Great Britain, still a great country?

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I don’t drink tea. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had a cup of tea. But I’m a bit of an exception, as most people I know (especially the older generations) knock the stuff back like it’s going out of fashion. It is hilariously English, stiff upper lip and all that. Make a cup of tea and everything will be alright, even if there are nazis in your backyard and the cat has its tail caught in the mangle. The nation was founded on the notion that all you need is a cup of tea and a good umbrella.

Well, we are allowed to wave 'em but no-one has really wanted to for a long time. There’s a far-right, white supremacist political party called the British National Party (formerly the National Front) who use the Union Jack as their symbol, so it became synonymous with racism and violence to a lot of people. I think the BNP use it to symbolise a ‘pure’ or traditional Britain (i.e. one with only white people) and a return to the traditional, historical values of the old British Empire (shoot anyone who isn’t like you and close all the borders?). I shouldn’t really speak for what they believe, as I’m biased (in that I think they’re all a bunch of f*cked up wankers) but I think that about sums them up.

I imagine the perception of the Union Jack changes depending on where you live though. For instance, I live in Birmingham, which is incredibly multi-cultural and ethnically diverse, so if you hung a Union Jack out of your window many people would automatically assume you were a member of the BNP. But there are parts of the country that are fairly untouched by all this, so if you saw it displayed on a little farm in the middle of nowhere you probably wouldn’t blink twice.

Don’t get me wrong, we still use the image of the British flag a lot (the monarchy would be pretty stuck without it, and schoolchildren wave them if the Queen comes to visit their school, that sort of thing), but as a general day-to-day symbol you can drive for a long time without seeing one. Flying the flag itself isn’t racist, it’s just that you may be associated with racists if you do fly it. And that, as you so rightly put it, is trash.

(I should note here that it’s also to do with the disintegration of the British Empire, many people are just plain embarrased about what the flag used to represent so avoid it altogether)

However, the English flag (red cross on a white background, properly called the St. Georges Cross) is everywhere now, thanks to the recent European Football Championships. The whole of England simultaneously decided to attach one (or several) to their cars, windows, clothing, or anything else that didn’t move. The media were largely responsble for this, and there wasn’t a newspaper or magazine that wasn’t giving flags away at some point.

There were a few reports of companies, shops etc banning their staff from displaying the English flag as they were concerned it was racist but the majority of the population consider this to be nonsense. It seems that the mentality is ‘the Union Jack is ruined but we’re keeping the good old St George’s Cross, and if you try and stop us we’ll poke you with our umbrellas’. Or something like that.

What amuses me is that many people displayed the St George during the football to show how proud they were of the team and how they were supporting ‘our boys’, and we still played like a bunch of idiots. If flag waving equated with football success then we would have won.

Still, there’s always the Olympics…

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A true Thread Jack…

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Hey, those are cool! Thanks. The leaves are very appropriate at the moment as the weather is more like late autumn than the summer it’s supposed to be.

But that’s another Great British mystery…the weather.

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ill clear this up. long island consists of from east to west suffolk, nassau, queens and brooklyn. nyc is made up of the 5 burroughs which are brooklyn (kings county), queens, manhattan (new york county), the bronx and staten island (richmond county) which are all their own counties. then theres westchester north of the bronx which is out of the city. the rest i dont know about really.

what confuses the shit out of me is why nyc and jersey city are next to each other. i didnt know that unti l i drove through. im just going to ignore jersey city and pretend its nyc.

but on topic… i love britain though ive never been there and know really nothing about it. i just assume its nicer than america which to me consists of a very small portion of a very small island.

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i don’t know if this was ever answered fully, so here is an explanation from one of those former history majors (me):

The full name of the UK is “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” Great Britain, as mentioned is the big island with Wales, Scotland, and England (and a couple small islands i think). Wales was conquered and an Act of Union made it one political entity with England in the 16th century. Great Britain originally came into existence when James I became King of England and King of Scotland (king of two separate countries). In the early part of the 18th century the two parliaments were united (thus uniting the two countries into one political entity). Shortly thereafter, the unified political entity of England, Scotland, and Wales became: “The United Kingdom of Great Britain”. Northern Ireland was later added into the title after the Irish Free State came into existence.

