things that are not British

Via, a load of old nonsense from the Scotsman

Among the plans under consideration is a "rite of passage" plan in which all 18-year-olds would be forced to take part in a ceremony marking the fact that they are able to vote.

It is not British to force people to take part in state mandated ceremonials.

"This is a rite of passage for someone who is now able to vote to go through a citizenship course and a citizenship ceremony."

He added: "The trouble is that we are embarrassed by it. It is not what we do.

No it isn’t. So don’t do it then. It’s not British.

Blunkett also famously declared that Asian families should speak English at home in order to inculcate a sense of Britishness.

As an Englishman, I’ll speak any language I damn well please in my own home. In fact, I’m going to start learning Urdu tomorrow. Stubbornness: how British.

"We want to identify lessons we can learn from the experience of countries like Canada and Australia where they place more emphasis on the symbolic nature of citizenship, for example through ceremonies or national events."

If people like this prefer Canada or Australia to their own country, they should go and live there.

Mark Leonard, director of foreign affairs at the Centre for European Reform, who has written a book on renewing British identity, said: "There have to be proper integration policies. At present, people of different ethnic mixes live in a series of walled, gated communities."

Name one. Show me a gate. More specifically, show me how many parts of the United Kingdom broken down by council wards or parliamentary constituencies, have a nonwhite population from any single ethnic community of over 50%. Britishness is empirical. It seeks truth from facts.

One recent poll, for example, found that only 27% of Scots said they were British, 35% of Welsh people and 48% of English. Even experts find it difficult to define what Britishness is about, often retreating to the negative. "It is not about being English, white or Christian," says Leonard.

It is not British to elect a new people if the old one doesn’t suit the government.

Experts have warned that the bombers are the product of Britain's ghettoised urban culture, which has failed to provide national symbols around which to unite….

The implication here is that a “ghetto” is a place where people from different cultures live together. No it isn’t. It is British to respect the actual meaning of words. This is, after all, the home of the English language.

I shouldn’t get irate about this. Every major incident or controversy seems to attract a bunch of prehensile snack thinkers with something to sell. We should be British and tolerant about it.

Anyway, let’s finish with a great old British tradition, the multiethnic joke.

An Afro-Caribbean Englishman a Sino-Irishman and a Scots Muslim of Pakistani descent went into a pub. “That Hazel Blears” said the Afro-Caribbean Englishman, who was Welsh on his mother’s side. “What fucking planet is she from?”

Comments

[dsquared]

I quite like the "rite of passage" idea but it would have to be done properly; ie psychedelic herbs, lizards, sweatlodges, ritual mutilation, fire, lion-killing etc. I suspect that a dull readthrough of some Birtspeak version of the Boy Scout Oath at the local registry office is just going to contribute to the long decline of our national vigour.

[dsquared]

perhaps we could require that you can't get onto the electoral register unless you gather the skulls of three Australians (our natural tribal enemies; I would have said the French or Germans obviously but I suspect that this would lead to complications at the EU level).

[Chris]

The only defining characteristic of British I can think of is the tendency to nick the best bits off any other culture and add them to our own. The best way we have found of doing this has been to bring in immigrants and let the flow of cultures be 2 way.
(This applies to the English language too in that we will happily nick the best words from other languages until they have no more good words left of their own and thus have no reason to be used in preference to english)

[M Pyre]

It's a good thing we Brits can't be bothered with all this patriotic nonsense these days. The only time we wave flags is during important moments in our history such as the Battle of Wembley (1966) or the more recent repulse of the Convict Invasion at Edgbaston.

I still find it puzzling though that armed with only a few rusty Lee Enfields, a gunboat or two and the occasional foolish charge of a Light Brigade that we built such an empire. Look at the New Imperialists of Merkinland; the most expensive arsenal in history and they can't beat a few poorly armed insurgents. Having said that, if one calculates the power of an empire by the quantity of outlets serving poor quality snacks and fizzy black sugared water then they have us beaten hands-down.

No wonder they need all that flag-saluting and allegiance-pledging palaver to "feel better about themselves".

[Alex]

Thanks for "prehensile snack thinkers", by the way.

[mr k]

I think Mr blair is hoping everyone will get so fed up of living here that we will all move to other countries, thus reducing the only people at risk of terrorism to himself. He's very self sacficing.