Why I wouldn't want to live in England

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In practice I'd say that everyone (99.9999%) of people are equal (by birth) in England. Just like America the richest minority owns the most. There are elitists due to their education Eton, Oxford, Cambridge but in the states you have Yale, Harvard, MIT. As far as the average working person is concerned I'm sure they feel just as equal amongst their fellows as do American's amongst theirs. Same principles as America too - study hard, work hard and you can do well for yourself and your family.

Some Brits do seem to go overboard about the royal family; but many either oppose their existence and view them as outdated parasites or others share my opinion that they are just irrelevant in today's society. Maybe good for pulling in the tourists but that is about all the practical use they are. I don't give a fig which royal does what to who or about royal marriages and the like.

i believe that if i lived in england, and if they disagreed with anything i said, they would say that i was genetically inferior because i lived in, and was brought up in a land populated by people who are descended from convicts.

there is a cultural snobbery in england that would explain why many english people feel superior to people like me and they always resort to explaining their superiority to me with respect to their idea that i was raised in a country that is populated with uncouth criminals.

as soon as they hear my voice, they may relegate me to the scrap heap of antipodean social trash.

i like to live where i live because i can stand my ground here, but i could not convince english people who are born of more "refined stock" that my opinions matter.

english people almost always feel superior to the people who have been born in their colony's.

i have known british people who have ridiculed me simply because i am not of their pedigree.

whatever. i will stay here.


i am not a descendant of a criminal as far as i can discern, and my way of speaking does not automatically (in my mind) consign me to the scrap heap of morons that british people are so familiar with ascribing many australian people to.

i do not drink tea and i do not like scones, so i guess i may be considered inferior in the minds of british people, but i am happy to live 20,000 miles away from them.


whatever.

1. The convict stuff is said by the sort of moron who is racist towards everybody else. Not just you. The racist minority is exactly that, a minority.

2. The convict stuff is inaccurate - more people in Australia are descended from mid century migrants, such as Brits in the 1950s that were invited to travel and settle there - the 'Ten Pound Poms', derived from the cost of the ticket. I don't suppose there are many Brits over the age of about seven who don't have a relative or friend who emigrated at some point.

3. Cultural snobbery isn't the preserve of one culture. Otherwise everybody would watch X-Factor (thinks it's entirely genuine) and believe the greatest entertainment was still throwing slaves to lions. Although, with the popularity of Survivor type programmes, Big Brother, the one with the minor celebrities camping in the back yard of an Australian hotel to eat insects, and other such claptrap, it could be argued it still is.

There is art and culture in Australia, too, isn't there? Just because all that makes it into the news about Australia over here is institutional racism towards Aboriginal people, shark attacks and forest fires, that doesn't mean you are all foaming racists stupid enough to go swimming amongst seals at dawn and chuck cigarettes and beer bottles in tinder-dry foiliage - when you aren't dressing in drag and singing ABBA songs, as in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Muriel's Wedding. It's quite possible to be a cultural snob anywhere in the world. Or be better, or worse, educated.


4. If you came out with that 'You're all racist towards me' nonsense, you'd be called worse than that (which is largely, as far as I can tell, what's called 'teasing', it's not actually a true picture of their thoughts.) But that's the nature of ASD and Asperger's, to find it hard to realise it's not meant with malice the vast majority of the time.

5. Accusing a whole nation of being racist and saying how bad they all are is as xenophobic as anything that has ever been said to you that you mention here.

More than likely you'd just have some chav call you a w*ker, not Jeremy Clarkson appearing out of nowhere giving you a quick witted response that makes you reexamine your entire life.

You can get decent chips all over the British Isles but, as with pubs and lots of other things, some fish and chip places are better than others.

My favourite thing I have when I go the chippy is battered white pudding with chips. Or a sav and chips with 'curry sauce' (that doesn't taste anything like curry).



I really want to go to Switzerland. It looks an amazing place, and I'd love to spend quite a while there. I promise when I go that although I'll stomp on the Swiss flag with my black boots, I'll be stomping off it again in short order.



This is actually quite a common sight in some, shall we say, less salubrious part of the UK. People often do it in Belfast, for instance.



You like a pint or ten - what's not cultural about that?



The Swiss wouldn't tolerate him for very long. They'd probably be looking at booting his arse out again.



It tastes horrid. There's no salt in the butter any more, rendering it utterly tasteless.



Do you know that we actually are about average for alcohol consumption compared to other European countries? Did you also know that alcohol consumption in the UK has actually been falling for years. The problem is not people drinking too much, it's the fact that there is a lack of personal responsibility and some people don't know how to handle their beer. I had nearly ten pints of lager the other night, but I wasn't puking up everywhere, picking fights with the police or swearing at passers-by. It's all a matter of social decorum.





Fair enough.



Don't talk to me about bloody Cathedral City! My mum used to buy that on a near-constant basis and if I never see the stuff ever again, it would be too soon!



They sound worse with their attitude to bacon than any Islamist or violent ultra-ultra-Orthodox Jew.

