WWII veteran declares winning the war ‘wasn’t worth it’ due to the state of the UK

It’s tricky. I’m grateful for his service, respect his opinion and he’s got the right for his voice to be heard. But this is a 100 year old man and this interview will be used by some to fuel division.

I understand the spirit of this statement – that we have lost freedoms and it’s shameful – but the stakes of WW2 were FAR greater than anything modern politics has produced since.

Flawed democracy, limited liberty, and piecemeal equality across the whole of Europe will always be worth fighting for in the face of Fascism. My life, like many others, depends on it.

> “The country of today. No, I’m sorry, the sacrifice wasn’t worth the result that it is now.”

Mr Ray interjected for the first time during the discussion and attempted to press him to expand on his point.

> “What do you mean by that, though?” the GMB host probed, prompting the WWII veteran to reply: “What we fought for, and what we fought for was our freedom.

> “We find that even now it’s downright worse than when I fought for it.”

Let’s have another war to reset things and then we can complain again about the “youths of today don’t know they are born” and we continue to rant “it was much better in my day”.

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> Grumpy old man whinges that the country is going downhill since his day

Since when was this news?

I mean it clearly was worth it. Unless you think living under Nazi rule is better?

OK, but I think the country is in a better state than it was in 1945.

Surveys show fewer people are proud to be British. There is growing political polarisation, a perception the streets are unsafe. There is a lot of homelessness in some cities and town centers often feel dystopian. Many towns where I come from, the industrial north, are horribly generic – bookies, cheap booze, charity, bookies, gambling arcade, thrift shop, ‘we sell lottery’, etc, etc. I left 30 years ago and when I visit, it astounds me how little development there has been. My town looks worse, the town where several of my friends died from overdose, one murdered, two killed themselves. Deindustrialization hurts, yet he government seems to have abandoned so much of England. I have traveled a lot and seen development elsewhere, I’ve seen hope, entrepreneurship, but not so much at home.

Then there have been the massive transfers of wealth, austerity, few natives having children. To offset this, the government’s recklessly embraced mass immigration. This has led to more division, overturned services, and dare I say, in some cities, a grim lack of social cohesion. Some towns look absolutely shocking. A country needs an identity, and Britain, as presented well by Adam Curtis, has lost its identity. It is like a shipwreck with no hope of a future, and this will get worse. The left side of politics abandoned the working classes. Identity replaced class, and as inequality widened, we see in movies and on Tv, how toxic and incompetent the working class white male is. The privileged few, ideologues, hijacked the left. Unfortunately, this will/has driven desperate people into the arms of populists. History could have told us this would happen.

I have nightmares about living back in England. I love my friends and am proud of what my culture has achieved, but I felt abandoned by the government a long time ago and I think working class people are feeling it now. There is a pervasive feeling of gloom there, of bitterness, anger, of desperation, evident in the increase in deaths of despair, something we rarely, if ever, hear about because the vast majority of victims are poor, white males. The left is as much to blame as the right. As Orwell saw so many years ago, there is a danger in the left being populated by virtue signalling elites. But the public also seems to have bought into the woke problem, as towns collapse, as people suffer, as crime rates increase to levels not seen since the 90s when police made more arrests for minor crimes. Addiction, alcoholism, depression, are off the scale. I’m a leftist through and through, but I am sure my views will be seen as right, because I blame the entitled wokists as much as the uncaring rightists. If you want to make things better, then focus your ire on class, inequality, rather than get down on your knees because it is fashionable.

Almost all old people say shit like this, it’s meaningless it’s just a phrase they can’t help but keep repeating. Respect to this man but being a veteran doesn’t mean he isn’t subject to the same changes every old person goes through. It’s a nonsense statement anyway, if we hadn’t won those wars the world would be a much much much worse place. Maybe this guy just doesn’t like Jewish people.

I wonder why it is that it’s only English WW2 vets that are platformed. Was the UK not helped by other countries like India and Kenya? Were they not fighting for Britain?

Ww2 veteran has his own opinion.

Doesn’t mean we have to listen to it or treat it particularly different to a 16 year olds. Ww2 vets aren’t superheros they are everyday members of the public. Many vets would disagree with him

“old man doesn’t like change” thank god someone alerted the media.

Reminds me of the story of Hiro Onoda.

Not just him but many in the veteran community even post WW2 are ashamed at what this country has become.

The Barbarians are at the gates.

Ofcorse it’s on LBC they will turn anything and make it a controversy.

Look what they all did was incredible and we should never forget that.

We should also note that life for average citizen in the UK is a lot better than it was before WW2 anyone who has studied history or picked up a book can tell you that.

Do we have problems yeah like every fucking generation has done in the entirety of history.

That’s devastating. Politics aside, I can imagine the weight of those who saw such carnage and experienced such loss to feel this way about what their home has become.

They should be careful about doing this kind of interview. These veterans are very elderly, and the Good Morning Britain interview quotes smack of cognitive decline.