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“ It is intended that youn think that way. Here we see the 'brainwashing' of the last two decades at work from this observation. Flag flying in the UK is an interesting case study and a litmus test for the indoctrination from the New Labour era and its lasting damage. Fly the Welsh or Scottish national flags and that is cultural heritage under mutli-culturalism, flag the St George flag and its seen as far right. The same is also claimed of the Union flag. More on this later. “
Nope your right, it was further down, you use fancy words to basically say “you have been brainwashed idiot, Labour is evil herpa derp”
That’s why I called you a daily mail reading nutjob, as it’s this kind of crap that tabloid usually spouts and I’m making fun of you for it... because thats the British way !
Well you got to the crunch of it at least.
The brainwashing is done, a whole generation has grown up not giving a feth about cultural identity, and that was 'just as planned'. Schools were being transformed into 'Business Academys' in order not to teach history at all, partly this s cost cutting, but mostly it is a form of cultural sterilization.
Why would a government focus so heavily on multi-culturalism while at the same time divesting the English of their own culture unless there was an agenda behind it?
You dont need to go to the Daily Mail to evidence this, knowing close friends with kids and who see this first hand. Such as those who could not study Shakespeare's Henry V because it was 'racist', and another could not talk about his father being a soldier during a class on 'what does daddy do; because it was "offensive", while the kid who's father was in prison on drugs related charges got to speak.
It is anything but herpa derp, what is happening is fething alarming to anyone with the common sense to see it. A lot of people do notice but are frankly too jaded or worried to speak out lest they be assumed to be alt right.
Please learn to use the quotes function, it will make things easier in future for everyone.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/07 06:25:45
n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.
It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion.
“ It is intended that youn think that way. Here we see the 'brainwashing' of the last two decades at work from this observation. Flag flying in the UK is an interesting case study and a litmus test for the indoctrination from the New Labour era and its lasting damage. Fly the Welsh or Scottish national flags and that is cultural heritage under mutli-culturalism, flag the St George flag and its seen as far right. The same is also claimed of the Union flag. More on this later. “
Nope your right, it was further down, you use fancy words to basically say “you have been brainwashed idiot, Labour is evil herpa derp”
That’s why I called you a daily mail reading nutjob, as it’s this kind of crap that tabloid usually spouts and I’m making fun of you for it... because thats the British way !
Well you got to the crunch of it at least.
The brainwashing is done, a whole generation has grown up not giving a feth about cultural identity, and that was 'just as planned'. Schools were being transformed into 'Business Academys' in order not to teach history at all, partly this s cost cutting, but mostly it is a form of cultural sterilization.
Why would a government focus so heavily on multi-culturalism while at the same time divesting the English of their own culture unless there was an agenda behind it?
You dont need to go to the Daily Mail to evidence this, knowing close friends with kids and who see this first hand. Such as those who could not study Shakespeare's Henry V because it was 'racist', and another could not talk about his father being a soldier during a class on 'what does daddy do; because it was "offensive", while the kid who's father was in prison on drugs related charges got to speak.
It is anything but herpa derp, what is happening is fething alarming to anyone with the common sense to see it. A lot of people do notice but are frankly too jaded or worried to speak out lest they be assumed to be alt right.
Please learn to use the quotes function, it will make things easier in future for everyone.
Well I grew up all over the world within the RAF, coming back to the U.K. in the early 90’s and attending public school in Scotland and later England, with a mass of English history being taught and surrounded by English people I can safely say your assertion is wrong and is a bit conspiracy theory ish, the man reason why I call myself British first and welsh second is because attended schools in Wales, Scotland and England with the emphasis on learning the cultural history of all 3 respectively.
Anyone that thinks that the English heretige has been watered down due to multi culturalism is frankly a fool who doesn’t know the history of this country in the slightest, there is no such thing as an “Englishmen” were all just a mish mash of various European and home nation cultures and have always been, none of our legends are our own and just “borrowed” from France, Germany etc. Which ironically is why lord of the rings was written, Tolkien knew we had no real “English” mythologys.
So no, I’m not alarmed, just seeing the status quo of the changing English/welsh/scotish culture to fit new ideas and eventually turn them into our own, which is also another very British thing to do.
Frazzled wrote: Wow this thread has become almost American in it's hostility.
It's cause someone brought up a point in British history that a lot of Brits find touchy.
penalty shoot-outs ?
Don't even joke
I though you guys were still hung up about Mohamed Salah's injury.
Or maybe it's just the Egyptians, since he'll fully healed by the time the premier league starts again…
Well I grew up all over the world within the RAF, coming back to the U.K. in the early 90’s and attending public school in Scotland and later England, with a mass of English history being taught and surrounded by English people I can safely say your assertion is wrong and is a bit conspiracy theory ish, the man reason why I call myself British first and welsh second is because attended schools in Wales, Scotland and England with the emphasis on learning the cultural history of all 3 respectively.
Anyone that thinks that the English heretige has been watered down due to multi culturalism is frankly a fool who doesn’t know the history of this country in the slightest, there is no such thing as an “Englishmen” were all just a mish mash of various European and home nation cultures and have always been, none of our legends are our own and just “borrowed” from France, Germany etc. Which ironically is why lord of the rings was written, Tolkien knew we had no real “English” mythologys.
So no, I’m not alarmed, just seeing the status quo of the changing English/welsh/scotish culture to fit new ideas and eventually turn them into our own, which is also another very British thing to do.
First off you need to explain your upbringing. You grew up in the RAF? So both of your parents worked in the RAF presumably and their jobs were such high level that neither your mother or father could stay at home to raise you? Are they spies?
Secondly why are you investing yourself so much in a thread about Englishness if you consider yourself to be British first, Welsh second?
Finally you're completely wrong in your assertion that there's no such thing as an Englishman's identity. This very thread proves it. Most of us are intelligent enough to understand that we have a bit of the Roman, Scandinavian and dare I say it, French in our ancestry but that has little to no impact on there existing a separate English culture. So you when you, as a self identifying Welshman turns to a thread and says that there's no such thing as an Englishman you get my back up because that's exactly what I am and what I consider myself to be. My Grandad was of the Black Lake gypsies (think real peaky blinders) who I believe are of Irish descent. He considered himself English. His parents and their parents considered themselves English. At the time (not so much now thanks in part to the media) it was something to be proud of. This is what has changed - any pride in being English is considered uneducated and far right at best and flat rascist at worst. It's an absolute joke and makes me sick that pride in our identity is discouraged in this way while the Scots, Welsh and immigrant population are encouraged in the maintaining of the culture of their home country. You've only got to look at the Welsh language for evidence of this - the Welsh voted to remove it from school curriculum, ironically it was the English that said Welsh must be taught in Welsh schools to help maintain their identity.
Orlanth wrote: It is interesting that this thread has revealed a lot of pointers to a problem with the social engineering of British identity for party political gain. I will make some comments on what I see here then return later to handle replies and expound more on the subject later.
This is, I think, quite true. English people use the term British quite interchangeable with their own culture of 'Englishness' usually.
This is the main issue, and one that really needs to be confronted.
It only needs to be 'confronted', if you think of the English as the enemy beyond the southern border. If/as you do, that is your problem and not really anyone elses.
Curious that you believe that it is a concern with this habit that is a problem, and not the habit itself.
This isn't really the case. The UK has been very harmonious, the raise of Scottish and Welsh nationalism is a very recent occurance and has much to do with the divide an rule policy of the Blair years.
Obviously untrue. It has unquestionably become more prominent in media focus and actual numbers, but it is not new, nor even new in the mainstream. That the majority of nationalists used to be in unionists parties has more to do with a two-party Westminster system than their lack of enthusiasm for devolution/independence.
