I tend to feel quite irritated when “the economy” takes precedence over “the people” in any discussion…(and in any “country”)
As far as national pride then until brexit (and moving here at short notice as the U.K. voted leave…!) I had never considered my self as European…only ever English as I was born in England…
Culturally…with sooooo many different and vibrant cultures around the world then the loss of any culture would be a tragedy…inclusive of being English…(Scottish Irish Welsh…)
I love my homeland…England…the country where I was born…I love the British Isles…I love the people…I resent the government…_any_government who impose an economic value on any one of the people…discarding great swathes of society to homelessness to poverty to lack and to scarcity…
“Government’ mostly comprising of people too (although admittedly some politicians do seem to have psychopathic and sociopathic tendencies…) work FOR the people…they are there to manage our infrastructure…all those things you mention…x
“England and Scotland were united in the early 18th century but at the time of the French Revolution (1789) only half of “French” people actually spoke French.”
But at the time a considerable proportion of British people didn’t speak English either…
The 1707 act of union was a direct result of disastrous Scots economic policy which led to complete economic collapse, it was a bail-out with self-interest at the heart of it.
And I think the Hovis advertisement-esque rosy-hued vision of idyllic rural Englishness doesn’t quite hold, north of the border.
The point i was trying make a couple of days ago …
The debate is not simply localism v internationalism but finding a creative relationship between the two. An element of personal identity and a sense of belonging will be rooted locally in some way but this is an age of diverse values and practices. ‘Local pride’ (rooted in the experience of in a coherent and harmonious community) doesn’t equate with ‘national pride’ for many people whose communities are more complicated than those in wealthier rural areas in the UK. The close ties with Europe over the last 40 years have been a vibrant part of developing a sense of belonging to a European culture that values difference and diversity, peace and collaboration … . Imperfect in practice of course but worth defending in the face of the populist and protectionist Brexit vision.
… and when the “will of the people” is in direct conflict with what’s best for their well-being?
It’s a real piece of “double-think” to say both “the Government must do the will of the people” and also “Government…are there to manage our infrastructure”. To do what the people voted for in the referendum in defence of “our” culture AND mange the economy in the best interests of the people are mutually exclusive just now and something has to give. I vote the government does the right thing and overturns the “will of the people” in the “best interests of the people”.
Culture is much easier to see as “vibrant” when your belly is full, you have a job you enjoy, and you can sleep safe in your bed at night.
It’s years of mis-management of the economy that threatens our culture not dilution from europe - I am after all already and English/Irish/Viking hybrid who loves living in france
Agreed but my point was that the UK has had a sense of nationhood for a long time - since the latter part of the 18th century at the latest but going back to Tudor times really.
That’s not to say that some parts of Europe have not had similarly long periods to develop a sense of belonging to a nation - Portugal, for instance, has had its modern borders, more or less, for about the same as the UK, as has Spain (ish) - again, geography has a role in their national identity.
But does someone born in the Alsace feel they have a French or German heritage. Or a bit of both - it might not be unreasonable to suppose that someone born in Strasbourg would look upon European integration more favourably than someone born in the UK.
This isn’t criticism by the way - just pointing out that the EU does have a different cultural heritage to Britain.
I don’t think it held in Cheshire (which is where Hovis originated) either.
Playing devil’s advocate, but one could make the argument that the English way of “adapting” to being part of a United Kingdom was essentially to remain unchanged and expect the Scots, Welsh and Irish to fall into line. As a lay person I’m not aware of any great efforts towards inclusion and integration on the part of England - encouraging devolution, spontaneously inviting the Scots and Welsh to have a greater say over the direction of the UK as a whole. Maybe if England had practised on the Scots and the Welsh and learned to be more open and flexible, it might have found it easier to be part of the EU?
Re Alsace, have you been there Paul? There still seem to be certain tensions, my instinctive feeling when I was there was that the region’s history was a topic best avoided with people you don’t know.
