jc_hoops

You BP, wary of nationalism and people motives that promote it - never

Merlot

Hi Calle

Hope your plans are moving on OK?

The funny thing is I saw more English Nationalism whilst living near expats overseas than you see in England. As I have said the Scots, Welsh, N Irish & Irish knock spots of us.

The problem I see in the UK the St Georges flag = boozing football idiots. The pubs have adopted the flag as a huge marketing tool. A real shame.

Merlot

callé

Hi Merlot!
Yes, just about six more months. Yet another 'yard' sale next weekend. It really feels nice to lighten the load though-should have done it long ago. funny you just think you need all this 'stuf' then when you start going through it you see you dont really need most of it and have just been stuffing things in closets and dusting around things, when you could have done without most of it and made life a bit simpler to start!
re nationalism- Maybe some Brits dont appreciate their own country until they leave it. A shame, But sometimes you really dont know how good you have things until you can experience elsewhere. Then again some people really do want other things. lol that subject goes round and round here doesnt it? It really is an individual thing. I'm glad for you that the weather is improving and you are having some nice days to spend with family. cherish all the good times, huh? We lost my husbands mother a few weeks ago. Totally unexpected. She went in for a hernia op. started recovery and ended up with a bad infection from the hospital and went downhill fast. And we were dreading telling her we were moving and seeing her upset. Never dreamed she wouldnt even be around long enough to know.
Take care Merlot.

dugongs

england has never been about flag waiving. st george is also a symbol linked to catholicism - st george is a saint which is a catholic ritual and nothing to do with england any more despite the coverage given to it recently by the bbc and tony blair who is a catholic although he claims not to be.

a little history reading around the time of henry 8th will show you that he slightly upset the pope when in order to try for a male heir dumped rome in favour of his home grown more tolerant to divorce version. the decision was probably on reflection the best thing that ever happened to england as this separation of church and state laid the foundations for the great achievements to come but poor henry never got his son despite the efforts he put in with several foreign and home grown lovelies.

england is about understatement in the face of enormous success and achievement. actions speak louder than words, 4th largest economy in the world, small island that once run the world etc etc flag waiving is for those that hav'nt quite made it yet. last vestige of the scoundrel etc etc. look at how scotland, australia, wales, canada, usa all use nationalism to try and enforce compliance on it's people - look at china now using nationalism to unite it's people against a common enemy in this case the japanese but they do not care who it is just as long as the people are looking in the opposite direction while they get away with whatever they like. australia is a young country but i already sense a maturing away from flag waiving and long may it continue.

bondipom

The lessons of history are there. Hitler, Mussolini, Milosevic, The IRA, UDA, NF, BNP, Mao, Saddam Hussein and Stalin are but a few types who have used nationalism to justify their actions.

Badge

NB The term England/Britain used deliberately, I switch from one to the other:

I am not against nationalism, in the general sense. As long as Nationalism and negativity don't go hand in hand it doesn't matter.
We're not talking about flag waving, we're talking about flag waving - negative.

eg Hitler Nazi Germany, Soccer fans England (!) not on the same par but it is a negative. And all the examples above, as BP says.

The French, perhaps, are proud - but are not known to be a complete philistine culture - apart from a few eccentricities they seem to be a nation well tolerated for their own brand of 'pride' - call it what you will. There are many European nations like the Dutch who are similar.

I had a lecturer at Uni years ago who said that a lot of current British pride was negative and it was precisely the lack of identity that caused this. If you think about it, alot of British culture is based on negativity - of course imperialism - it seems hardly fair to mention this now and most recently (recently being 1945-) there is a sense in which it is being eroded in some aspects. It is very subtle - you have to balance thousands of years of history some good, some bad of course,with what is on the balance sheet now. It's hard. I was quite aghast at his opinion of negativity at the time, I was not proud to be English in the right wing sense of the word but I liked the apparatuses of the life I led and the traditional English lifestyle. It was only when I went to live overseas years ago (long before I discovered Australia) that I saw other proud cultures that were great in their own right and came to see what the lecturer meant. You mustn't mix up past history with future.

(As an aside :there are people here on this site who have compiled lists of thing they miss about England/UK. I grasp them and read them avidly to see what I am perhaps ''missing out'' on, but I find myself dissapointed, dismissing many of them as fluff and completely trivial. A lot of them are popular culture, tv comedy programmes, fiction and novelty food items - hardly the stuff of a proud people with thousands of years culture.

What does this mean? UK culture often seems to be going too contemplative/complacent. There does not seem to be anything new coming through. That is just my opinion.)

I think the British have it hard. They live in a very multi-cultural society and there is a lot of boundary pushing, which is great for the modern economy but bad for the millions that harpe for the past or the present and want to develop a stronger sense of identity. Is there anything wrong with this second point - no. I think Australia and the US are better at assimilating cultures, or converting people to their 'own' - sounds bad but it is just a question of team work and community - than Britain who replaced their own culture with others at precisely the very time their own has been eroded. Therein lies the problem. A .There is nothing with new cultures if a country already has their own. B.It wouldn't be so bad if a country wanted the culture that others brought to it, but patently people don't want it or we would not be reading Daily mail style articles.

The question that any country must ask itself is a) do we have a culture
b) are welcome new cultures adding to, degrading or having no effect on our culture ...

ie is our current culture stable enough, *mature* enough to grow and evolve? I honestly believe, in fact, that Australia does quite well here, because it has room to grow, *and* it has a pride of it's own. I think England's culture is not stable enough, people have become confused.

In the absence of a strong proud postive culture - the very lack of flag waving that Dunroving talks about - it is hard to maintain a 'postive' Franco-style culture. England does tend to cop it. It is interesting; in rugby, celtic nations often acuse England as ''arrogant'' in victory when all it is pride - the same pride that the Celtic nations display in observing their national day and their culture!

I think you can reconcile this with what dunroving was saying by saying that England(yes England) ideally should have no need to wave a flag, but when it is, it is often done in a negative way. You almost wonder if it will become too late and there will be a recourse to negative flag waving which will get worse..ie. it is better to be a flag waving country which acts as a safety valve..

I have a pride in many aspects of England, and many of the rose-tinted things that expats the world over have of England. I am fortunate, though, in that I have found all the best bits of England in a ''new and improved'' setting in Melbourne.

badge

HiddenPaw

Patriotism is a more positive way of demonstrating allegiance and pride in one's own country. Nationalism tends to lend itself to superiority over other nations.

Merlot

Sorry to hear about your husbands Mom This happened with my Nanna last year here in the UK and I was so glad to be back here.

I have been back in the UK for over a year and planning a car boot sale to get rid of the junk we have collected, hard to believe we came back with 13 boxes. It is a non-stop process this clearing out, good luck with the yard sale.

Best wishes
Merlot

Merlot

Hit the nail on the head, it is the lack of patriotism that I find hard. I compare England in the 2000's to say the attitude's to those going through WWII. We have lost our sense of community and care for each other and our country.

M

wombat42

An example of nationalism.
My countries alot bigger then yours

Merlot

Is this the only picture you own?

Maldepays

I don't think he's finished colouring the rest in.

jugsy

[ [/QUOTE]

And my Dad's bigger than your Dad

Merlot

And my Dad's bigger than your Dad [/QUOTE]

In my experience the bigger it is, the harder it is to handle

Mercedes

In my experience the bigger it is, the harder it is to handle [/QUOTE]

Using a JCB usually helps.