If you can speak French, have you not thought about asking a butcher to sort you some out? It should be a goer. Failing that, have you tried looking up on the Internet for British/Irish butchers or supermarket based in France? True, it might cost you a few quid but it's worth finding out, I'd say.



With all due respect, your dad is an idiot. The royal family is basically a celebrity irrelevance these days, and are purely there as a ceremonial role. The only people who seem to really have a loathing for them are extreme republicans (often of the Irish variety). Most of the rest of the country simply couldn't care less about them. Even the Royal Wedding wasn't really celebrated much up here where I live - and I live in Northern England. It seemed to be far more celebrated in the South East of England (and in the Irish Republic) than up here. I never saw any street parties or anything.



Yep. This is true. There is a stark chasm between the upper-class and the rest of society (and most of the rest of the country sees them as a caste apart, completely alien to the rest of us), and there are class distinctions that are made with the rest, but it's not quite as pronounced, I would say. Most countries have these divisions.



Agreed. I'm a monarchist, but not a royalist. I want to see a stable royal family, but I don't honestly care about the celebrity side of it. They're a national joke.



Oh dear. Someone has a massive chip on their shoulder about the British, don't they.

a) Australians call British people 'Poms' far more than British people call Australians the descendants of convicts or criminals. In fact, it's actually seen as quite offensive to say that about Australian people here and it's not considered a pleasant or polite thing to say. It's deliberately insulting.

b) I don't feel superior to Australians in any way and neither do most people here. Yes, you will get the odd idiot who might crack the odd 'joke' or two but it's generally harmless. In fact, from what I can tell, the jokes against English people are far more commonplace in Australia than vice versa. I wouldn't let it worry me and I don't know where you get this chip on your shoulder from.

c) Have you actually met many English people these days? We're far more like you than you would imagine. Most of us even like to drink cold pee these days, just like you do in Oz. The stereotypes that you refer to hardly exist in this country any more, and they're of people of long ago.

d) No, we don't. I don't feel inferior to the Indians, Hong Kongers, Singaporeans, Canadians, most Caribbeans, Irish, Maltese, Cypriots, Australians, New Zealanders etc etc. I do think our culture and way of life is superior to some of the ex-colonial hellholes in Africa, or perhaps some of the Muslim/Arab countries but I don't necessarily think all of the people in these countries are inferior. Not by a long way.

Last time I drank tea was a couple of weeks ago (and before that I hadn't consumed it in about ten years), I never eat scones and, when I have the choice, I tend to drink coffee.

Oh, and I've just realised that SqeekyJoJo has said what I was going to say anyway, and your post is actually pretty anti-English/British.

All countries have their pros and cons, UK, Australia, USA, all of them. I like my country, but I don't feel superior to anyone else.
This thread is a bit strange.

And where the bloody hell have you been?! !

Welcome back, Henbane!

yes i know. i was not very judicious with the post i posted that you are currently quoting. there was no other threads of interest to post to last night, and so i forced myself to conceive of things to say in this thread, but i do not really believe what i said last night personally. i just raked my mind for things to say to contribute to this thread. there are seeds of truth in what i said, but those seeds do not germinate in a predominant way with respect to british people. sorry.



you are correct. my heritage is swedish and german, but my parents were killed when i was a baby and i was adopted into an australian family when i was 2 weeks old. thankfully.


i guess it is better for me to admit that i do not know what your sentence means than to simply ignore it.


i have never seen or heard any racism toward aboriginals. aboriginals are cranky that we are here and they often rebel, and i suppose i can understand what they feel. the song "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot" is similar to how i think they feel. i agree.
i actually i can not be bothered to frame a reply to your sentence because it contains so many cliches.


sorry your sentence is not structured in a way that i am sure that i understand, so i will merely acknowledge it. i have no reply.




ok i stand corrected ("stand" being the operative word). i should not post things that i have not considered fully. sometimes i fail to recognize that there are real humans that read my posts. i do not fear other cultures or ideas. i truly do not. i can not understand many things, but i do not fear what i can not understand

are fish that are caught in the north sea tasty and clean and white (when cooked)? i heard that the north sea is rather polluted. i tried smoked haddock once and i spat it out because it was not palatable to me. do your fish and chip shops batter haddock and other oily tasting fish? what type of fish is commonly battered and fried in england (i wish to know (i am not being sarcastic))



i am swamped by sentences i can not understand on this site. why would you stomp on the swiss flag? how could you "stomp off it"? does that mean you would stomp randomly around not on the swiss flag as well as stomp on it? it makes no sense to me. what does "short order" mean? i do not involve myself much on this site because of sentences that i can not understand that i can not be bothered to question. my game crashed tonight so i am speaking with more energy than i usually do. what does "stomping 'off' the swiss flag in short order" mean? maybe you have no time to explain because you are busy with your WP stage show, but i can not reply to you unless i understand what you say.





what do you mean "shall we say"? you are allowed to say what you say, and i am allowed to say what i say, but there is no common authority that we can both obtain licenses from to say what "we" say.

you may equate my excursion to the shops in my pyjama's with insalubrious circumstances, and you reveal your snobbery even though you thought you had cloaked it with your choice of words. what is your opinion of Belfast (i used a capital letter!!) ?


