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What does it mean to you to be English?

The following - rather blunt - statement will not sound nice to some ears here, but I tend to agree with Merle Haggard to some extent.

If you live in a country, start by abiding to its rules (i.e. observe the law).

If you don't like these rules, and have a good reason not to like them, then become active and help bring about change. By becoming active, I mean more than just throwing rocks into windows an run away.

If you are not ready to invest time and energy into improving things, then either leave, or shut up. I have chosen the latter option, as by shutting up, at least I don't **** up things more than they already are. I could curse about a few things on some forums, but I judge the effectiveness of such moves as being close to zero, apart from harming mainly myself.
 
Cheese said:
The following - rather blunt - statement will not sound nice to some ears here, but I tend to agree with Merle Haggard to some extent.

If you live in a country, start by abiding to its rules (i.e. observe the law).

If you don't like these rules, and have a good reason not to like them, then become active and help bring about change. By becoming active, I mean more than just throwing rocks into windows an run away.

If you are not ready to invest time and energy into improving things, then either leave, or shut up. I have chosen the latter option, as by shutting up, at least I don't **** up things more than they already are. I could curse about a few things on some forums, but I judge the effectiveness of such moves as being close to zero, apart from harming mainly myself.
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Merle Haggard was a Republican and the above is a very right-wing view. His most famous song was an attack on the progressive hippie movement in the ‘60s and ‘draft dodgers’. History proved him wrong. Very wrong. The protesters and civil rights activists he railed against helped shape our world.

Collective action and mass protest are the most powerful tools we have. It changes the world. History tells us protesters are the very best of us. They are the ones that ended slavery, apartheid, obtained rights for workers, women, LGBTQ+ people etc etc. Everyone has a part to play helping shine a spotlight, speak truth to power, or if necessary take it forcefully to the streets.

Screw Merle Haggard!
 
gavreid said:

Study by World Health Organization shows more than half of children in Britain had drunk alcohol by age 13​

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Of itself, is this a bad thing? I had, a glass of wine with dinner, etc. In France and Italy everyone does. But they have fewer problems with drunkenness than the UK.
 
stevec67 said:
Of itself, is this a bad thing? I had, a glass of wine with dinner, etc. In France and Italy everyone does. But they have fewer problems with drunkenness than the UK.
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Not in and of itself. I suspect that's not the kind of drinking that's going on, talking to my kids about it. I raised it because it was questioned yesterday - the truth is that there's a nasty drinking culture in this country that isn't just about having a social drink occasionally.
 
Cheese said:
The following - rather blunt - statement will not sound nice to some ears here, but I tend to agree with Merle Haggard to some extent.

If you live in a country, start by abiding to its rules (i.e. observe the law).

If you don't like these rules, and have a good reason not to like them, then become active and help bring about change. By becoming active, I mean more than just throwing rocks into windows an run away.

If you are not ready to invest time and energy into improving things, then either leave, or shut up. I have chosen the latter option, as by shutting up, at least I don't **** up things more than they already are. I could curse about a few things on some forums, but I judge the effectiveness of such moves as being close to zero, apart from harming mainly myself.
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Merle Haggard is against people being active. He wants people to ‘shut up’.

That should be enough not to agree with him to any extent.
 
Cheese said:
The following - rather blunt - statement will not sound nice to some ears here, but I tend to agree with Merle Haggard to some extent.

If you live in a country, start by abiding to its rules (i.e. observe the law).

If you don't like these rules, and have a good reason not to like them, then become active and help bring about change. By becoming active, I mean more than just throwing rocks into windows an run away.

If you are not ready to invest time and energy into improving things, then either leave, or shut up. I have chosen the latter option, as by shutting up, at least I don't **** up things more than they already are. I could curse about a few things on some forums, but I judge the effectiveness of such moves as being close to zero, apart from harming mainly myself.
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I'm not sure how much of the above is Merle Haggard, and how much is Cheese.
 
Tony L said:
Merle Haggard was a Republican and the above is a very right-wing view. His most famous song was an attack on the progressive hippie movement in the ‘60s and ‘draft dodgers’. History proved him wrong. Very wrong. The protesters and civil rights activists he railed against helped shape our world.
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Wiki tells me he started smoking weed from the late 70s onwards and later stated he'd got it all wrong about the hippies.
 
There seems to be a lot of negative feeling to this. I feel that being English is to have a good sense of "fair play" and good manners, polite and respectful, that's what I tell my son it mean to be English.

I'm proud of our industrial past. But its a shame that one is made to feel like a racist or a xenophobic to say that I feel English and not European. I feel English and British and proud of both.
 
I think being critical of your country shows that you care, in an odd sort of way. You want it to be better. If we didn't care, the long-running political threads on here would die out after one page of 'whatevers'.
 
RICHARD1111 said:
There seems to be a lot of negative feeling to this. I feel that being English is to have a good sense of "fair play" and good manners, polite and respectful, that's what I tell my son it mean to be English.

I'm proud of our industrial past. But its a shame that one is made to feel like a racist or a xenophobic to say that I feel English and not European. I feel English and British and proud of both.
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I feel English because I am. Not sure what there is to be proud of though. Our industrial past is part of our history, it is something to be studied, but studying it from a starting point of pride is ahistorical. Our sense of “fair play” is non-existent. If it did exist we wouldn't have racism and a history of systematic exploitation.

No one is telling you that you are racist just for being English or saying you feel English and not European.
 
Pravda said:
I'm still not sure why, me, as English born, am denied a proud status. While other countries, go about it with gay aboundment.
From history, there are no countries, without a checkered past. So why pick on the English, and try to give them severve guilt for who they are are.

If we start to use history, as as a measure of uprightness, then we come out ok, considering what the Normans did to us
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I think it is wrong, not morally wrong, just plain a mistake, to try to pass moral judgements on centuries or millennia of a nation's history. There is no point. Everyone tried to further their own interests; Greeks, Romans, Habsburgs, the Popes, English kings, American presidents, Napoleon, Bismarck, Stalin, Hitler, etc.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Unless we make value judgements on past behaviour, how can we know not to repeat the behaviour?
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Agreed, and it is not necessarily confined to the past given just how much power and wealth obtained via horrific violence, oppression and enslavement still remains in play today.
 
Pride or not, starts in your own community. If you and your friends are included, encouraged and supported to achieve your aims, then, you should be able to look back with pride on the place that fostered you.

RAYE comes to mind when she bigged-up Croydon at the BRIT's.

That is a town in England.
 
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