You must be joking.
Mind you, there are some things which make me happy about the English, or the British.
The fortnightly magazine, Private Eye, which I have bought since its birth in the 1960s, continues the satirical tradition going back to the wicked cartoons of William Hogarth in the 18th century and Jane Austen’s gentle mocking of the middle and upper classes. I value our tradition for disrespect, satire and lack of deference for religions and royalty.
A feature in the Eye, to which I regularly turn, is appropriately titled DUMB BRITAIN.
Here’s a recent sample from an ITV quiz show.
Question: What animal’s height is measured in hands?
Answer: Birds.
Question: A bird in the hand is worth two in the …?
Answer: pocket.
Question: What flying insect has the French name Papillion?
Answer: Dog
Question: Meles meles is the Latin scientific name for which nocturnal mammal with a black and white striped face?
Answer: The whale.
Such abysmal ignorance and egregious stupidity. And yet these are people who considered themselves knowledgeable enough to display their intellect before an audience of millions.
Ignorance is the national sin; Ignorance of the depth of one’s own ignorance is a double sin, especially when coupled with arrogance.
I delighted in the 2012 London Olympics; not just our tally of medals; the happiness of the event; the 70,000 volunteer ambassadors who helped to turn central London into a Happydrome.
I rejoiced in Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the labour Party. Here was a completely different kind of politician. Of course, it helped that I agreed with his policies. This man was honest, never retaliated in kind, despite the most vitriolic attacks, including from people ostensibly on his side. I was proud to see the membership of the Party reach half a million precisely because of his leadership.
I was appalled at the plain perfidy of the campaign against him. I was appalled that so many people were so easily taken in by the campaign of misinformation against him. These people had so little hinterland of political understanding. Again, it is ignorance.
It baffles me that the vast majority of football followers never play the game; they only watch others playing it. I know that some of these men have such an overhang of beer-belly that they could not see the ball at their feet. I know that if their team’s performance pleases them, or disappoints , they go home, demand sexual favours in celebration or consolation and beat up the wife or girlfriend.
I am proud that we stood against the Nazis in WW2. I am not proud that we joined the totally fraudulent bloodbath of WW1.
I am not proud of the long history of our involvement in colonial repression and slavery.
I am not proud that school history curricula largely skip those parts of our history.
The litter and fly-tipping, that we see everywhere, show us to be the muckiest people on the planet. That, too, is down to ignorance; ignorance of the most basic niceties of a civilised society.
In 2020, there were 400,000 instances of raw sewage being released into our rivers and coastal waters. That takes us back hundreds of years, to the days when all waterways were exploited as open sewers.
The water companies get away with it and their executives, instead of being sacked and imprisoned, receive multi- £million bonuses.
Most people should not criticise the water companies for the despoliation of the environment, because they dump their own rubbish around the streets and open spaces every day with gay abandon.
So, all things considered, am I a patriot? No, definitely not.
Nowadays I never travel abroad. When I used to do so, I kept as far away as possible from other English people. They were usually cringe-worthy. I recall being in a small café at the top of a mountain near Zakopane, on the Polish, Slovakian border. In came a loud-mouth
gasping for a cup of tea. It came and she demanded: “where’s the milk? Ignorance of the fact that most of the world does not take milk with tea any more than they would take milk with whiskey. At that altitude she was lucky to have hot water, let alone milk, but in her blissful ignorance she would not know that. She prattled on about poor service. I shrank into my corner and made my request in German, in order not to be associated with such an ignorant old rat-bag.
We have a Prime Minister whose carefully cultivated image is dischevelment: overweight, baggy trousers, deliberately ruffled hair. What is that about?
He is making the assumption that, no matter that he looks like an unmade bed, no matter that his private life is also a mess, the English will vote for him. He is justified in his arrogance, because the English are, indeed, ignorant enough to continue supporting him.
No, I am no patriot.
I am so glad you have raised these issues. I am not a patriot either but I am in the enviable position to choose which nationality I prefer, although I could have both if I chose to. But no, even after 50 years of living mostly in Britain the thought hardly ever crossed my mind but when I was confronted with the issue, in the mid 1980s, when I was renewing my French passport, I had to make a formal declaration at the French Consulate, that I had not ever applied for British nationality. I hadn’t but this made me reflect on my situation: I would have had to take some tests ( language and history of Britain) and also swear allegiance to the Queen: the tests would have been a laught but the allegiance was unthinkable; I could’nt possibly voluntary commit to a system where religion was embodied by the head of state when I came from a country where there is separation from church and state, where freedom of expression was introduced as a principle as the result of the French Revolution and where the notion of Freedom of the Press became law in 1881. Although my parents were atheist, and my mother was furiously anti religious, we were christened because of the grandmothers, both very religious, in fact my mother used to call my paternal grandmother “grenouille de bénitier” which translates roughly as ” baptism font frog”. For years I had to go church on Sundays and envied my best friend who was’nt baptised. I felt a great deal of shame when passing my school, where Mademoiselle Jean, the headteacher lived, I used to crawl along the wall so that she would not see me. She used to teach us French grammar and history and also revolutionary songs which we sung standing in rows in the playground. Every year we had Fete de la Jeunesse, USSR model. The rumour was that she had been a résistante during the war and also the head of the local Communist Party; she instilled in me the lasting principle of laïcité.
So no, I couldn’t become British, although there are many aspects of British life* I respect and love, but I despair about the politics and mainly about people’s views, insularity and ignorance. I hate Brexit.
But I am not a French patriot either, there are too many issues to list here but France has to be ashamed of his colonial history, of having let Pétain create Vichy France during the war, and of many other more recent events and…. I hate les Gilets Jaunes. I defend Laïcité principals established in 1905, bec et ongles (tooth and nails) and the right to blaspheme. The assassination of Charlie Hebdo’s journalists in 2015, and the decapitation of teacher Samuel Paty on 16 October 2020, are wake up calls to French democracy that have yet to be understood by many. Idiots are manifesting every weeks now, wearing a yellow star, comparing themselves to victims of the nazis, to defend their so called right to refuse vaccination and measures against the Covid19 and complaining that these measures are creating a new form of Apartheid.
*Forgot to say I am an admirer of Hogarth too