Prior to Blair Plaid Cymru and the SNP were fringe joke parties with very little support.
Sorta. Prior to Blair there were no partial-PR elections to allow people to diversify their voting choices. The SNP took 29% of the vote at the very first Holyrood election. In the 1997 GE they only took a little below the LDs as a percentage of seats competed.
However now we have the myth of England vs everyone else, engineered for party benefit that has largely backfired.
Britishness invoked the ideal of the United Kingdom, which while England was the economic and geographical central component it based on a unified identity to which the Scottish and Welsh identity was a protected part and no less than the whole.
This is really top flight revisionism. Scots had two of their languages outlawed. They're still subject to extreme derision amongst the unionist parties that fight tooth and claw against any official use of one, and have so far successfully supressed the other, which most still deny can be described as anything other than Bad English. The clearances happened. The Poll Tax experiment. I'm not sufficiently expert on Wales, but to pretend that Scottish identity (itself highly varied, though generally unified in the English elite imagination) was protected by London-centric rulers and governments is nonsensical and disproven by 300 years of dismissal. That Scots are a resistant liability requiring domination is enshrined in the British National Anthem, for goodness sake.
Back as far as the 1980's the history curriculum would cover the history of the British isles. By the age of twelve I had been taught about Roman Britain, the Anglo Saxons, Norman Conquest continuously through to King John, the Tudors, Edward 1 through to Robert Bruce, the English Civil War and Jacobite rebellion. I got a grounding in the national identity. Then learned a more modern history covering the first half of the twentieth century as a teenager. In more recent years it is normally reduced to a form of very slanted social science. Restricting the curriculum to topics like womens suffrage, and post colonialism is common and is intended to both strip cultural and national identity while fostering a guilt mentality.
The current government woke up to this and in 2012 insisted that the curriculum covered a minimum of 200 years of continuous British history.
This is incredibly subjective. Fair enough that you think it is a problem, but it really must be qualified and it's necessary to acknowledge that it is subjective and contentious. I don't see why it is an issue unless you think education's job is to foster national identity, for instance, and think that's really a rather problematic goal. Quite aside from the fact that identity is itself subjective, fluid, and constantly (and rapidly) changing, and always has been, everywhere, I like to think education should teach people how to think, not instruct them what to know. I realise that educationalists themselves have largely lost that war, and now most people see the essential function of primary, secondary, and even tertiary education as worker-production, but it would be nice if schools could retain some effort to encourage students to approach historical narratives from different angles, and question the narratives that used to dominate.
What is in no doubt, is that refocussing some periods of history on its traditionally less-considered participants was never intended to either damage cultural or national identity nor to foster guilt. A cursory glance at the educational literature that, over decades, gradually led to these changes will teach you that. A case might be made that it has that result, but it is manifestly not its intention. That really is knee-jerking, Daily Mail reactionism.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/06/07 07:55:40
Well I grew up all over the world within the RAF, coming back to the U.K. in the early 90’s and attending public school in Scotland and later England, with a mass of English history being taught and surrounded by English people I can safely say your assertion is wrong and is a bit conspiracy theory ish, the man reason why I call myself British first and welsh second is because attended schools in Wales, Scotland and England with the emphasis on learning the cultural history of all 3 respectively.
Anyone that thinks that the English heretige has been watered down due to multi culturalism is frankly a fool who doesn’t know the history of this country in the slightest, there is no such thing as an “Englishmen” were all just a mish mash of various European and home nation cultures and have always been, none of our legends are our own and just “borrowed” from France, Germany etc. Which ironically is why lord of the rings was written, Tolkien knew we had no real “English” mythologys.
So no, I’m not alarmed, just seeing the status quo of the changing English/welsh/scotish culture to fit new ideas and eventually turn them into our own, which is also another very British thing to do.
First off you need to explain your upbringing. You grew up in the RAF? So both of your parents worked in the RAF presumably and their jobs were such high level that neither your mother or father could stay at home to raise you? Are they spies?
Secondly why are you investing yourself so much in a thread about Englishness if you consider yourself to be British first, Welsh second?
Finally you're completely wrong in your assertion that there's no such thing as an Englishman's identity. This very thread proves it. Most of us are intelligent enough to understand that we have a bit of the Roman, Scandinavian and dare I say it, French in our ancestry but that has little to no impact on there existing a separate English culture. So you when you, as a self identifying Welshman turns to a thread and says that there's no such thing as an Englishman you get my back up because that's exactly what I am and what I consider myself to be. My Grandad was of the Black Lake gypsies (think real peaky blinders) who I believe are of Irish descent. He considered himself English. His parents and their parents considered themselves English. At the time (not so much now thanks in part to the media) it was something to be proud of. This is what has changed - any pride in being English is considered uneducated and far right at best and flat rascist at worst. It's an absolute joke and makes me sick that pride in our identity is discouraged in this way while the Scots, Welsh and immigrant population are encouraged in the maintaining of the culture of their home country. You've only got to look at the Welsh language for evidence of this - the Welsh voted to remove it from school curriculum, ironically it was the English that said Welsh must be taught in Welsh schools to help maintain their identity.
Self identifying BRITISH man, welsh second, because I understand that we are stronger as a county united, not as individual nations.
No I am correct that that there is no such thing as an Englishman, we’re all a massive mix of European cultures even a cursory knowledge of history would show you this, so when you say crap like “Scots, welsh, Irish and immigrants” what your actually saying is “just as it’s always been and will always be” but the media you so hate has convinced you that some grand conspiracy has happened and you bought it, even our language is different due to such things, they way we speak now is different from even 50 years ago, it’s evolving All the time like our culture. And claiming that French in our ancestry has little impact on us these days is plain stupid, even to this date it has a massive impact on our culture, same with the “vikings” Germans, Spanish etc. ,
Now to the hyjacking of the “English” national pride, there is a reason why people see it as racism, that’s because sadly the loudest people are those idiots who scream about it but are too stupid to even look at their own history, the bigotism and prejudism they use to surpress any discourse is as bad as any SJW crap the far left comes out with, but want to know the super squirrel secret ? Smart people know it’s not true! Dum dum duuuuuuum, we know that it’s ok to have English pride, we see it every day, in every walk of life, but the far right is Just from using your fear and ignorance to fan the flames against what they claim is a threat, they are lyers and it’s given “English” pride a bad name, it’s ok to be English, it’s not ok to use that as an excuse to be racist.
Formosa wrote: Self identifying BRITISH man, welsh second, because I understand that we are stronger as a county united, not as individual nations.
You identifying as a British man has absolutely 0 impact on the so called "strength" of the United Kingdom. Not sure if you noticed, but we're talking about identity, specifically the identity of what it is to be English, not what's best for the UK. Also 'British' didn't need to be in caps, I can read without them thanks.
Formosa wrote: No I am correct that that there is no such thing as an Englishman,
Glad we cleared that up, thanks.
