Why?
Totally agree with you. Its a pure accident of birth. I was born in Torquay and am English but have many Dutch friends and I love the Netherlands ! Hup Oranje !!happytorq wrote: ↑11 Dec 2018, 20:00 Why?
Not being deliberately obtuse, I'm asking a genuine question.
I just never really understand why people are 'proud' to be one nationality or another, when generally, they have very little control over it. I'm British solely because it was the land mass my mother happened to be standing on when her waters broke. That's it. I didn't get any say in it. It's an accident of geography, and nothing more. I might as well say "I'm proud to be 6 feet tall!".
I'll never hide that living in England shaped me (even when I'm a citizen of another country, as I will be soon), but I won't ever say I'm "proud" about it. It's just...a thing. It doesn't seem to serve any sort of purpose. (well, the accent has certainly helped... :devil: )
Probably the biggest problem that I have with patriotism is that it is usually blind - if somebody is proud that they come from the country that colonised the world, spreading the English language globally, creating an Empire, etc etc etc, that's fine, if they also then claim pride over the negative things that e.g. colonialism caused. Saying "this the greatest country in the world!" is an idiotic thing to say blindly, because a: you can never really measure which is the 'best' anyway, and b: most people are basing this claim on having lived in about 0.5% of the countries available.
(I've also had this argument with many Americans, and woo...let me tell you, Americans do not like being asked why they're proud to be an American. "Because we have freedom!" was the funniest response I've had)
I agree! take no heed of crime records showing a growing crime wave as 50 Romanians are arrested per day. Its only petty crime of child sex attacks,violent assaults, human traffickiing and prostitution offences. So what if the precentage of Romanians in this country arrested by police has risen 16% to 19,841. We need to look at the positives. They have a wonderful education system called the “Romanian Crime Academy”, which recruits members and provides them with training such as how to avoid being followed and how to defeat forensic techniques. Sounds like a good 'get rich quick' course too me.
Maybe you can tell us why you think Brexit is racist? Again why do you think racism is endemic in society? Do you think racism exists amongst the Black and Asian communities? I work as a lorry driver, alongside two Polish drivers do you think racism exists in Poland or an anti-Islamic feeling exists amongst the Polish.dawlishmatt wrote: ↑11 Dec 2018, 18:14 I'm not sure exactly about other countries but sometimes I feel ashamed to be British. We are so racist that I believe that the whole Brexit farce at the moment is simply down too one reason, racism. People were always moaning about all these bloody foreigners from the European Union coming to our country and taking our Jobs. When first Poland and more recently Romania joined the EU the outcry was discusting. Locally, I can remember when a Newton Abbot taxi firm took on 15 Romanian drivers because the owner had vacancies for drivers for over two years. I am also aware of a farmer in the south hams who recently lost an estimated £ 40,000 due to crop's in his field remained unpicked and rotted in the fields. In previous years the farmer relied on European workers as did the taxi owner. Today if you wish to book a taxi, during the day you have to wait at least an hour for one to become evalable because most of these foreign workers have returned home.
In my opinion, racism is not just a football issue, it's endemic in our society.
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