited to send comments on these and offer articles of their own within the scope of the website as defined above.
Gill Bush is content manager for the site and inter alia will look after the timing of the appearance of posts and articles.
For more information about authors, go to People