Formosa wrote: we’re all a massive mix of European cultures even a cursory knowledge of history would show you this, so when you say crap like “Scots, welsh, Irish and immigrants” what your actually saying is “just as it’s always been and will always be” but the media you so hate has convinced you that some grand conspiracy has happened and you bought it, even our language is different due to such things, they way we speak now is different from even 50 years ago, it’s evolving All the time like our culture. And claiming that French in our ancestry has little impact on us these days is plain stupid, even to this date it has a massive impact on our culture, same with the “vikings” Germans, Spanish etc
I didn't say that our ancestry had little impact on us these days though did I? I said it had little impact on the existence of a separate English culture. Which it doesn't/didn't. An Englishman is not just a mismatch of cultures from a ton of different ancestral links, as you seem to believe (the English language is, though), they have THEIR OWN UNIQUE AND IDENTIFIABLE CULTURE. Have you ever met a Frenchman? A Spaniard? Compare them to an Englishman. Compare an Englishman to a Welsman or a Scot. Shouldn't be too hard to see they aren't the same and they have their own quirks, outside of any other culture that may or may not have impacted on their development. Also please don't presume to know my thoughts - the media hasn't convinced me of anything, I've made up my own mind based on experiences and gathering my own information. I don't read the Daily Mail or any other rag so cut your generalisations.
Formosa wrote: Now to the hyjacking of the “English” national pride, there is a reason why people see it as racism, that’s because sadly the loudest people are those idiots who scream about it but are too stupid to even look at their own history, the bigotism and prejudism they use to surpress any discourse is as bad as any SJW crap the far left comes out with, but want to know the super squirrel secret ? Smart people know it’s not true! Dum dum duuuuuuum, we know that it’s ok to have English pride, we see it every day, in every walk of life, but the far right is Just from using your fear and ignorance to fan the flames against what they claim is a threat, they are lyers and it’s given “English” pride a bad name, it’s ok to be English, it’s not ok to use that as an excuse to be racist.
They aren't the "loudest people", they are the people who are pushed by the media to be the loudest. You realise this yea? The media pushes an agenda and that agenda currently is that English pride is synonymous with racism. There have always been bigots and racists from England, just as there have always been Scottish and Welsh racists/bigots. I'm quite sure there are equivalent 'EDL' parties in Wales and Scotland - they just don't get the same sort of coverage that the EDL has, because that's not in the media's agenda. Look at Sinn Fein FFS - there you have effectively a legitimised terrorist organisation.
Iron_Captain wrote: Just something completely unrelated I have been always wondering about the Welsh:
Why the hell do they write Cymru but pronounce it something like Cumry? That does not make sense!
Why are words in Russian not pronounced phonetically as they are spelled in English? Why does russian have a different alphabet? Why is French not pronounced as it is spelled in English? Why is any language not pronounced as it is spelled in English? Come on
Iron_Captain wrote: Just something completely unrelated I have been always wondering about the Welsh:
Why the hell do they write Cymru but pronounce it something like Cumry? That does not make sense!
Why are words in Russian not pronounced phonetically as they are spelled in English? Why does russian have a different alphabet? Why is French not pronounced as it is spelled in English? Why is any language not pronounced as it is spelled in English? Come on
Actually Russian is one of the most phonetically consistent languages out there. It just turns out that transliterating makes a bit of a mess of the whole thing.
Now if Russians did actually bother to actually write ë and not just think "everyone knows when it's ë and when it's a simple e" it would be much better.
Iron_Captain wrote: Just something completely unrelated I have been always wondering about the Welsh:
Why the hell do they write Cymru but pronounce it something like Cumry? That does not make sense!
Why are words in Russian not pronounced phonetically as they are spelled in English? Why does russian have a different alphabet? Why is French not pronounced as it is spelled in English? Why is any language not pronounced as it is spelled in English? Come on
Welsh is deliberately obtuse to annoy us English, and struggles with new fangled devices like the ffon, still least it's better than the pigen-Kobold the Cornish keep trying to Necro
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/07 09:14:38
"AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED."
Formosa wrote: Now to the hyjacking of the “English” national pride, there is a reason why people see it as racism, that’s because sadly the loudest people are those idiots who scream about it but are too stupid to even look at their own history, the bigotism and prejudism they use to surpress any discourse is as bad as any SJW crap the far left comes out with, but want to know the super squirrel secret ? Smart people know it’s not true! Dum dum duuuuuuum, we know that it’s ok to have English pride, we see it every day, in every walk of life, but the far right is Just from using your fear and ignorance to fan the flames against what they claim is a threat, they are lyers and it’s given “English” pride a bad name, it’s ok to be English, it’s not ok to use that as an excuse to be racist.
They aren't the "loudest people", they are the people who are pushed by the media to be the loudest. You realise this yea? The media pushes an agenda and that agenda currently is that English pride is synonymous with racism.
This doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. In terms of readership, vastly more print media that argues your position is consumed than that which argues that English pride is synonymous with racism. Broadcast media is harder to quantify, but both the BBC and Sky News love a good dose of ‘look how awesome England is’.
‘The loudest people’ is very nuch the case. Because normal people who are proud of where they come from don’t spend half their life screaming about it.
There have always been bigots and racists from England, just as there have always been Scottish and Welsh racists/bigots.
Of course, but does anyone argue otherwise? Your antithesis is that English pride is synonynous with racism, not that English people are racist. Do you want to make a case that Scottish or Welsh pride overlaps with racism and xenophobia as frequently as English pride does? That is going to be a struggle.
I'm quite sure there are equivalent 'EDL' parties in Wales and Scotland - they just don't get the same sort of coverage that the EDL has
Two problems with this point: firstly, they don’t get as much national coverage because they don’t have the numbers. The SDL do ocassionally organise a march. Usually in Glasgow because of overlap with the Orange Order. The last one had less than two-dozen attendees. Mostly EDL people who had come up for the day (which we know because, funnily enough, it gets coverage proportionate to the event - in Scottish media).
Secondly, they don’t get as much national coverage because they are in countries that don’t get as much national coverage. UK national media is overwhelmingly Anglocentric.
Iron_Captain wrote: Just something completely unrelated I have been always wondering about the Welsh:
Why the hell do they write Cymru but pronounce it something like Cumry? That does not make sense!
Why are words in Russian not pronounced phonetically as they are spelled in English? Why does russian have a different alphabet? Why is French not pronounced as it is spelled in English? Why is any language not pronounced as it is spelled in English? Come on
Actually Russian is one of the most phonetically consistent languages out there. It just turns out that transliterating makes a bit of a mess of the whole thing.
Now if Russians did actually bother to actually write ë and not just think "everyone knows when it's ë and when it's a simple e" it would be much better.
But are all letters in Russian which are shared with English used to make exactly the same sounds? (Sorry this is a pet peeve of mine since people always say this about Irish names like Saoirse and so on - "Why isn't it pronounced how it is spelled?!" "It is. In Irish.")
nfe wrote: This doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. In terms of readership, vastly more print media that argues your position is consumed than that which argues that English pride is synonymous with racism. Broadcast media is harder to quantify, but both the BBC and Sky News love a good dose of ‘look how awesome England is’.
‘The loudest people’ is very nuch the case. Because normal people who are proud of where they come from don’t spend half their life screaming about it.
You're going to have to back up some of your points with actual evidence.
You can't just say something and expect me to believe it as gospel because it came from your mouth/keyboard.
nfe wrote: Of course, but does anyone argue otherwise? Your antithesis is that English pride is synonynous with racism, not that English people are racist. Do you want to make a case that Scottish or Welsh pride overlaps with racism and xenophobia as frequently as English pride does? That is going to be a struggle.
It depends on what terms you are assessing the overlap? I'd be interested to know the figures in terms of relative population for sure. My case has nothing to do with the overlap between Scottish or Welsh pride and it's frequency of racism and xenophobia compared to English pride and you know it. You're strawmanning. My point is quite clear. The FOCUS is on English pride and it's synonymy with racism. Note my point about Sinn Fein which you seem to have ignored entirely?
nfe wrote: Two problems with this point: firstly, they don’t get as much national coverage because they don’t have the numbers. The SDL do ocassionally organise a march. Usually in Glasgow because of overlap with the Orange Order. The last one had less than two-dozen attendees. Mostly EDL people who had come up for the day (which we know because, funnily enough, it gets coverage proportionate to the event - in Scottish media).
