Are you British?

[mjmooney]

1 hour ago, Awol said:

English when in UK, British when outside it. 

Proud of either/both because this is a mostly good country, with mostly good people, doing mostly good things, most of the time.

Imagine that’s how most normal people feel about their country, wherever it is. 

Hmmm... 

[villa4europe]

2 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Hmmm, I’m very very very anti team GB in the footballs.

I think it would be fun and more lighthearted, I actually don't enjoy watching England play a lot of the time (for different reasons don't enjoy villa a lot of the time either...) and with the nature of the Olympics and then also the u23s thing it could be interesting 

[chrisp65]

5 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

I think it would be fun and more lighthearted, I actually don't enjoy watching England play a lot of the time (for different reasons don't enjoy villa a lot of the time either...) and with the nature of the Olympics and then also the u23s thing it could be interesting 

Nope, not for me.

Horrible idea. Can’t imagine bothering to pay Lordy knows what to go to Wembley to see if maybe one Welsh bloke got on the England subs bench.

 

Plus I’m really crap at throwing patio furniture.

[bickster]

International football bores me, can't be arsed with it

[villa4europe]

5 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Horrible idea. Can’t imagine bothering to pay Lordy knows what to go to Wembley to see if maybe one Welsh bloke got on the England subs bench.

I'm the same with that, the interest would come from it travelling round and mixing it up

The ten English players and giggs stuff would be as shit as the normal stuff 

[chrisp65]

If we have a single international team, then the obvious thing to do is remove national leagues and remove my occasional trip to Europe. 

I’m agin’ it.

It’s a selfish standpoint, but I’m ok with that.

[sharkyvilla]

It's all a bit complicated by FIFA being founded after all the home nations FAs.  Same with a lot of other sports that were invented here.  Either way I generally think of myself as British, then English.

[Awol]

54 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Hmmm... 

Okay I’ll rephrase, for most people it’s normal to feel an attachment and fondness to your country of birth. I’ve lived in all four home nations and quite a few places abroad. This sense of ambivalence, embarrassment or even shame about one’s national identity is a peculiarly English phenomenon. 

Or as Orwell put it: “England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals 
are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always 
felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman 
and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse 
racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably 
true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of 
standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a 
poor box. All through the critical years many left-wingers were chipping 
away at English morale, trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes 
squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British.”

I don’t think much has changed since then. 

[snowychap]

1 hour ago, Awol said:

I don’t think much has changed since then.

Orwell further said:

Quote

If you were a patriot you read Blackwood’s Magazine and publicly thanked God that you were “not brainy”.

If you're right on the quote above then you'd need to be right with this, too - given that it's an integral part of the process that leads him to say it.

Edited April 3, 2020 by snowychap

[mjmooney]

1 hour ago, Awol said:

Okay I’ll rephrase, for most people it’s normal to feel an attachment and fondness to your country of birth. I’ve lived in all four home nations and quite a few places abroad. This sense of ambivalence, embarrassment or even shame about one’s national identity is a peculiarly English phenomenon. 

Well, as I was hinting at in my earlier post, I see shame and pride as two sides of the same dodgy coin. No shame whatsoever about my nationality here - but equally, no pride, either. Pride (an iffy emotion at the best of times) should be reserved for one's own achievements, not some vicarious claim on the history and culture of a vaguely defined and totally non-homogenous nation. 

[Awol]

1 hour ago, mjmooney said:

Pride (an iffy emotion at the best of times) should be reserved for one's own achievements, not some vicarious claim on the history and culture of a vaguely defined and totally non-homogenous nation. 

That’s fair enough. I prefer the Burkean idea that a society is a partnership between the living, the dead and those still to be born.

Our rights, responsibilities and achievements are part of a common endeavour, inherited and ongoing, the cultural scaffolding that binds a nation together through shared culture, custom and habit.

That’s not about being better or worse than anyone else, just unique, as all nations are - or diversity wouldn’t even be a thing. 

Nothing iffy about taking pride in that - imo, of course. 

[Enda]

I came here to be self-righteous about Ireland even being listed as an option, and stayed for the sensible posts about patriotism really being a bit silly.

[tonyh29]

this hasn’t been a thread of myopic patriotism , it’s been a thread with some alternative points of view and decent counter arguments , imo  

 

[Enda]

4 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

this hasn’t been a thread of myopic patriotism , it’s been a thread with some alternative points of view and decent counter arguments , imo  

If that’s in response to me, maybe you misread my meaning? I agree that we’ve had surprising levels of nuance for discussions patriotism chat.

[Spoony]

8 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Hmmm, I’m very very very anti team GB in the footballs.

Sorry if someone asked already, but may I ask why?

I’m not saying this is your view by the way but just if memory serves the Scotland/Wales/NI FA objections were that it somehow blurs the football associations or dilutes football in all the home nations which I really think is bullshit. I never got the sense that the English are trying to dominate any suggestions of GB football, and I thoroughly enjoyed it in 2012. Perhaps I’m naive as to the real issues but I really like the idea of GB football (in specific contexts like the Olympics). 

[KenjiOgiwara]

22 hours ago, StefanAVFC said:

I never refer to myself as English, in English. Only British.

But when speaking Polish, I say I'm English because you don't really say 'British'.

How long did it take you to learn Polish? My gf is polish, but learning a slavic language is very difficult for me. 

[snowychap]

9 hours ago, Awol said:

Our rights, responsibilities and achievements are part of a common endeavour, inherited and ongoing, the cultural scaffolding that binds a nation together through shared culture, custom and habit.

That’s not about being better or worse than anyone else, just unique, as all nations are - or diversity wouldn’t even be a thing.

You keep on repeating this as though 'nations' are the only thing in which these common endeavours, shared customs and habits occur and that isn't the case.

That can happen because of locality, because of influence (conquering peoples/invading armies/occupying empires*), for any number of reasons other than an arbitrary line drawn on a map.

On top of the obvious movement of peoples across the globe and the development of new cultures, customs and habits as a result (largely leaving claims of uniqueness in a nostalgic past), I'd suggest that virtual communities across borders, regions, nations and continents will also start to develop shared cultures, customs, habits and common endeavours and so these physical constructs that are nations are going to have to develop even more in order to stay relevant and that the retrenchment in to (largely) erroneous homogenous coalescences of 'unique' cultures is very much the last hurrah for this kind of stifling categorisation.

 

*Edit: Obviously, this isn't exhaustive and I'm not trying to suggest that the only way that influence is gained over an area is by these methods - though, historically, it has been very common.

Edited April 4, 2020 by snowychap

[Jareth]

I'd go further and say Brummie first, English second. I love my city and am proud of its diversity and tolerance, and that we all have the same shit accent. Contrast that to parts of Dorset or Norfolk and I have nothing in common with those 'English'.

[StefanAVFC]

39 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

How long did it take you to learn Polish? My gf is polish, but learning a slavic language is very difficult for me. 

I've been here 5 years, only really taking learning it seriously for 1 and a half years, and I would say I'm like a B1 level now. I would like to get to B2 but it's difficult to cross that line.

[mjmooney]

45 minutes ago, Jareth said:

I'd go further and say Brummie first, English second. I love my city and am proud of its diversity and tolerance, and that we all have the same shit accent. Contrast that to parts of Dorset or Norfolk and I have nothing in common with those 'English'.

Nothing??? Really? 

Just out of interest, have you lived in Brum all your life? One the best things I found about moving away from home (admittedly only as far as Leeds) to go to uni, was making new friends from different parts of the country (and indeed, other countries). There was plenty of pisstaking of each other's accents and football teams, etc., but I never perceived any genuine differences.