I live in Britain, known informally by the rest of the world as ‘England’, whose official name is the ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’ a state that has only been in existence for less than 80 years. Despite being legally unified with Wales in the 1530s, we only became ‘Great Britain’ when the Act of Union in 1707 allied the Scottish with the English parliaments, and this union is represented on the flag of the UK, where Wales is not referenced at all.
Britain is a very grey country, in quite a literal sense. We are famous for complaining endlessly about the perpetually miserable weather; at this very moment, the country is buried beneath a dirty sheet of snow and slush and the sun hasn’t been seen for many weeks.
Don’t confuse the sun with ‘The Sun’, however, a newspaper with the largest daily readership in the country (more than 2.5million). By implication, the British people therefore find this paper and its arrogant homophobia, misogyny and unwavering defence of free-markets preferred reading over the other conservative newspapers (Daily Mail, The Times), the middling champagne liberalism of the Independent or the Guardian, or the truly progressive voice of the the Morning Star, which has a depressingly low readership figure of 17,000.
The Sun also loves the British monarchy, as do, apparently, 74% of the British people. 2012 marks the 60th year Elizabeth Windsor has inherited a role in the British state that allows her unprecedented power over the British state, power that is invested within the British government that denies the country any real form of modern democracy. Unlike most functioning nations in the 21st century, Britons elect only half of their government (House of Commons), whilst the other half (House of Lords) are party-appointed political donors, corporate lobbyists and the landed aristocracy. The head of state’s power is de facto controlled by the Prime Minister, who, along with the rest of the government, is not accountable to any member of the electorate. And because of our archaic voting system, which has no fixed terms and can come about whenever the government feels like it, less than 1/3 of voters in 2010 balloted for the Conservative Party, yet here they are in control and busily disembowling any semblance of a fair and considerate society.
Not that we as a population care. With the near-total loss of any traditional jobs such as manufacturing, construction and the decimation of smaller businesses, the British people have resigned themselves to the solace of a tv karaoke show that airs for 6 months, a tv dancing competition hosted by octogenarian men and twenty-something women, music made by young white people trying to sound like young black people, and the constant reguritation and promotion of ever shinier gadgets. We aren’t interested in the fates of our lives or our country; we’d much prefer disguising our contempt and self-loathing by doing things like watching football (soccer) or mercilessly punishing our livers three times a week, sometimes both at once, sometimes just the latter in local bars and clubs whom even the owners admit are hellish holes of desperation and sickness.
And British people hate, more than anything, to face up to the squalor we exist in. We are terrified about exercising our (limited, restricted) democratic power, about fighting back against a surveillance state, about breaking any of the more than 3000 new criminal offenses created since 1997, about speaking out against the rampant homophobia endemic amongst straight men, about admitting there is something disturbingly upsetting about the fact that one woman in this country is murdered by her partner every 84 hours. We are a terrified people, living in regular fear of any kind of change, because we automatically assume it’s always for the worst. The most miserable, coerced, gullible, ignorant and apathetic people on the planet, and we’re proud of it, or at least not bothered as long as we don’t miss our soaps and we can keep track of the score between Chelsea and Stoke.
‘John Bishop’s Britain’, a comedy tv programme featuring the epynonymous stand-up, aired an episode looking at British attitudes to animals, and while our famous reputation for loving non-human creatures was suprisingly soured by the reminder that we still tolerate the blood-sport of fox hunting, a young man quipped in his interview: “I think deep down the British are just lonely people, aren’t they? And I guess animals just help us with our insecurities, in a weird sort of way.” The quintessential British psyche: our lives are a horrible, damaging cocktail of deep cynicism, abscence of ambition and a revilement for people who have genuine self-esteem, but who cares, the X Factor’s on!
A Very Grey Country; Britain,
Garry
18 Feb 2012That is rather disturbing for a country as small as England(and Wales, and Scotland and Northern Ireland, bleh) that a woman is murdered like that ever 84 hours(I wonder what it is for us here?)
Andrea
18 Feb 2012The grass is always greener. I am an American that lives in the UK and I can honestly say I feel safer living here and raising my daughter here then I did in the US. I think that all countries have things that they are unhappy with and honestly compared to a lot of other countries it isn’t that bad here in the UK.