Secondly, they don’t get as much national coverage because they are in countries that don’t get as much national coverage. UK national media is overwhelmingly Anglocentric.
Scotland seems to enjoy it's fair share of national coverage actually. More than it's fair share given the relative population.
nfe wrote: This doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. In terms of readership, vastly more print media that argues your position is consumed than that which argues that English pride is synonymous with racism. Broadcast media is harder to quantify, but both the BBC and Sky News love a good dose of ‘look how awesome England is’.
‘The loudest people’ is very nuch the case. Because normal people who are proud of where they come from don’t spend half their life screaming about it.
You're going to have to back up some of your points with actual evidence.
nfe wrote: Of course, but does anyone argue otherwise? Your antithesis is that English pride is synonynous with racism, not that English people are racist. Do you want to make a case that Scottish or Welsh pride overlaps with racism and xenophobia as frequently as English pride does? That is going to be a struggle.
It depends on what terms you are assessing the overlap? I'd be interested to know the figures in terms of relative population for sure. My case has nothing to do with the overlap between Scottish or Welsh pride and it's frequency of racism and xenophobia compared to English pride and you know it. You're strawmanning. My point is quite clear. The FOCUS is on English pride and it's synonymy with racism. Note my point about Sinn Fein which you seem to have ignored entirely?
Ok. First things first. I don't think you know what a strawman is. A strawman argument is the misrepresentation of someone's argument to make it easier to refute. I didn't do that. I pointed out that your comparison is invalid by stating precisely what you did. You are arguing that English pride is not synonymous with racism. As a comparison, you noted that there are also Welsh and Scottish racists. This is irrelevant because you are comparing the prevalence of racism amongst the people shouting loudest about English pride' with the prevalence of racism amongst the entire populations of Scotland and Wales. It could only be made relevant if you were to argue that people shouting loudest about Welsh and Scottish pride are as frequently equitable with racism as those doing so about English pride. I thought the point was obvious, apologies if not. Is the problem I want to foreground clearer now?
I didn't address Sinn Fein because it was going to run off down a road about what constitutes a valid political party almost instantly, a bunch of Northern Irish members would rightfully take umbrage at either side, and we'd get a thread derail/lock in quick time.
nfe wrote: Two problems with this point: firstly, they don’t get as much national coverage because they don’t have the numbers. The SDL do ocassionally organise a march. Usually in Glasgow because of overlap with the Orange Order. The last one had less than two-dozen attendees. Mostly EDL people who had come up for the day (which we know because, funnily enough, it gets coverage proportionate to the event - in Scottish media).
Secondly, they don’t get as much national coverage because they are in countries that don’t get as much national coverage. UK national media is overwhelmingly Anglocentric.
Scotland seems to enjoy it's fair share of national coverage actually. More than it's fair share given the relative population.
Now it's going to be your turn to provide some numbers.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2018/06/07 10:52:41
Iron_Captain wrote: Just something completely unrelated I have been always wondering about the Welsh:
Why the hell do they write Cymru but pronounce it something like Cumry? That does not make sense!
Why are words in Russian not pronounced phonetically as they are spelled in English? Why does russian have a different alphabet? Why is French not pronounced as it is spelled in English? Why is any language not pronounced as it is spelled in English? Come on
Actually Russian is one of the most phonetically consistent languages out there. It just turns out that transliterating makes a bit of a mess of the whole thing.
Now if Russians did actually bother to actually write ë and not just think "everyone knows when it's ë and when it's a simple e" it would be much better.
But are all letters in Russian which are shared with English used to make exactly the same sounds? (Sorry this is a pet peeve of mine since people always say this about Irish names like Saoirse and so on - "Why isn't it pronounced how it is spelled?!" "It is. In Irish.")
Pretty much yes. Ш is sh as in sheep and Ц is ts like in, say, pizza.
If English would get their vowels in order it would be much more straightforward
Do you Brits ever get an sense of who is English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish on Dakka Dakka absent obvious references in their posts? (I have no clue from whence other posters with American flags might hail.)
Manchu wrote: Do you Brits ever get an sense of who is English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish on Dakka Dakka absent obvious references in their posts? (I have no clue from whence other posters with American flags might hail.)
well of course, its a very small island, with only 60 million(ish) people so its inevitable we bump into each other at her Maj's tea and cucumber sandwich afternoons
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/07 11:25:08
"AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED."
nfe wrote: This doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. In terms of readership, vastly more print media that argues your position is consumed than that which argues that English pride is synonymous with racism. Broadcast media is harder to quantify, but both the BBC and Sky News love a good dose of ‘look how awesome England is’.
‘The loudest people’ is very nuch the case. Because normal people who are proud of where they come from don’t spend half their life screaming about it.
You're going to have to back up some of your points with actual evidence.
It gives no reason as to why people read such newspapers - you are making massive, sweeping assumptions that may well be (are) false. Where is your evidence that those with English pride who are racist are "the loudest people"?
nfe wrote: Ok. First things first. I don't think you know what a strawman is. A strawman argument is the misrepresentation of someone's argument to make it easier to refute. I didn't do that. I pointed out that your comparison is invalid by stating precisely what you did. You are arguing that English pride is not synonymous with racism. As a comparison, you noted that there are also Welsh and Scottish racists. This is irrelevant because you are comparing the prevalence of racism amongst the people shouting loudest about English pride' with the prevalence of racism amongst the entire populations of Scotland and Wales. It could only be made relevant if you were to argue that people shouting loudest about Welsh and Scottish pride are as frequently equitable with racism as those doing so about English pride. I thought the point was obvious, apologies if not. Is the problem I want to foreground clearer now?
I don't think you understand my argument, to be frank. It is thus - English pride is not synonymous with racism (correct) however much of the media portrays it as such and hence there is a negative association with having English pride because you are generally assumed to be a racist or at least uneducated. You can see this in my previous post. My other point regarding Scotland and Wales you seem to have misunderstood too - it being - those who show a pride in Scotland, or Wales are not tarred with the same racist/uneducated brush that the English are, in fact it's quite the opposite. I believe that there are racists from all nationalities in the UK and the pride they show in their country is largely irrelevant. Hence the EDL/SDL/WDL comparison. EDL picks up the majority of "airtime" because this is what the media wishes to portray. The same can be said for English football hooligans abroad and any other nation's hooligan's abroad, who are treated (in my opinion) quite differently in the media.
I hope that makes more sense?
nfe wrote: I didn't address Sinn Fein because it was going to run off down a road about what constitutes a valid political party almost instantly, a bunch of Northern Irish members would rightfully take umbrage at either side, and we'd get a thread derail/lock in quick time.
nfe wrote: Two problems with this point: firstly, they don’t get as much national coverage because they don’t have the numbers. The SDL do ocassionally organise a march. Usually in Glasgow because of overlap with the Orange Order. The last one had less than two-dozen attendees. Mostly EDL people who had come up for the day (which we know because, funnily enough, it gets coverage proportionate to the event - in Scottish media).
Secondly, they don’t get as much national coverage because they are in countries that don’t get as much national coverage. UK national media is overwhelmingly Anglocentric.
Scotland seems to enjoy it's fair share of national coverage actually. More than it's fair share given the relative population.
Now it's going to be your turn to provide some numbers.
nfe wrote: This doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. In terms of readership, vastly more print media that argues your position is consumed than that which argues that English pride is synonymous with racism. Broadcast media is harder to quantify, but both the BBC and Sky News love a good dose of ‘look how awesome England is’.
