pommie bastard

Not Pom the Aussies dislike us with a passion but seems we now kings of Europe?

A weird and entirely unprecedented thing is happening in mainland Europe this summer. Across the continent, from Syracuse in the south to Tromso in the north, English holidaymakers are being welcomed with beaming smiles and offers of a free pre-prandial drink. Locals gather excitedly at the airports, cheering each time a BA flight touches down.

Time after time hoteliers and restaurateurs would tell me that the people they wanted to serve most were not the Germans, Italians or French, but the English, or maybe Swiss. And there's the clue. Hear the word "Swiss" and you begin to divine the reason for their recent conversion to our cause.

Because for the first time in 60 years we - together with the Swiss, of course - are the most affluent people in Europe. The rest of Europe is skint. The good people of Austria, Germany, Italy and France are welcoming us out of that very special love which is engendered by comparatively greater wealth.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/euro/story...013091,00.html

Megalania

Awake - you're dreaming! Generalizing too.

pommie bastard

Could be right am I a Aussie Pom dreamer who counter balances the garbage posted by the we hate the Uk dreamers that base immigration to Australia on bull Media reports in the Brit press
The same press that ran this story?

Megalania

Watch out how much bull you cast aside, you may be left with nothing to cling too.

pommie bastard

Mummy says I am a big boy now , more than what can be said for the believers of the Aussie dream land .
Pom refugees who buy into a dream can awake to a nightmare .

Badge

Richest people in Europe on all that consumer debt fueled by all that equity in people's homes...so fragile...I have no debts - it annoys me to see people spending money for the sake of it to keep up with the jones's so that people like me who have been careful with their money have more to lose in a crash..

makes me sick

pommie bastard

You understand what drives the Australian economy then , personal debt.

Australians are going into debt at a record rate.

What's more, they don't appear to be worried. The personal debt trap is expected to be the worst ever this new year when the reality of Christmas spending hits.

Australian Consumers' Association yesterday predicted credit card debt was expected to hit a record of more than $22 billion this month.

ACA finance policy officer, Catherine Wolthuizen, says figures from previous years and retailers' claims of a 4 per cent increase in
The most recent figures from the Reserve Bank of Australia show debt for October at $21.95 billion.
December spending point to a record debt for the end of 2002.

"We certainly expect it to go over $22 billion," she told Sky News.

Badge

indeed - sick isn't it??

Meridian

We are even the party people of Europe:

WE ALL KNOW, when it comes to socialising, what the Brits are really like. Reserved, aloof, phlegmatic, stiff-upper-lipped (except when on holiday), we like to stay in, tend our gardens and watch TV. Just occasionally we may go to a restaurant to eat dodgy food.

However, this received opinion is being challenged by a report from The Wall Street Journal. Having conducted a survey of 22,000 Europeans from Kerry to Kiev, the WSJ has found that the British are the most keen on going out (to clubs, restaurants and pubs).

Indeed, the Brits are the only people in Europe who prefer going out to staying in. Far from being the world’s homebodies, we are the biggest party animals.

So what’s going on? Do we really go out more, have more fun, than our European cousins? This piece is being written in Menton on the French Riviera, hard by the Italian border. Menton is about 200 miles from Germany, Switzerland and Spain, and about 100 yards from beaches filled with Swedes, Russians, Dutch and Brits. There can’t be many towns better placed in which to take an anecdotal (and wholly unscientific) straw poll of European partying habits.

Let’s start with the French. The first thing that strikes any Anglo observer of French nightlife is that the age-old insult “the English take their pleasures sadly� (coined by an 18th-century French aristocrat) could now be applied to the French. Walk into a bar in Menton and the first thing that hits you is the hush. There may be a television on, but it is turned down low and nobody is really watching.

The pub “chatter� is desultory and rather devoid of laughter. Contrast that with an English pub, where the jukebox is drowned out by catcalls, breaking glass and whoops of delight as someone gets their nipples out.

Of course, a small-town French boozer can’t be compared with, say, a boisterous theme pub in Manchester, but even the “happening� French bars are considerably quieter than an average British pub at the weekend.

I remember a few years ago when I went to the Cannes film festival and asked a French journalist where all the buzzy French media types went at night. “The British bar,� he replied. “That’s where the fun is.�

And yet, and yet. We should remember that pub culture is, by definition, a British speciality. What the French really do is restaurants and cafés. And it’s true that on the Riviera these places are more animated than the bars. But there still seems something joyless about the modern French restaurant ambience.

Judging by the faces in Menton, what the French like to do at night is to go to a nice restaurant — and have a good scowl. That’s what they do: they scowl and sip tiny glasses of stuff while turning their lips down. This sourness is all the more amazing when you consider how cheap and delicious their food is, how good and unpricey the wine, how great the weather, how warm the nearby sea.

What about the Italians? Are they any different? The vibrant entrepôt of Ventimiglia is only a few minutes down a beautiful railway line from Menton. An evening there shows that when the Italians step out they are, on the face of it, cheerier than the French. They smile more, talk more, they are noisy and extrovert. They look, in fact, like us after we’ve had a few.

