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Hi everybody.
After reading up on Colonialism and our history in general, it figures that Britain isn’t as great as our school teachers and polititions like us to think it is.
As much as we helped Science and Technology along, I can’t help but think that our forefathers (along with those repressed puritans who buggered off to clear the Native Americans off their own land, with the help of our EU chums) had really set the foundations for ****
ing over planet earth and all it’s inhabitants.
Now that’s my opinion and it shouldn’t have any bearing on your own, but please discuss – How proud are you of being British?
I’m proud of being British. I don’t see why we should be the only country in the world where we have to be "ashamed" of who we are, with all this postcolonial guilt blah blah blah. A good bit of healthy patriotism never did anyone any harm. Furthermore, I’m proud of being English too.
Me too. I’m very proud, but I’m happy that we don’t go over the top with our patriotism here like some Americans do, especially in the media. All that flag waving and "the American people" is too vulgar. I think we get it just right in the UK.
Like most people in the UK, I don’t think of myself as "British".
Am I proud of being Scottish??
Well…..
– we invented a bunch of stuff – TV, telephone, light bulb, aeroplane ( twice) – to name just a few.
– came up with the theory of evolution
– produced the link between Newtonian and modern physics (Maxwell)
– wrote a couple of very good scary books (Jeckyl & Hyde, Frankenstein)
– discovered penicillin
and so on….
However, we have, as a nation, decided to skip over all that thinking and, for our national identity, go back to a fictional time of tartan and kilts.
And, for me, that choice tells you pretty much what you need to know about the modern day Scot.
Steve
Hiya,
Frankly there is only really the variety of horse racing and the music that hasn’t made me quit the UK a long time ago. The product of an Anglo-German marriage, I am, and will always remain, a proud EUROPEAN.
For all its undeniable excesses, verbosity, red tape, etc., I am more comfortable to throw in my lot under the EU flag – in the defence of which hardly anyone, if anyone at all, has ever killed or been killed – than the Union Jack or St George’s wotsit.
I appreciate this is an opinion probably at odds with that of most posters to what is a more right-wing leaning Forum than left or centrist (get thee to Blackpool, Mesh!), but anything other than this would be wholly dishonest of me.
Jeremy<br>(graysonscolumn)<br>
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Jeremy – a fair opinion. I might disagree, but life would be very boring if we all agreed on everything. ;)
P.S Blackpool’s off my list at the moment. :biggrin:
I’m fairly confident that at least one of the people who voted "I’m ashamed to be British" is Irish or Scottish. Could I be mistaken?
As I drive through the cotswolds and into the centre of London and drive past Buckingham palace, Nelsons collom and then onto Big Ben himself. I am very proud to be British!
Then I drive on towards my house.
I see scum, crime, muggers, crap hospitals, traffic, beggars, no police, schools without discipline, happy slappers, oap’s going to jail for having a bit of a protest, graffitti, red tape, MRSA, no dentists available to ordinary people, tax hikes, and all the other stuff that goes with.
I then dont like Britain.
Whatever happened to the Dunkirk spirit.
Still theres always the england football team to make me proud!!!:biggrin: <br>
(Edited by lollys mate at 7:43 pm on Oct. 5, 2005)
ok, as I am only a student I can’t remeber what britain used to be like, but I do know this:
I can’t go to a park, because I will get either mugged, raped or attacked in some sort of way, so me and some of my brothers friends play football down the end of my street.Its a nice quiet street. But a mental lady told us to go to a park. We told her the concicuences of going to parks and she replied. No my son goes there all the time and he’s only been mugged 4 times. Well apperantly thats not that bad.
My friend went on a bus to go home, she went on the top deck and sat there with her friend as they played with there phones. A girl came up to them and said to them give me your phones. Now my friend handed over her phone but then the other girl just started hitting her friend. She shouted to the driver to stop the bus, but the driver refused to do so. <br>It all ended up with this girl getting beaten up until the next stop when she ran off to get away.
Now Iknow it may be silly to get your phone out in public, but don’t you think thats bad? And with a girl getting beaten up on a bus and a driver refusing to stop!
I agree as I walked the streets in London I am proud, but thats just because of the fancy monuments, and thats just in London, but as I walk the streets anywhere else I am pretrified and scared that I am going to get attacked in someway.
Light Bulb: James Bowman Lindsay in the 1830s
Aeroplane: Alexander Graham Bell (with Simon Pierpont Langley) just before the Wright Brothers.
(and were creditied with it by the Smithsonian Institute for the best part of 50 years, until the Amercans chose to re-write history)
Before that, Preston Watson.
Evolution: Monboddo came up with a flawed but similar notion in the 18th century. Given that Darwin’s grandfather wrote about him and Darwin studied at Edinburgh Uni, it’s fair to assume that, although he never gave any credit, Darwin knew of his work.
Frankenstein: you’re kidding, right? You’re incapable of finding out the author of this book?
Steve
Has any original piece of work, that you are aware of, ever been credited to a Scot erroneously or are all the historical errors in the favour of the other nation (rather than Scotland?)
Of course.
And that would be a brilliant response to my comments, if only it had some relevance……
Steve
But Razzen, <br>What do you think of britain? <br>I think Steve is right there but I haven’t heard your opinion on what you think Britain is like.
Something to think about.<br>
Raz
Mary Shelley, as you know, lived in Dundee as a child and was in Edinburgh at the time of body snatching (which prompted part of the storyline).
Steve
Just for you, Razeen:
Wha’s Like Us?, by  T Anderson Cairns.
The average Englishman in the home he calls his castle, slips into his national costume-a shabby raincoat- patented by Chemist Charles Macintosh from Glasgow, Scotland.
Enroute to his office he strides along the English lane, surfaced by John Macadam of Ayr, Scotland.
He drives an English car fitted with tyres invented by John Boyd Dunlop, Veterinary Surgeon of Dreghorn, Scotland.
At the office he receives the mail bearing adhesive stamps invented by John Chalmers, Bookseller and Printer of Dundee, Scotland.
During the day he uses the telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh, Scotland. At home in the evening his daughter pedals her bicycle invented by Kirkpatrick Macmillan, Blacksmith of Thornhill, Dumfriesshire, Scotland.
He watches the news on T.V. an invention of John Logie Baird of Helensburgh, Scotland and hears an item about the U.S. Navy founded by John Paul Jones of Kirkbean, Scotland.
Nowhere can an Englishman turn to escape the ingenuity of the Scots.
He has by now been reminded too much of Scotland and in desperation he picks up his Bible, only to find that the first man mentioned in the good book is a Scot-King James VI-who authorised its translation.
He could take to drink but the Scots make the best in the world.
He could take a rifle and end it all but the breech-loading rifle was invented by Captain Patrick Ferguson of Pitfours, Scotland.
If he escaped death, he could find himself on an operating table injected with Penicillin discovered by Sir Alexander Fleming of Darvel, Scotland, and given Chloroform, and anaesthetic discovered by Sir James Young Simpson, Obstetrician and Gynaecologist of Bathgate, Scotland.
Out of the anaesthetic he would find no comfort in learning that he was as safe as the Bank of England founded by William Paterson of Dumfries, Scotland.
Perhaps his only remaining hope would be to get a transfusion of guid Scottish blood which would entitle him to ask-
Wha’s Like Us?
<br>
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