‘The loudest people’ is very nuch the case. Because normal people who are proud of where they come from don’t spend half their life screaming about it.
You're going to have to back up some of your points with actual evidence.
It gives no reason as to why people read such newspapers - you are making massive, sweeping assumptions that may well be (are) false.
It demonstrates the circulation of print media and shows that the top end of the table is dominated by the papers that are, by and large, effusive in their English (and British) pride.
Where is your evidence that those with English pride who are racist are "the loudest people"?
Well I suppose it depends on how you define loudest. For me, that implies the people who spend the most time telling others that they are proud of being English, and go out of their way to broadcast that most often. A particularly 'loud' group might be, for instance, people who stick 'Proud to be English' in their Twitter bio.
nfe wrote: Ok. First things first. I don't think you know what a strawman is. A strawman argument is the misrepresentation of someone's argument to make it easier to refute. I didn't do that. I pointed out that your comparison is invalid by stating precisely what you did. You are arguing that English pride is not synonymous with racism. As a comparison, you noted that there are also Welsh and Scottish racists. This is irrelevant because you are comparing the prevalence of racism amongst the people shouting loudest about English pride' with the prevalence of racism amongst the entire populations of Scotland and Wales. It could only be made relevant if you were to argue that people shouting loudest about Welsh and Scottish pride are as frequently equitable with racism as those doing so about English pride. I thought the point was obvious, apologies if not. Is the problem I want to foreground clearer now?
I don't think you understand my argument, to be frank. It is thus - English pride is not synonymous with racism (correct) however much of the media portrays it as such and hence there is a negative association with having English pride because you are generally assumed to be a racist or at least uneducated.
Given I've addressed every component of this, which part did I misunderstand?
My other point regarding Scotland and Wales you seem to have misunderstood too - it being - those who show a pride in Scotland, or Wales are not tarred with the same racist/uneducated brush that the English are, in fact it's quite the opposite.
Ok. Great. You didn't say this. You went straight from people equating English pride and racism to racism being a general feature of society. This is a perfectly valid comparison if true. I don't think you have a hope of demonstrating it, alas.
I believe that there are racists from all nationalities in the UK and the pride they show in their country is largely irrelevant. Hence the EDL/SDL/WDL comparison. EDL picks up the majority of "airtime" because this is what the media wishes to portray. The same can be said for English football hooligans abroad and any other nation's hooligan's abroad, who are treated (in my opinion) quite differently in the media.
I hope that makes more sense?
It does, but you now need to demonstrate two things: that national pride is not a multiplier and; that racism is equally prevalent amongst these groups. All things being equal, are people who state that they are proud of their heritage more likely to be racist than those who do not? That's a question that's probably actually quite easily demonstrated by a wealth of cross-cultural sociological, anthropological, and ethnographic studies - I' happy to go and find a bunch if you don't think it's likely.
The questions that must be asked to support the second issue are more difficult. Do SDL members represent a similar proportion of the Scottish population as EDL members do of the English population, for instance? Are Scots who are the most outwardly prideful of their heritage (by any measure you choose, provided it is consistent) as likely to also be racist as their English peers? Were we to utilise the flippant Twitter bio yardstick above and contrast people identifying themselves as proud to be English, Welsh, or Scottish, are they each as likely to be tweeting, liking, and retweeting racist material? Are the antisocial behaviour, violence, and arrest records of English, Scottish, and Welsh football fans similar (if adjusted for frequency of international appearances and size of travelling support)?
nfe wrote: I didn't address Sinn Fein because it was going to run off down a road about what constitutes a valid political party almost instantly, a bunch of Northern Irish members would rightfully take umbrage at either side, and we'd get a thread derail/lock in quick time.
Presumptuous and convenient.
Realistic. However, for the sake of it, it's a separate issue. Irish nationalism is not so often associated with racism as English pride is, no doubt. It is, however, relentlessly associated with ethnic tension and religious bigotry. We had a near year long non-stop campaign across most of the media tying Jeremy Corbyn to Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams, and Martin McGuinness specifically on the basis that they were anti-UK. Consequently, I don't think it really supports your position that English pride is vilified whereas everyone else gets a free pass.
nfe wrote: Two problems with this point: firstly, they don’t get as much national coverage because they don’t have the numbers. The SDL do ocassionally organise a march. Usually in Glasgow because of overlap with the Orange Order. The last one had less than two-dozen attendees. Mostly EDL people who had come up for the day (which we know because, funnily enough, it gets coverage proportionate to the event - in Scottish media).
Secondly, they don’t get as much national coverage because they are in countries that don’t get as much national coverage. UK national media is overwhelmingly Anglocentric.
Scotland seems to enjoy it's fair share of national coverage actually. More than it's fair share given the relative population.
Now it's going to be your turn to provide some numbers.
I provided raw numbers demonstrating that readership of UK national papers leans heavily towards papers who endorse English pride - supporting the precise point that I made. To support your point, you'll need to demonstrate that Scottish coverage represents more than 8.2% of all national news media coverage. I think that's going to be a challenge, but I'll be very impressed if you can find some numbers to support it. You can probably end the Scottish 6 debate immediately!
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Well I grew up all over the world within the RAF, coming back to the U.K. in the early 90’s and attending public school in Scotland and later England, with a mass of English history being taught and surrounded by English people I can safely say your assertion is wrong and is a bit conspiracy theory ish, the man reason why I call myself British first and welsh second is because attended schools in Wales, Scotland and England with the emphasis on learning the cultural history of all 3 respectively.
Public schools are an entirely separate dynamic, it costs a lot nowadays even with the service discount, and for the most part your parents get what they pay for.
The dogma is applied mostly to the state sector.
I too was privately educated, but in my schooldays, the 70's and early 80's, the curriculum was widespread and history was taught in full as part of the national curriculum. The experience I had was echoed in and similar to the state sector. When the national curriculum was cut threadbare with regards to history teaching, many of the quality private schools continued to teach history.
Anyone that thinks that the English heretige has been watered down due to multi culturalism is frankly a fool who doesn’t know the history of this country in the slightest, there is no such thing as an “Englishmen” were all just a mish mash of various European and home nation cultures and have always been, none of our legends are our own and just “borrowed” from France, Germany etc.
No such thing as Englishmen. Seen that trotted out a bit but not a for a while as it was a largely outdated piece of dogma that is too easy to refute. Every geneology is a mish-mash unless they come very an exceptionally isolated community like in the deep amazon rainforest or a tribe in the tundra.
However the idea that there is not such thing as the English is not a mantra applied to anyone else, and is there as a doctrinal beatstick. Is there such a thing as a Scot or Welsh but your definition? There would not be, not every Scot is a descendant of a Pict, there is a lot of Norse blood too, and English, and others.
The Welsh are a similar mixed bag, part old Celt, part Roman, part Norse, part Saxon, part Norman, and that is just the pre-dominant wave cultures, not subset communities or recent wave immigrations. I would never deny that they are Welsh.
You deny the revisionism then proof its effect by your own words. Yes there are such things as Englishmen, Scots Welsh etc, they all exist. We exist.
You swallowed the dogma and it has skewed your thinking remarkably: proud to be Welsh while simultaneously believing that the English do not exist as a racial group.
Which ironically is why lord of the rings was written, Tolkien knew we had no real “English” mythologys.
Tolkien was comparing the Arthurian myth which are pre-English and also romaniticised (literally as given a Frankish/Latin cultural makeover), with extent myths from France (Roland) and Norse and Germanic myths and seeing that the predominant mythic cycle was indeed not English.