Up until very recently, there was only one unified Parliament for the UK, making the country a unified political entity, made up of 4 distinct cultural regions. Now this all got a bit more hazy in 1999 when Wales and Scotland were given parliaments (N. Ireland actually had one from the 1920s until the 1970s and had home rule…this was suspended upon outbreak of major violence…established again, suspended…generally messy). These new Parliaments are devolutions of the UK Parliament, by which some power (over domestic matters) has been transferred to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments.

In this way, I wonder if, soon, a more appropriate title for the UK might be: the Confederate Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as the consitutuent bodies gain more control over their own domestic matters and the sole unifying factors become 1) being under one crown and 2) having foreign policy making, the military, etc. unified under the control of the parliament in Westminster

hopefully that helped/made some sense/is not completely wrong

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and here is my rant about British greatness:

i have my issues with Britain’s past (as well as the situation in Ireland)… i was raised by a father who was raised by grandparents who grew up in the wake of the Potato famine which was essentially a genocide, not a famine (Ireland is a land full of rich farm and pasture land… while the Blight was going on enormous amounts of food were being exported from Ireland to pay exhorbant rents to British landlords…the Irish were not allowed to own land, so instead they rented small plots in which potatoes were the most efficient thing to grow). The fact that the British are still in Ireland is a source of unhappiness and resentment in my family.

the British are also responsible for the creation of the concentration camp… They began that wonderful invention during the Boer War in which to put the women and children after burning their farms

further, the British and the French essentially destroyed hopes for stability in the Middle East with their handling of the region after WWI

All that being said…America has had plenty in its history to be ashamed of, yet I still consider it to be a great country. Britain remains great because of its politics (whatever you think of Blair, he is a great leader and his speeking ability is absolutely amazing…it puts Bush to shame), its culture, its rich (if occasionally blighted) history, and its economic and political power within the world. (my apologies if my rant took up much more room than the part of about Britain’s greatness, but every now and then, my heritage bursts forth…)

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youre from where exactly?

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Depends what u mean by great really doesnt it, and depending on that defines wheather it was great in the first place. Supposing that u do consider that it was a great country in the past im assuming u mean in terms of 1. economic and political influence and 2. cultural works of significance. Under both of these headings I think that it is safe to say that Great Britain is in a decline that has been going on significantly since the end of WW2 (or perhaps just b4), with the comming to power of countries outside the traditional sphere of world influence.

Although i do consider that Great Britain is in many ways a pleasent place to live-and there are many positives that i could mention- I do feel that our time has gone: the sooner we come to terms with this fact the sooner we can get over some of our hang-ups (I suggest racism, pretentiousness, small-mindedness and conservativism as a start).

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belonging to a “great” country is rather annoying honestly. telling a nation of people that they can theoretically kill anyone does wonders to the ego.

great to me is history and culture.

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Are you talking about current culture? Because Iraq has a long history filled with culture (Baghdad was for a while, probably the seat of the greatest culture in the world (though i guess it depends on what you mean by culture…but it was a center of learning, writing, the arts, etc.). The same things can be said of Damascus in Syria. I would by no means call Iraq or Syria great.

Or perhaps you simply speak of countries in their current incarnations (Iraq’s history was not as the country Iraq, but the center of an empire, the same with Syria).

I’m just curious as to what distinction you are making

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id say for iraq that it was once a great country. both history and culture would be judged by the way they currently are. i love the achievements the middle east made and respect the history as well as how their culture was but i dont let it overshadow their current situation. i suppose not so much history simply because giving the modern rulers credit for they once were would be ridiculous.

but power, freedom, wealth, and plenty of other things are crap because they can be abused and are worthless if the people are worthless.