Yes quite Orwellian…double speak double think and newspeak…x
Difficult to convey differing feelings about national pride and culture in one small paragraph whilst also talking about the economy…My heart will always be in England as that’s where my family are…x
From the heart I can never reconcile how there is always money to drop bombs on innocent people in other countries but in doing so the people must suffer austerity…the illusory and deceptive nature of money…currency…the illusion of debt…the mind-boggling trillions of global debt payable to who…???
Sometimes I imagine what might happen if the global debt clock was just switched off…and all supposed debt cancelled out…I imagine the kind of earth we could all create then…
Lol…speaking as an English mother of 3… with Scottish roots… Pictish/Paganish/Celticish who happened to be born this time around in England but now living in Brittany…x
I may have said this before in another post, if so what the heck !
Some years ago an acquaintance who had a second home here asked the question " where would you prefer to die, in France or Britain"?
My response was " it’s not where you die that matters, it’s where and how you live"
Is there an English way? I lived in several parts of the country and the groups of people I met couldn’t have been much different from each other. I really don’t like the comments about how the French do this and the British do that. Luckily there are free thinking people in both places.
The most foreign place I lived was Worthing in West Sussex, it’s hard to believe that a lot of the people there lived on the same planet as me, let alone in the same country.
I think you’re describing how you want it to be, and not the way it actually is. I come from a rural village on the Oxon/Warks/Northants borders. Under the surface there is a division created by the Brexit referendum that will take many years to heal. You might like to separate the economy from the people, but that is naïve. The NFU are very concerned about the negative impact of Brexit, and many people in this area are employed by JLR at Gaydon, just 8 miles away. As JLR are shifting production of the Land Rover to Slovakia, and have publicly stated that they will review their whole UK operation because of the damage that a “hard” Brexit will inflict on the viability of the company, a good number of local people face uncertainty. That’s a lot of jobs. Nearby Banbury is home to lots of smaller automotive service industries. They will be negatively impacted as a result,
So the village is still a pleasing collection of old cottages and larger houses built in ironstone, cricket is played every Sunday, and people put out boxes of excess fruit and veg. There are get togethers in the local village hall every so often, in which the undercurrents of centuries-old hierarchy embedded in rural English social life is still very much in evidence. About the only missing thing is the vicar peddling home on a creaky old bicycle, and a steam train trundling through the countryside on the now disused Great Central Line.
Meanwhile, there is a demonstration of enormous proportions taking place in just over a week’s time against Brexit. The idea that ordinary people are disengaged from their country’s future is simply not the case.
I can be nostalgic for elements of all that, but I think you’re wearing rose-tinted spectacles.
Good grief Dominic I wasn’t saying that I think that’s typical of how England is. I was simply describing a moment in time that I found heartwarming because it showed that England isn’t all doom and gloom and jingoism and racism and me-me-me and panic. It’s a farming area, you can’t drive anywhere at this time of year without getting stuck behind a trailer full of spuds, but also a very affluent area, not many factory workers could afford a house there so factory closures won’t affect them too much. Obviously it won’t avoid the impacts of Brexit and I’m sure folk are aware of that, but that’s not what I was talking about. I was responding to earlier posts that gave the impression that the whole of the UK is Brexit-obsessed to the point of no longer functioning normally. Also to a post that seemed to suggest that people who’ve lived all their lives in their home village count for nothing and shouldn’t have had a say in their country’s future, because I happen to think that people who spend their lives working to feed the nation count at least as much as Brits who have moved abroad and whose chief concern is whether the UK is going to keep paying for their healthcare after Brexit - because let’s face it, that was only factor that many expats considered.
Do people still dock dogs’ tails? Not a practice I ever really liked, but if it’s still allowed I think there’s an excellent case for it here.
I’m sure Mr Barnier was very interested to have it explained to him exactly how NI sees its future relationship with the UK, but that’s not really the EU’s concern, is it.