England had a large mythology but only that which was written down survived. Beowulf and a handfful of other tales. There is quite a lot, but to Tolkien who knew all the recorded Saxon myths as part of his primary trade despaired on comparing it to the Celt and Manx bardic traditions which are considerably larger. The Celt and Manx bards survived, and their legacy is enormous* the Saxons had bards too, but there was a cultural disconnect after 1066 and other those myths important enough to be written down survived, and likely only a fraction of those.
Tolkien was troubled by this because it was a legacy of the cultural extermination that occurred under the Norman invasion, a notably vibrant culture was all but made extinct. The fact that the Saxons were advanced for their time is undisputed, it was the tail end of Saxon organisation that allowed the compilation of the Domesday book, though that was also due to the centralised control culture of the Normans.
Post Norman Conquest the English still produced legends but both were in terms of rebels against the crown, Hereward the Wake and Robin Hood.
Robin Hood is as large a cultural milestone as the French legend of Roland, and is proof of a regenerating post-Saxon English mythology.
Tolkien was more concerned with not that there was no English mythology at all, but that a very deep mythology and culture of the English peoples was systemically destroyed post 1066. a cultural subtype closely connected to his career as a a profession of Anglo-Saxon language and history.
* This is also a problem, the last Manx bard died in the 1980's and the last Irish Celt bards are dying out. People do not have the patience or mindset to memorise myth, however the full repertoire of both was recorded copied and kept so the myths will survive.
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An Actual Englishman wrote: First off you need to explain your upbringing. You grew up in the RAF? So both of your parents worked in the RAF presumably and their jobs were such high level that neither your mother or father could stay at home to raise you? Are they spies?
Strange bedfellows. Going to briefly defend Formosa here.
service families get a bursary for a heavy discount to private education fees. This is partly a means of creating a next generation of officer class, part a perk of the job but mostly because with service personnel being moved around a lot education can be very disruptive. If you are in private business and your employer says you are to work in an offsite office for three years you can expect a bonus, or can refuse. In the armed services you can do neither, and you can go to prison for trying. So there has to be some mitigation for daddy just got sent away to [foreign country] for several years. The best answer is to give the kids heavily discounted boarding school fees. A lot of private schools make their main income out of service families.
All Foreign office workers and all non-Fioereign Office civil servants over a certain grade get the same privilege.
This is what has changed - any pride in being English is considered uneducated and far right at best and flat racist at worst. It's an absolute joke and makes me sick that pride in our identity is discouraged in this way while the Scots, Welsh and immigrant population are encouraged in the maintaining of the culture of their home country.
The brainwashing at work, selective empowerment and disempowerment to reforge the public conscience for party political gain.
It works on some, as evidenced, and not on others, also as evidenced.
You've only got to look at the Welsh language for evidence of this - the Welsh voted to remove it from school curriculum, ironically it was the English that said Welsh must be taught in Welsh schools to help maintain their identity.
I was unaware of this.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/08 09:18:15
n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.
It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion.
Orlanth wrote: : proud to be Welsh while simultaneously believing that the English do not exist as a racial group.
I'm with you on everything apart from this. English is not a racial group. It may be national or cultural, but is deffinitely not racial. Within the English there are regional differences in heritage. More Scandinavian in the north east, Briton in the south west, Saxon in the south, Angle in the midlands.
And that's just the English. The Scots are equally a mish-mash of identities, being predominantly Caledonian, Irish, Norman and Briton. Try telling a Scottish person that there's no such thing as a Scotsman.
Orlanth wrote: It is interesting that this thread has revealed a lot of pointers to a problem with the social engineering of British identity for party political gain. I will make some comments on what I see here then return later to handle replies and expound more on the subject later.
This is, I think, quite true. English people use the term British quite interchangeable with their own culture of 'Englishness' usually.
This is the main issue, and one that really needs to be confronted.
It only needs to be 'confronted', if you think of the English as the enemy beyond the southern border. If/as you do, that is your problem and not really anyone elses.
Curious that you believe that it is a concern with this habit that is a problem, and not the habit itself.
I am more concerned with the myth not the habit. Most English do not confuse Britishness with Englishness, we can tell the difference. The claim 'that them English think its all about them' is a racial slur generated against English people and not a habit of the English people.
Racism is bad, however anti-English racism is getting more widespread in Scotland and these racist myths are not being challenged. The SNP is smoothly led but has an undercurrent that is essentially an alt-right movement and only escapes that label by restricting its hatred to the English and not people of a different colour.
Orlanth wrote: : proud to be Welsh while simultaneously believing that the English do not exist as a racial group.
I'm with you on everything apart from this. English is not a racial group. It may be national or cultural, but is deffinitely not racial. Within the English there are regional differences in heritage. More Scandinavian in the north east, Briton in the south west, Saxon in the south, Angle in the midlands.
And that's just the English. The Scots are equally a mish-mash of identities, being predominantly Caledonian, Irish, Norman and Briton. Try telling a Scottish person that there's no such thing as a Scotsman.
Ok. Technically you are correct. However by the same technicality the only ethnic groups are those that practice racial purity, either through geography or ideology.
Sure Amazonian tribes are 'pure' (hate the word but lets run with it for now) racial group. Jews are fairly 'pure' because of Jewish marriage laws, but Jews too are very diverse over time.
English are not 'pure', but then neither is just about anyone else. Japanese are pretty close being an island nation with very little immigration or external contact. Just about every African tribe bar the most isolated and primitive is interbred with its neighbours, Asian peoples even more so and Europeans most of all, due to having technology longest.
However we do have a racial identity, because said identity is partly genetic but also partly geographical and partly cultural.
When the Romans captured the Sabine women they did so to generate more Romans not more Sabine. The difference was cultural the genetics were the same either way.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/08 09:37:58
n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.
It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion.
Orlanth wrote: It is interesting that this thread has revealed a lot of pointers to a problem with the social engineering of British identity for party political gain. I will make some comments on what I see here then return later to handle replies and expound more on the subject later.
This is, I think, quite true. English people use the term British quite interchangeable with their own culture of 'Englishness' usually.
This is the main issue, and one that really needs to be confronted.
It only needs to be 'confronted', if you think of the English as the enemy beyond the southern border. If/as you do, that is your problem and not really anyone elses.
Curious that you believe that it is a concern with this habit that is a problem, and not the habit itself.
I am more concerned with the myth not the habit. Most English do not confuse Britishness with Englishness, we can tell the difference. The claim 'that them English think its all about them' is a racial slur generated against English people and not a habit of the English people.
Alas, it is a habit of the Anglo- and London-centric British media. That does get extrapolated to represent all English people, which is unfair, but it is a common enough issue that it is understandable, I would suggest.
Racism is bad, however anti-English racism is getting more widespread in Scotland and these racist myths are not being challenged. The SNP is smoothly led but has an undercurrent that is essentially an alt-right movement and only escapes that label by restricting its hatred to the English and not people of a different colour.
This is demonstrably nonsense. It is far easier to point to, for instance, Westminster MPs treating Scotland, Holyrood, and MSPs with derision and contempt than the opposite direction. There are certainly nationalists who express hatred towards England and English people, but they are called out and excluded by the mainstream movement and by all nationalist political parties.
Orlanth wrote: : proud to be Welsh while simultaneously believing that the English do not exist as a racial group.
I'm with you on everything apart from this. English is not a racial group. It may be national or cultural, but is deffinitely not racial. Within the English there are regional differences in heritage. More Scandinavian in the north east, Briton in the south west, Saxon in the south, Angle in the midlands.
And that's just the English. The Scots are equally a mish-mash of identities, being predominantly Caledonian, Irish, Norman and Briton. Try telling a Scottish person that there's no such thing as a Scotsman.
