Tuesday 6 June 2006

A bitter and broken nation

On 15 March 2011, The Telegraph published the article, ‘No wonder the UK lags behind America: we're a bitter and broken nation’.

The author of the sneeringly contemptuous article, Milo Yiannopoulos, is, so we are told, 'disillusioned by the UK's bad attitude and antipathy towards entrepreneurship.'

"I love Europe... Brits... are mean-spirited by nature. Sorry, but it's true... We're profoundly ashamed of success. There's a culture of envy deeply ingrained in the British psyche that poisons politics, relationships and business... what a bitter, broken, negative place this country is: how eager we are to tear down those around us." (No wonder the UK lags behind America )
But I liked this bit. This bit you got right:

"It wasn't until returning to the UK that I realised just how vast a gulf it is between the land of the free and this bitter, divided Isle."
We are bitter and we are divided. (Though I'd never swap this country for Yankee-land, as Milo says he's almost certain to do one day) But it wasn't always thus. In a 1944 essay titled 'The English People', George Orwell wrote with affection of the ‘gentle-mannered, undemonstrative, law-abiding English’.

He said that foreigners were amazed by our ‘gentleness… by the orderly behaviour of English crowds, the lack of pushing and quarrelling’. he also said that there was ‘very little crime or violence.’ Despite the war, that’s how our world was in 1944.

In 1955, the anthropologist, Geoffrey Gorer, was moved to say this:

‘The English are certainly among the most peaceful, gentle, courteous and orderly populations that the civilised world has ever seen’.
That’s how it was for us in 1955. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we had before the politicians and the social engineers, those who knew so much better and saw so much further than the rest of us, decided to change it all. By 2009, one uniquely honest Labour politician was admitting to this:

"In my constituency… there are now more violent crimes against the person than there were in the whole country 50 years ago."
Perhaps we are 'bitter' and 'divided' nowadays because of all the second-generation immigrants insisting we're 'bitter,' 'broken' and 'mean-spirited.' Perhaps it's got something to do with all the 'violent crimes against the person' that half a century of parliamentary and media treachery has foist upon us.

We weren't 'mean-spirited' back then, Milo. If we are now it's because someone made us this way. My guess is that you'd rather hang out with the someones than the descendants of Orwell's ‘gentle-mannered, undemonstrative, law-abiding English’.

You're welcome to them. And they to you.

This is Milo Yiannopoulos:

3 comments:

  1. heh. The name is Greek. But he looks like a jewboy to me.

    =XIV=

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah. He doesn't look much like the golden-haired Greeks of legend, does he?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have to admire his affrontery in referring to 'our' country, and the use of the collective 'we'. He is at best an emigre, who understands nothing of the British psyche, he has no historical ties, and therefore no real allegiance to Britain, other than a grudging thank you for allowing the British people a place to hang his hat. The Yanks are welcome to him, good riddance.

    ReplyDelete