Cybele
18 Feb 2012I read it was more like 3 a week in the UK, not that there isn’t an undeclared war on women there like here. In the US about three women a day are murdered by a partner and there were over 84,000 reported “forcible” rapes last year, reported being the key word and the fact that the definition of rape was updated just this year by the Justice Department. It sounds like as a culture, Britan, like the US thinks it’s ok to abuse women and homosexuals with little or no shock…
Emma
18 Feb 2012When I saw this post I was prepared to disagree with it out of ignorant mindless patriotism. But then I read it and remembered I haven’t been patriotic of our country since I was 10. Unlike the above, I picked up on the smaller issues, the weather is one. We are such a depressed little nation that discussing the weather really is the highlight of the week. One thing not noted, which does actually scare me, is children. Yes, children. Or more so, children being in gangs, becoming thugs, mugging people. I see them in my small town, they are about 12. And it scares me. They are the future? England is in the shit, and it will not improve. But thats just the opinion of another depressed brit!
Jake
18 Feb 2012By comparison to the US, Britain is probably ‘safer’, though since the US has five times the population of the UK obviously more crimes will be committed over all. The biggest fear spread by the media here is, as you acknowledge Emma, is of a large class of violent children. This phenomenon has always existed, in every country, wherever children live in extreme poverty and squalor, and since Britain has th highest rate of child poverty in the developed world we suffer the consequences of that. The media would like us to believe that these young people had the choice to go on and become financially successful adults but gave it up in favour of a nihilistic existence, living in an extremely male-dominated culture where the only goal is to acquire social status by showing how violent, promiscuous and socially disruptive one can be. I’m not denying that there is a problem, but this isn’t something that sprouted out of nowhere. A generation of parents didn’t suddenly decide universally to neglect their children. These parents themselves were deprived of jobs and direction when they grew up in the ’80s and ’90s because of the Thatcherite decimation of British industry and individual communities, and because their baby boomer parents were already converted to the worship of money they were not given the proper skills to raise their own children. My own parents separated when I was a child, as have many of my friend’s parents since, mostly because these people want to live like adolescents in middle-age before they get too old for it. This is the real, massive social problem that results in so called ‘feral youth’, because the UK is becoming a nation deeply mired in ignorance of social skills and self-esteem, compounded and magnified by a lack of jobs to give people a sense of pride and self-worth.
Oh, and it’s great you’ve gotten rid of the 19th century concept of ‘patriotism’. It’s an intensely destructive, racist idea that segregates ‘us’ from the rest of the world, when we should be embracing and welcoming the vast array of cultures, languages and working people like us as our real brothers and sisters, not listening to the super-wealthy people in the government and the media who take it upon themselves to know what our best interests are.
Barb
21 Feb 2012I love Britain. It’s the rain that makes everything amazingly green. The people tend to be ribald, in my experience. The pubs can’t be beat for fun, nice warm beer, and good food. History sends shivers. The Cotswalds make me feel as though I’ve lived somewhere there before. Bath, my favorite, can’t be explained with words, only feelings. I’m not good enough to do that. I’d live there if I could. Well, my first choice would br Fort Augustus, Scotland. Bath is a very close second. I love Britain.
Mimi
21 Feb 2012I’m a Californian who had the privelege of working in England (pardon! s/b Britain) and fell in love with the country; unfortunately, I lived in what’s called a chav town but I drove absolutely everywhere on weekends. Earlier was a tourist in Wales, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland (which I know doesn’t count). Despite all the travel and living there for a year, I just broke the surface of all there is to see and enjoy.
Serpentskirt
27 Feb 2012Barb, you seem to be confusing Britain with Hobbiton. Yes there is a beautiful folk history here, a wonderful spirit of our agricultural past, but that only exists in he parts of the country you’ve visited (and fallen in love with). Go to Bradford, or Leeds, or Sheffield, or Hull, or Liverpool, or Newcastle, and you will find a very different picture, one of dirty industrialisation, Victorian slums and everything George Orwell describes in ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’, which is the England I’m writing from and recognise. In the South, where you live, the country is rich, agrarian, summery, middle-class, preserved as the personal rambling sites of previous rich and aristocratic generations. They are the Britain of the 1770s, not the 2010s.
And Mimi you’ve proved my point by wanting to escape the ‘chav towns’. These are the real faces of this country, the overcrowded welfare ghettoes that swallow up huge swathes of the population and who are held up for merciless, classist ridicule by the media and media personalities alike. I don’t understand how any American immigrants can settle in the most affluent parts of the country and somehow think this is an accurate reflection of British life. If a British immigrant (by some miracle) settled in Nassau County, or Marin County, do you think they would have any idea what life would be like in Harlem, or South Central LA? So unless I hear the words of an immigrant expounding the virtues of Britain from a flat in Grimsby or Oldham, then you guys are doing much more harm than good.
p.s. thanks for the self-correction Mimi 😛