Ok. Technically you are correct. However by the same technicality the only ethnic groups are those that practice racial purity, either through geography or ideology.
Sure Amazonian tribes are 'pure' (hate the word but lets run with it for now) racial group. Jews are fairly 'pure' because of Jewish marriage laws, but Jews too are very diverse over time.
English are not 'pure', but then neither is just about anyone else. Japanese are pretty close being an island nation with very little immigration or external contact. Just about every African tribe bar the most isolated and primitive is interbred with its neighbours, Asian peoples even more so and Europeans most of all, due to having technology longest.
However we do have a racial identity, because said identity is partly genetic but also partly geographical and partly cultural.
When the Romans captured the Sabine women they did so to generate more Romans not more Sabine. The difference was cultural the genetics were the same either way.
Several fundamental problems here: You’re conflating ethnicity and race; I don’t think you know a lot about Jewish marriages; trying to project modern conceptions of race and/or ethnicity into the Roman world is at best a fool’s errand; ‘primitive’ is a severely problematic term when describing humans.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/08 10:43:49
Orlanth wrote: It is interesting that this thread has revealed a lot of pointers to a problem with the social engineering of British identity for party political gain. I will make some comments on what I see here then return later to handle replies and expound more on the subject later.
This is, I think, quite true. English people use the term British quite interchangeable with their own culture of 'Englishness' usually.
This is the main issue, and one that really needs to be confronted.
It only needs to be 'confronted', if you think of the English as the enemy beyond the southern border. If/as you do, that is your problem and not really anyone elses.
Curious that you believe that it is a concern with this habit that is a problem, and not the habit itself.
I am more concerned with the myth not the habit. Most English do not confuse Britishness with Englishness, we can tell the difference. The claim 'that them English think its all about them' is a racial slur generated against English people and not a habit of the English people.
Alas, it is a habit of the Anglo- and London-centric British media. That does get extrapolated to represent all English people, which is unfair, but it is a common enough issue that it is understandable, I would suggest.
You suggest incorrectly.
First British media not Anglo or London centric. Most national newspapers go as far as to have a Scottish edition, there isn't a separate Welsh edition of most national newspapers due to circulation, however focus is still clearly national.
Second, if it were true it would still not excuse the anti-English rhetoric. Being misled into bigotry doesnt make the bigotry 'understandable', we can understand its root, but shouldn't handwave it away ac in any way acceptable
Racism is bad, however anti-English racism is getting more widespread in Scotland and these racist myths are not being challenged. The SNP is smoothly led but has an undercurrent that is essentially an alt-right movement and only escapes that label by restricting its hatred to the English and not people of a different colour.
It is far easier to point to, for instance, Westminster MPs treating Scotland, Holyrood, and MSPs with derision and contempt than the opposite direction.
Please do so. You will find it is part of the myth.
Scots are so treated with derision in Westminster? Really. Ok Westminster treats everyone with derision inside the parliament chamber, its a parliament, this is to be expected, and Scottish parliamentariains are treated no different. We can prove this because we had a Scottish Prime Minister recently, were we a bunch of anti-Scottish bigots we would not have put a Scot in charge. It was Gordon Brown and he didn't last long, but his being a Scot was not part of the reason he was unpopular. were the contempt real were the racism real that would have surfaced in a big way.
Parliamentary games are no different the world over, and are no different in Holyrood, Cardiff or Stormont, except Stormont was considerably worse, but that is a separate issue.
However projecting that as a contempt for Scotland is blatant scaremongering.
Projecting that as a contempt for Holyrood or the MSP's is a different type of scaremongering. The SNP leadership will of course make claim that anything other than giving in to every one of their demands is an attack on Scottish people or Scotland. It's their rhetoric, it's what they do. Your fault if you lap it up.
There are certainly nationalists who express hatred towards England and English people, but they are called out and excluded by the mainstream movement and by all nationalist political parties.
If only that were true.
- I will partly retract that. Some Scottish nationalist leaders are probably embarrassed by it, others quietly encourage it, and made wide support of 'cyber-nats' while remaining legally unconnected, and some are complete undiscuised Anglophobes, the latter were asked to remain quiet during the referendum for tactical reasons.
Several fundamental problems here: You’re conflating ethnicity and race;
We have to as our geneology is a social concept. To say there is no English race is to say there is no other either for logical consistency to be maintained.
trying to project modern conceptions of race and/or ethnicity into the Roman world is at best a fool’s errand; ‘primitive’ is a severely problematic term when describing humans.
Please stop and think about what you are saying here. Fools errand? Really. Historical distance is not a factor, we are human so were the Romans.
The analogy stands, and is one of many. I mentioned it because it is a classic story of geneology and politics and history mixing. I could have tried some other more recent dry as toast example.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2018/06/08 11:18:27
n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.
It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion.
Orlanth wrote: It is interesting that this thread has revealed a lot of pointers to a problem with the social engineering of British identity for party political gain. I will make some comments on what I see here then return later to handle replies and expound more on the subject later.
This is, I think, quite true. English people use the term British quite interchangeable with their own culture of 'Englishness' usually.
This is the main issue, and one that really needs to be confronted.
It only needs to be 'confronted', if you think of the English as the enemy beyond the southern border. If/as you do, that is your problem and not really anyone elses.
Curious that you believe that it is a concern with this habit that is a problem, and not the habit itself.
I am more concerned with the myth not the habit. Most English do not confuse Britishness with Englishness, we can tell the difference. The claim 'that them English think its all about them' is a racial slur generated against English people and not a habit of the English people.
Alas, it is a habit of the Anglo- and London-centric British media. That does get extrapolated to represent all English people, which is unfair, but it is a common enough issue that it is understandable, I would suggest.
You suggest incorrectly.
First British media not Anglo or London centric. Most national newspapers go as far as to have a Scottish edition, there isn't a separate Welsh edition of most national newspapers due to circulation, however focus is still clearly national.
Second, if it were true it would still not excuse the anti-English rhetoric. Being misled into bigotry doesnt make the bigotry 'understandable', we can understand its root, but shouldn't handwave it away ac in any way acceptable
The vast majority of national coverage broadcast or published in Scotland and Wales is devoted to events in England. Now, in many cases this is good, we want coverage of what's going on at Westminster, for instance, as it is relevant to everyone in the UK. What is silly and highlights an Anglo-centric focus, however, is when the bulk of broadcasts in Scotland in the major news hours is dedicated to the London Mayoral race, or a tube strike, or the Northern Rail fiasco. These are things that are important and should be dealt with, but they shouldn't dominate the 6 or 10 o'clock news in Aberdeen or Aberystwyth. Probably the most clear Anglo-centric media bias is in sports commentary, punditry, and reporting, where it is so relentless that people don't even complain: it's simply funny. People make bingo cards for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland football games when they're in the same competitions as England. You've usually hit 1966, England's expected progression, a mention of nearly every England squad member etc by half time. English sports commentators focussing on England when commentating on games England are not part of isn't a major social disaster, obviously, but it does speak to a general undercurrent of England's centrality amongst the home nations.
You are entirely right that it doesn't excuse anti-English rhetoric directed at the general populace, but then I stated that flatly above.
Racism is bad, however anti-English racism is getting more widespread in Scotland and these racist myths are not being challenged. The SNP is smoothly led but has an undercurrent that is essentially an alt-right movement and only escapes that label by restricting its hatred to the English and not people of a different colour.