i presume you mean that i like to get drunk. i do not like to drink alcohol, and even if i did, i would not consider it a cultural asset. people drink alcohol to escape from the boredom of their ordinary existence. some people can escape from the boredom of their ordinary existence by creating music or artwork that is outside their day to day lives, and others who may not have that ability may drink alcohol to the degree that they experience a new level of mentality that is different from what they are bored with.

i can not see how the imbibement of alcohol can be considered a cultural thing. but i do not have a very solid idea of what "culture" actually means.

the word "culture" (not the contents of a petri dish) is like a color that i am blind to since i have emotional black and white vision.




i like aussie bloke. he gets himself in all sorts of trouble with people on WP, but i know he is good at heart. i am not allowed to talk about people behind their backs so that is all i have to say.



we still have salted lurpack in australia. there are 2 kinds. unsalted and salted. i agree that unsalted butter is little better than margarine (which i consider to be like yellow stained petroleum jelly). lurpack is so creamy and decadent and it is the only butter i buy.




i suspect you may be talking about me. no i like british people. i just injudiciously wrote a very derogatory post last night which i now will divorce my self from. i like american people more than i like english people though as a whole. americans love australian accents and our way of life, but english people always have a raised eyebrow with respect to us.



use a smaller brush my man. i never called a british person a pom. i can not understand how the word "pom" came about.

wipe the tear from your eye. we like you and you like us (what about neighbors?). i was injudicious about what i said last night.



what?!?! i do not drink urine and i have never seen anyone else in my world drink it.
that is disgusting.

maybe they are more monotypes than stereotypes then.

anyway i have spent enough energy replying to this thread, so i will leave your last few sentences for other people to address.

Right, I really must be in bed now but here goes...

Yes they are.



Oh, it can be.



I can't remember whether I've had that or not. That said, I did have haddock yesterday evening for dinner in a nice tarragon sauce. That was alright.



Most things are battered in fish and chip shops. Not sausages though. Or pies. I sometimes take in a white pudding (like a blood sausage but without blood) in and they batter it for me, and I have that with chips. Battered haggis is sometimes served.



Oh, all kinds. You can ask for it lightly battered if you like. I like it either way. There are 'upmarket' fish and chip shops here as well as the more regular kinds. And then we've got the pizza parlours and general fast-food shops.



It's a reference to this controversial poster, put out by the right-wing Swiss People's Party at the last federal elections. This particular party had an initiative on the go calling for an end to mass immigration. I think they actually failed in this particular campaign to get enough signatures to force a referendum on the issue.

I've translated it into English from German:





"Short order" is British army/military slang, in common use here, and it means to do something quickly. If I said that I polished off my dinner in short order, it means that I ate it very quickly and (another way to phrase it is to say that it "barely touched the sides").



I'm sorry you feel like that, b9.



Good for you.



Perhaps it's now time for you to explain what you mean by that particular comment, hmm?



Well, I hope I've explained it.



It can mean a slightly unusual choice of words, or a hint that a euphemism is coming up.



"We" and "I" in this sentence are interchangeable.



What was meant is that in the rougher parts of the UK, especially in inner cities and places where lots of people are on social welfare, it can be fairly common to see people going to the supermarket in their pyjamas.

Outside of these areas, it is generally discouraged. It is not seen as a socially acceptable thing to do outside these areas. Hell, you could at least get pyjamas that don't look like pyjamas or something!



No, I was referring to the Australian national culture of liking a few pints. Much like we do here in the UK.



We have salted Lurpak here in the UK, but most of the salt has been removed from it, making it not very nice. It no longer has that 'zing'.



I don't think that's true.



Not referring to you in general. What is meant is that more than one Australian uses the term but not all.



Or Vegemite.

I can't remember what Neighbours is on these days. Probably Channel 5. I don't watch much TV any more.



Cold pee = mass-produced lager like Foster's (originally from Australia, now produced and sold here) and Kronenbourg. Some lagers are so bad that they taste like...

Cause their to much like Aussies, I prefer my trains to run on time (another thing the Swiss are better at ) when was the last time B9 took a train ( or public transport of any kind,) I can assure you "laid back" is a polite way of putting it.It was ok back in the day when it was cheap say up to the late 90's , but if your now going to charge Swiss type prices deliver Swiss type service please I'm meant to be happy this year ticket prices are "only" going up 7 % instead of the 15 % they tried to do us over with ?

And not as "Laid Back" as you think B9 ( why cant I have a beer and take my dog on the train ?) The uptight Swiss allow it

I give creidt where credit is due Aussies make good stuff I'll admit eg beer,(Coopers must rank as the best value beer in the world) flour (Laucke is the best) olive oil, wine etc etc etc

Don't shoot the messenger even Keating was often critical of Australia

Nailed it I see it more and more here to , where goes the money ? the UK seem to tax like the central Europeans yet have social/economic policys that mirror the USA , scary stuff!

Dollie Downer being served by Keating is a fine way to start the day, thanks B9 I enjoyed that vid, he needs to make a come back , it's about the only time I would vote for Labor or any one else for that matter