Watching one of the many egotists/politicians trying to convince the people of the British Isles that being Welsh, Irish or Scots is fine but being English is not, it occurred to me that this is racial bigotry at its worst...but we are falling for it. Just before he died Dennis Potter – playwright - told Melvyn Bragg: “I find the word British harder and harder to use – we English tend to deride ourselves far too easily because we’ve lost so much confidence, because we lost so much of our own sense of identity, which had been subsumed in this forced Imperial identity which I obviously hate. But we were at the same time, both a brave and a steadfast people, and we shared an aim, a condition, a political aspiration if you like, which was shown immediately in the 1945 General Election, and then one of the greatest governments of British history….I love England, and when I’m abroad I genuinely feel homesick…I’ve always loved my country, but not the flags and drums and trumpets and billowing Union Jacks and busby soldiers and the monarchy and the pomp and circumstance and all that, but the real – something about our people that I come from and therefore respond to.” Billy Connolly the actor/comedian who has made a living from being a professional Scot said: “Braveheart is pure Australian shite…William Wallace was a spy, a thief, a blackmailer – a c**t basically. And people are swallowing it. It’s part of a new Scottish racism, which I loath – this thing that everything horrible is English. It’s conducted by the great unread and the conceited w***ers at the SNP, those dreary little pr**ks in Parliament who rely on bigotry for support. So what is Englishness I wonder. Damon Albarn - Lead singer of Blur - reckons : There was a time when pop music wouldn’t have been able to explain what being English was all about, but that’s changed now. If you draw a line from the Kinks in the sixties, through the Jam and the Smiths, to Blur in the nineties, it would define this thing called Englishness as well as anything. Well, its a thought. Then theres David Starkey - historian: Yes, England - the country that dare not speak its name. In England we have this dreadful inhibition about talking about ourselves. England is a historic country which has shaped the world we are in. It is arguably the very origins of modernity. That is something we should celebrate, not be ashamed of. As Birdie Bowers - who died lying next to Robert Falcon Scott in the Antarctic, said: I love my country. . . That dear old country - I wonder if a fraction of its inhabitants appreciate its worth, or does it require a probation of long absences to show one that that little island is the best, the very best place on Gods earth. Ok, so I may sound patriotic...but does that matter? Or am I, like many patriotic Scots also, being influenced by flag-waving brainwashing? Lets appreciate what these politicos are really doing....and ask whats in it for them...
Posted on: Sun, 08 Jun 2014 14:52:26 +0000
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