I don't think discarding the Union Flag is anti-English. I think it's anti-Westminster, which you may well see as a problem, and I'm not necessarily in disagreement, but it's a distinct issue. That you do think the removal of the UK flag is anti-English perhaps suggests you are equating the UK with England, the very problem you claim is mythical.
Bad example. Well, for your point. It's an excellent example of the British media misrepresenting Scottish society to attack the independence movement. Two problems for the point you wish to make:
Firstly. The numbers do not state that racist incidents against English people in Scotland are up. They state that all racist incidents are up, including against white British people. That all reports of racism are up suggests that attitudes towards tolerating racism have changed and that Police attention and vigilance have changed, not simply that Scotland has started hating everyone more.
Secondly. Not all white British people are English. The majority of racist incidents in Scotland are directed against Catholics*, the vast majority of whom are white British. A trend that is on an upswing, sadly. There is an excellent book dealing with racism in Scotland that is well worth a read, which does an excellent job of addressing both the habit that many Scots have of thinking we're immune to racism as a problem, and of dealing with the groups that tend to be targeted, and by whom. Davidson et al. 2018. No Problem Here: Understanding Racism In Scotland. Edinburgh: Luath.
*For what it's worth, I don't think these are racist, but rather ethno-religious hate crimes, but it fits with the conception of race you are using and we'll come back to the fluidity of these concepts below!
It is far easier to point to, for instance, Westminster MPs treating Scotland, Holyrood, and MSPs with derision and contempt than the opposite direction.
Please do so. You will find it is part of the myth.
Scots are so treated with derision in Westminster? Really. Ok Westminster treats everyone with derision inside the parliament chamber, its a parliament, this is to be expected, and Scottish parliamentariains are treated no different. We can prove this because we had a Scottish Prime Minister recently, were we a bunch of anti-Scottish bigots we would not have put a Scot in charge. It was Gordon Brown and he didn't last long, but his being a Scot was not part of the reason he was unpopular. were the contempt real were the racism real that would have surfaced in a big way.
Parliamentary games are no different the world over, and are no different in Holyrood, Cardiff or Stormont, except Stormont was considerably worse, but that is a separate issue.
However projecting that as a contempt for Scotland is blatant scaremongering.
Projecting that as a contempt for Holyrood or the MSP's is a different type of scaremongering. The SNP leadership will of course make claim that anything other than giving in to every one of their demands is an attack on Scottish people or Scotland. It's their rhetoric, it's what they do. Your fault if you lap it up.
How about when Kelvin MacKenzie wrote an entire Sun column about how stupid Scots were, and chortling that at least we were dying faster than the rest of the UK, and made gags about rebuilding Hadrian's wall 'another hundred foot higher and start airlifting in Red Cross parcels of Mars bars' and then Nigel Griffiths, Deputy Leader of the House, when asked about it by a Scottish MP jumping headlong into whataboutery?
There are certainly nationalists who express hatred towards England and English people, but they are called out and excluded by the mainstream movement and by all nationalist political parties.
If only that were true.
- I will partly retract that. Some Scottish nationalist leaders are probably embarrassed by it, others quietly encourage it, and made wide support of 'cyber-nats' while remaining legally unconnected, and some are complete undiscuised Anglophobes, the latter were asked to remain quiet during the referendum for tactical reasons.
A Scottish MP is accused of not taking the side of three Scottish soldiers who died serving the UK. What point are you making about English hatred? Are you saying they were English soldiers? Or that they were serving England? Are you conflating England and the UK, like you claim no one does?
Several fundamental problems here: You’re conflating ethnicity and race;
We have to as our geneology is a social concept. To say there is no English race is to say there is no other either for logical consistency to be maintained.
They mean distinctly different things. One (almost certainly inaccurately) defines human groups on the basis of perceived biological commonalities whilst the other is an explicitly social construct.
This link makes a point of the genetic diversity of Jewry right at the top. In any case, marrying outside the Jewish community is relatively common. Marrying outside the Jewish sub-community is very common.
trying to project modern conceptions of race and/or ethnicity into the Roman world is at best a fool’s errand; ‘primitive’ is a severely problematic term when describing humans.
Please stop and think about what you are saying here.
I promise I am. I'm an archaeologist who works on Iron Age Israel and Middle Bronze Anatolia, periods where ethnic definitions are major issues that are taken extremely seriously because of their potential to be exploited in the modern day.
Fools errand? Really. Historical distance is not a factor, we are human so were the Romans.
Historical distance is a massive factor. Ethnicity is unquestionably socially constructed and perceptions of racial markers are understood differently in different cultural contexts. Unsurprisingly, socially constructed things are constructed differently by different societies. They're understood very differently once you start introducing substantial time-depth. This is not controversial. This is mainstream, firmly established in the anthropological, sociological, and ethnographic literature. I am happy to give you a list of key texts if you want to see the groundwork in it.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/06/08 13:33:35
nfe wrote: This link makes a point of the genetic diversity of Jewry right at the top. In any case, marrying outside the Jewish community is relatively common. Marrying outside the Jewish sub-community is very common.
Couldn't be more wrong.
Do you know any Jews? In real life? What are you basing this on? Do you have any evidence to back it up?
Every jew I've ever know, which has been a fair number, has married only other people from the same community. Many have been quite literally forced to do so (women told by their father they'd be disowned by the family if they stayed with someone who wasn't Jewish, for example).
Also how have you got the time to write these essay length troll posts?
Either way, your response is irrelevant. The last few pages have been completely off topic, the English, believe it or not, are not defined by their relationship with the Scottish.
nfe wrote: This link makes a point of the genetic diversity of Jewry right at the top. In any case, marrying outside the Jewish community is relatively common. Marrying outside the Jewish sub-community is very common.
Couldn't be more wrong.
Do you know any Jews? In real life?
I work in Israel.
Also how have you got the time to write these essay length troll posts?
PhD life, innit. I keep funny hours and am well-practiced at reading and writing arguments fast. There has been no trolling.
Either way, your response is irrelevant. The last few pages have been completely off topic, the English, believe it or not, are not defined by their relationship with the Scottish.
I have at no point argued that they are. I've discussed two issues that pertain directly to 'what it is to be English': the degree to which English pride overlaps with racism, and the degree to which English people conflate English and British identities. You and Orlanth brought up Scotland and Wales. I responded to your comparisons.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/06/08 14:10:53
Since this is a what it is to be English thread I figure this is an okay place to ask.
A friend of mine (a fellow American) told me that Britts take much offense to the phrase "Mother gaker" than they do to the C word which describes female anatomy. It's almost the exact opposite here so it's pretty funny if that is true.
If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced.
- Fox Mulder
Xenomancers wrote: Since this is a what it is to be English thread I figure this is an okay place to ask.
A friend of mine (a fellow American) told me that Britts take much offense to the phrase "Mother gaker" than they do to the C word which describes female anatomy. It's almost the exact opposite here so it's pretty funny if that is true.
As a general rule, witch is far more acceptable in Scotland and Northern Ireland than it is England and Wales, but I don't think many people would think it less offensive than melon-fether even in contexts where it is used freely.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/08 14:50:41
Xenomancers wrote: Since this is a what it is to be English thread I figure this is an okay place to ask.
A friend of mine (a fellow American) told me that Britts take much offense to the phrase "Mother gaker" than they do to the C word which describes female anatomy. It's almost the exact opposite here so it's pretty funny if that is true.
As a general rule, witch is far more acceptable in Scotland and Northern Ireland than it is England and Wales, but I don't think many people would think it less offensive than melon-fether even in contexts where it is used freely.
Humm - perhaps my friend was FOS then. We were drinking scotch though. So figures how we were having such a silly discussion anyways.
If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced.
- Fox Mulder
