Can't we just drop a nuke on the Vatican

[Greyblades]

Economically, you're richer - period. Technologically, clearly stronger. Health? So good in some aspects that problems in others have been engendered. Militarily, you're still relatively powerful - isn't relative power what you're always on about?

Technology and health: true, but diminished when even the utterly insignificant luxemburg can claim the same since the 1930's.
Economic and military: uh-uh, the days of being able to match the 2 other top navies combined and having europe worrying, about british goods being cheaper and more pleantiful than anything they can do, are long over. Relatively, we've gone from superpower to playing america's occasionally favoured pet and being continually undermined by the EU.

Being a British nationalist has double dose fluroxetine and access to a suicide hotline as a requirement.

In Japan? I don't know...

Dude they're not even allowed uncensored porn over there, of course they're miserable.

[spankythehippo]

Currently in Japan, the government is pushing people to make babies, with incentive bonuses and the like. Considering the aging population and the sexlessness of the younger generation, this poses a very serious problem.

Well, that's what I heard from family a while ago. I haven't followed up on it. I revoked my citizenship, so I don't particularly care (although I probably should *sigh*).

[rory_20_uk]

The Empire may have helped the colonies to a degree, but the main purpose was to help the UK. We, as far as possible for as long as possible, kept all the good bits at home. Heavy industry and ship building fell apart when other countries started doing the higher value activities - and of course we were responding to the threat by increasing the labour costs which helped ensure a decline became a collapse.

The Commonwealth has declined, but not terminally. Would it be able to cause a new Pax Britannia? Of course not. Could it serve a function? Probably - a loose grouping of countries who would speak with one voice on some issues (of course not all). Probably 95% soft power, but that is just a reality.

The need for productive units is of course there, but increasingly manufacturing jobs are undertaken by robots. Where we might have had a few thousand employees in car plants we now have a handful.

The decline occurs when upkeep of what you've got overwhelms the system: focusing on benefits for all, extending the length (not quality) of life and placing worker safety over productivity.

When Brunel built his "groundbreaking" tunnel near Bristol a few hundred workers died. Worse odds than the trenches of WW1. Now one workerr chips a nail and everything stops. If others don't work to these rules you've got a problem. Overheads are going up just as doing productive things are going down.

We are not quite a protectorate of the USA merely as we can't rely on their helps unless it benefits them. Our forces are designed to fit in with theirs. It is also designed to fit in with all those of NATO and probably others. Just because it fits with America does not make it bad. I personally think we should redesign our Armed forces to be like their Marines in a relatively small force but unified and set up to be good on the sea and transiently hold coastal areas and give up on the pretensions of big land units.

Where the population growth comes from is not an issue. How those persons view themselves is. If they grow up viewing themselves as English / British all well and good. We have a problem if the majority hold increased fealty to ancestral homelands. From the persons I have interacted with, Eastern Europeans often become "English" in a generation with a few residual customs. This is far less often the case from elsewhere.