But these Italians aren’t drunk. They don’t really drink, not to distraction and falling-overness, à l’Anglais. What they like to do is walk: they stroll about admiring each other’s trousers; they amble around licking fine gelati. This is pleasurable, but for an up-for-it Brit it’s also a little . . . pointless. After you’ve had your seventh tutti-frutti, you start thinking — OK, that was nice, now I want to go out. At this point the Italians want to go home.

As for the other nationalities in Menton, on the whole they also bear out the survey’s findings. The Finns and Scandinavians spend the evening doing press-ups (the Nordics’ favourite form of entertainment is sport, apparently). Meanwhile, the Spanish are often to be seen in Menton’s “plein air� cinema (they are Europe’s biggest cinemagoers), while the Germans (of which there must be many, judging by their number plates everywhere) don’t seem to venture from their hotels after dark (which tallies with the WSJ’s finding that the Germans are the biggest stayerinners in Europe). As for the Austrians, well, I’ve seen only one. Which makes sense, as the WSJ found that an Austrian’s favourite entertainment is sitting in his Salzburg apartment not spending any euros (the Austrians dedicate the least cash to entertainment).

All this raises a big question: how have we turned into the party monsters? It’s not that long since a Briton was regarded, in terms of sociability, as “two pints behind everybody else� (ie, socially crippled by reserve).

Similarly, recall how, in Down And Out In Paris And London, George Orwell compared the buzz and joie de vivre of 1930s Paris with the somnolent streets of prewar London (“sleeping the deep sleep of England�). In 50 years we have become top-drawer razzle-dazzlers — from being, frankly, complete party-poopers.

My theory is that we British are now reverting to type. Long before we were known for our reserve, we were notorious for drunken boisterousness. In the 16th century England was “Merrie England�, a place where foreign visitors would remark on the free and easy manners of the locals, and the anarchy of the streets.

Likewise, glance at any of Hogarth’s prints of 18th-century London, such as Morning, and you will see that Covent Garden was the kind of place where gin-soaked nobs would brawl drunkenly in bars. At 8am. This Covent Garden is again recognisable today.

How did we become respectable and boring? Perhaps it was the Empire, a need to impress conquered natives by staying in emotional control. Perhaps it was also a result of the bourgeoisification of the Victorian era, when increasingly rigid class structures meant that you had to behave “better� than your social inferiors — or risk being mistaken for them.

This makes sense: now that the Empire has gone and class structures are almost meaningless, we can revert to our true selves: hedonistic, aggressive, ribald and given to drinking too many Bacardi Breezers.

Some will deplore this decline. They would hark back to Victorian times, when we were the uptight prefects of the world. But these people should remember when it was that we actually won that empire: in 1759 we sank the French fleet in Europe and Africa, defeated our enemies in Canada, took half the islands of the Caribbean and gained a hold on India.It was also the height of the London gin-and-gambling craze — when we all went out a lot.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspap...766953,00.html

pommie bastard

Love the Brit Media always tell a good fairy story.

Ceri

And here we have again The British word ,when in fact it is referring to the English, the story is jumping from Brits to the English word. Sorry to be petty, but the story is about the English. It's like when they say "Brit football hooligans" - ahem - it's the English. Don't drag us all down.

So is the story referring to English or British? ... because if they are referring to British -since when has a Scot,N.irish or a welsh person been English.

Just a little pet hate of mine. ruddy media.

Another one I hate is if one of the Celtic nations do something "good" - the media portrays them as British so England can share in their "glory". If England do bad - they become British so we can share in their not so glories, if they do good they are English... confused??? lol... good!

Cheers

pommie bastard

I would rather we all called ourselves British but pride in being English , Welsh , Scottish or Irish is not a bad thing if we can stand together when its required.

Wilf

Whenever something goes well for me I take credit as an Englishman. If something goes wrong then I blame Britain or Australia. This is a good technique you know Ceri and can be done by you too - you can say "Up the Welsh" when something is good and "shit Brits" when it is no good and then we are all blaming the people called the "Brits" and yet none of us claim to be it. The "Brits" are then a poor race of people where everything they do goes wrong and yet the English, the Welsh, the Irish, the Scots are all successful races where all they do is good.

I find it a good system, however, if you do not like it, blame "The Brits" because it is their fault, not mine.

Ceri

Read your story again - the clipping says British, then it says English this and that... as if all Britons are "English"

Is it any wonder why some less informed Americans and such think Britain is England and we are all English. Some of them even think Wales is a place somewhere in England.. lol

This is what I am referring to. ...Calling Britain England or English. When in fact the story is about England and not Scotland, Wales and N.Ireland. If you say Britain it refers to us all. The story is referring only to the English so the British word should be not used ... get it now.
I'm not debating about "we should stand together" I' m saying the story is about England. Alone England is not Britain... so the story should not use the British word - they should use the English word.

Cheers

pommie bastard

Not seen any border controls entering Wales , Scotland or Ireland the buggers let us Brits wonder where we choose .
There is no lines drawn to denote whether you are leaving or entering another part of the British Islands except the Irish Sea , like it or lump it we live in each others pockets.