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| Subject: Acknowledging animosity is the key to solving it | |
Author: Trixta (UK) | [ Next Thread |
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] Date Posted: 04:51:34 11/06/04 Sat In reply to: Jim (Canada) 's message, "I'm fed up with the British" on 01:51:54 11/04/04 Thu Jim, take a deep breath and get your head around something: we don't have to like one another to work together - but we must respect one another. The English, Scots, Welsh and Irish have a long and bitter history - we've all battered seven shades out of each other for long periods of the last millenium. That doesn't go away quickly. The same thing is evident in Europe - bitter memories of past wars are still in the background and have helped to make us who we are. The French and English still don't quite get on, and as for the English and Germans - well, Basil Fawlty anyone? (Interestingly, none of the others have a problem with either the French (except for their penchant for port-blocking and sheep-burning) or the Germans (except for the whole towels-on-sunbeds issue)). There are in canada, no doubt, still some who will have a problem with the Germans, because they were in WWII or dislike the French / English because old enmities die hard. To say we hate one another is incorrect and I must apologise as I did use the word rather hastily in a previous posting. In the end, for that is all that matters, all the old animosities within the UK have been reduced to jokes and stereotypes: the pompous English fop / thuggish English football hooligan, the miserly / drunkenly violent Scot, the sheep-shagging / hymn-singing Welshman and the small-minded sectarian Irishman (okay, but 3 out of 4 is good going). Only the smallest handful of us actually take the animosity to anything approaching hate and all of them tend to be extreme nationalists. You have much the same thing in Canada from what I can gather in the whole English-French thing: most people don't let it bother them, a minority shout about it and a minute handful actually believe it to be the most important thing on the planet. We have all, long since, acknowledged that united we stand and divided we would fall. Devolved, however, is the grey area and while I oppose centralisation I would never dream of trading in the arrogance of the Sassernachs, the aggression of the Jocks, the bestiality of the Welsh or the pure rage of the Irish for independence. We are, after all, British and geographically, linguistically, economically and politically are too closely-knit to effectively separate. If you really want to see Britain at work, visit - for crying out loud don't rely on the press or the rants of a few of us to make a judgement. You should also be aware that irony and sardonism are keystones of the British psyche - with 60 million of us crammed into these little islands you need a fairly twisted sense of humour not to go mad. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |