Things I like about being British

[cunning fergus]

Bow and bow is probably confusing enough without throwing in bough.

Not to mention Beau.............albeit that is French.................sacrebleu.

 

[brixtonA23]

A green and pleasant land and goodnight.

 

[Adders1]

Rubbish. Have you ever been to New Zealand? They don't respect the Aussies at all. .

That's just not true.

 

[Ali_rrr]

Scandinavian girls love you ;-)

This!

 

[pastafarian]

Things I like about being British

Our amazing History-World Class.

Fish and chips

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I lived in Canada for 4 years and have travelled . . . a bit.
The good bits about here are far too subtle for many foreigners to appreciate, except those that do (who end up living here). (I mean foreigners who stay here because the y like it, rather than those who come here because they have to).

My list:

Good music (my missus says the yanks have better but that's an ongoing discussion)
Nice weather on the whole
Variety (countryside, towns, people)
Intolerance (of extremism - let's face it, we'd make dreadfully wishy washy Nazis)
We aren't German. I mean that in the sense we beat the buggers in two world wars, and we aren't like them.
Maturity. When its late at night national telly might have a programme on it where someone calls someone else a ****. And we get it. Then we go to sleep.
Skepticism. We treat every innovation with 'that's nice'.
Nobility. We may not go around pretending we are all equal, but most of us have a sense of our own dignity.
Poverty. We don't really have that. Yes, half the country earns less than 50% of the national average, but that's just the product of the Gaussian distribution, FFS!
Football - a paradigm of life. Only the Brits know how to appreciate it properly. We may not be specially good at it, but that's half the charm
Chutney.
Cheese.
Cheese and chutney.
A good attitude to diversity (not perfect, but better than any other country).
Crap roads. With roads as crap as ours there is a feasibility cap on car transport. Nobody with a brain who lives in London owns a car. Thanks to the crap roads. Genius.
And finally, its bloody brilliant here. There are quite a few ********s, but not enough to make it like America. Or even Canada . . .

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I lived in Canada for 4 years and have travelled . . . a bit.
The good bits about here are far too subtle for many foreigners to appreciate, except those that do (who end up living here). (I mean foreigners who stay here because the y like it, rather than those who come here because they have to).

My list:

Good music (my missus says the yanks have better but that's an ongoing discussion)
Nice weather on the whole
Variety (countryside, towns, people)
Intolerance (of extremism - let's face it, we'd make dreadfully wishy washy Nazis)
We aren't German. I mean that in the sense we beat the buggers in two world wars, and we aren't like them.
Maturity. When its late at night national telly might have a programme on it where someone calls someone else a ****. And we get it. Then we go to sleep.
Skepticism. We treat every innovation with 'that's nice'.
Nobility. We may not go around pretending we are all equal, but most of us have a sense of our own dignity.
Poverty. We don't really have that. Yes, half the country earns less than 50% of the national average, but that's just the product of the Gaussian distribution, FFS!
Football - a paradigm of life. Only the Brits know how to appreciate it properly. We may not be specially good at it, but that's half the charm
Chutney.
Cheese.
Cheese and chutney.
A good attitude to diversity (not perfect, but better than any other country).
Crap roads. With roads as crap as ours there is a feasibility cap on car transport. Nobody with a brain who lives in London owns a car. Thanks to the crap roads. Genius.
And finally, its bloody brilliant here. There are quite a few ********s, but not enough to make it like America. Or even Canada . . .

I sense your 'a bit' is rather small?

 

[Trufflehound]

My list:

Intolerance (of extremism - let's face it, we'd make dreadfully wishy washy Nazis)

We aren't German. I mean that in the sense we beat the buggers in two world wars, and we aren't like them.

There are quite a few ********s, but not enough to make it like America. Or even Canada . . .

......

 

[The Spanish]

I lived in Canada for 4 years and have travelled . . . a bit.
The good bits about here are far too subtle for many foreigners to appreciate, except those that do (who end up living here). (I mean foreigners who stay here because the y like it, rather than those who come here because they have to).

My list:

Good music (my missus says the yanks have better but that's an ongoing discussion)
Nice weather on the whole
Variety (countryside, towns, people)
Intolerance (of extremism - let's face it, we'd make dreadfully wishy washy Nazis)
We aren't German. I mean that in the sense we beat the buggers in two world wars, and we aren't like them.
Maturity. When its late at night national telly might have a programme on it where someone calls someone else a ****. And we get it. Then we go to sleep.
Skepticism. We treat every innovation with 'that's nice'.
Nobility. We may not go around pretending we are all equal, but most of us have a sense of our own dignity.
Poverty. We don't really have that. Yes, half the country earns less than 50% of the national average, but that's just the product of the Gaussian distribution, FFS!
Football - a paradigm of life. Only the Brits know how to appreciate it properly. We may not be specially good at it, but that's half the charm
Chutney.
Cheese.
Cheese and chutney.
A good attitude to diversity (not perfect, but better than any other country).
Crap roads. With roads as crap as ours there is a feasibility cap on car transport. Nobody with a brain who lives in London owns a car. Thanks to the crap roads. Genius.
And finally, its bloody brilliant here. There are quite a few ********s, but not enough to make it like America. Or even Canada . . .

indeed Harry. I disagree with around 30% of your list but can still agree its great. perhaps thats it in a nutshell.

roads are ****ing excellent compared to most of the world.
chutney is horrible
we are quite like the germans
its a myth you are stupid to drive in London. its not that difficult and theres nothing wrong with it.
we most certainly do have serious poverty in this country.
we are certainly not better than any other country at diversity. that is an astounding claim.

 

[W.C.]

Chutney really is horrible.

As are pickled onions.

 

[Norman Potting]

I lived in Canada for 4 years and have travelled . . . a bit.
The good bits about here are far too subtle for many foreigners to appreciate, except those that do (who end up living here). (I mean foreigners who stay here because the y like it, rather than those who come here because they have to).

My list:

.....
Chutney.
Cheese.
Cheese and chutney.
. . .

Plus a nice bit of fresh granary bread, dairy butter and a decent strong pickled onion. ...And a pint of Harvey's (other equally decent real ales are available).

Thread closed?

 

[The Spanish]

Plus a nice bit of fresh granary bread, dairy butter and a decent strong pickled onion. ...And a pint of Harvey's (other equally decent real ales are available).

Thread closed?

basically a ploughmans lunch norman.

reminds me of alan partridge ordering a gin and tonic from Michael.

 

[Nibble]

We seem to have got summat spot on in Britain. When you go to other European countries things all seem a bit poundshop.

 

[spring hall convert]

Before troll invasion, just let one thread go without pejorative comments about the negative side of life where we live. I wrote a post a few months ago about why I like the BBC and the best responses were from ex-pats in far away lands. Not creating a magic world, which I know can never exist but I do like it here more than any other country I know. So here goes..

Tolerance beyond any other country. And believe me I have seen the change in 10 years here
Quiet pride without flouting it
Funniest people
Most polite
Easiest language to learn although bow and bough must be difficult
Forgive people who have hurt us
Have the SAS when they just might
Love all sports even when we don't win, but we keep it going, just in case we might. (Ashes, Wimbledon, all change, World Cup not)
Live in a democracy where we can say enough is enough (Syria vote for example)
Best authors, poets, designers and popular music (since 1962).
The countryside.

If you take all that on, or some of it, then would just like your thoughts.

Thanks, I really enjoyed reading this.

 

[tinycowboy]

basically a ploughmans lunch norman.

reminds me of alan partridge ordering a gin and tonic from Michael.

A mate of mine did something very similar when ordering a full English in a café once - "I'll have a couple of hash browns, errr, a sausage.." etc, etc. Must be more common than we thought.