In a 'Jerry Maguire' you got me at hello moment, when TB finaly came rund to my way of thinking in his first of no doubt a zillion auf weidersein speeches, I remembered why I'd fallen for the whole 'Britpop' shenaghains in the first place.........
The prime minister says that this country is the 'greatest nation on Earth' and Brits are 'special'. American-born writer Tim Dowling couldn't agree more - and here's why
Friday May 11, 2007
The Guardian
Your amusing national hypochondria
Despite its comparative cosiness, Britain has an unshakable view of itself as a nation that is forever falling to pieces. If you watch the television you see a crumbling health service, falling educational standards, rampant gun crime, infrastructural chaos, economic meltdown and a fractured civilisation well beyond repair. Look out the window, and you see someone throwing a stick for a dog. This might not seem like such a great advertisement for a country, unless you have lived some place where it's the other way round.
Your weirdly old-fashioned radio
Does any other nation continue to float programmes such as Test Match Special, Gardener's Question Time and The Archers purely on an inexhaustible bubble of collective affection? Even if no one listened to them any more there would still be an outcry if you tried to cancel them.
The world's least scary police
It's not just the lack of guns or the breast-shaped hats; British police, alone or in groups, are almost incapable of maintaining an aura of menace. They can be officious, patronising, incompetent, dishonest or bigoted, but they are hardly ever frightening with it (although I'm not a Muslim). The postmen are more intimidating. This may not help their clear-up rate much, but as a foreigner I find it particularly endearing.
The silliest place names
Sometimes, during traffic jams, I play a game in the car with my children and the map, asking them to guess which of a list of local place names I have made up: Craze Lowman, Hand and Pen, Pant, Droop, Trull, Splatt, Gussage All Saints, Hole, Shitebowl Episcopi. They always get it right, because I am not British and therefore cannot begin to imitate the sublime purity of oddness.
Your genuine lack of patriotism
One of the things that Britons can be most proud of is, perversely, the fact that they don't take an unseemly pride in being British. Unlike the Americans and the French, the British seem well aware that patriotism is largely an attempt to take credit for national achievements - a written constitution, haute cuisine, jazz, impressionism - which you have done nothing to foster, support, advance or preserve. Britons instead have a sliding and inclusive scale of belonging, in which it is possible to be both a Scotsman and a Londoner, or both a Yorkshireman and a terrorist.
Your enduring fascination with some of the planet's least interesting weather
You have to admire a nation that manages to make the most of so little. Apart from the occasional toy-town tornado, all you really have is rain interspersed with brief sunny spells, which are known locally as "droughts". The change of seasons is all but imperceptible: winters are uncommonly mild, and summer routinely fails to make an appearance at all. There is nevertheless a charming sense of collective surprise and wonderment at minor accumulations of snow or sudden gusts of wind. It's not unusual for an item about lost roof tiles to make the top of the six o'clock news. Whatever the weather, it's nice to be among people who care, and not just because they are afraid their cars are going to be sucked into the sky and dropped three counties to the south.
Your chequered past
While it is an easy-going-enough place, one never has the sense that Britain just sort of fell into the routine of constitutional monarchy without having tried anything else first. Many countries are stuck with a form of democracy that is still considered by a portion of the population to be a dangerous experiment. The United Kingdom is in the happy position of knowing it had finally exhausted the other options.
Your long tradition of moaning
Visitors to these isles could be forgiven for assuming that the expression "Mustn't grumble" is actually a local truncation of the longer "Mustn't Grumble Any More Than We're Doing Already, Or It Might Get Depressing". The national non-reluctance to complain (not face-to-face of course, but after the fact) means that everything is always a little bit better than you have been led to expect.
The lack of competition
Britain may not automatically spring to mind as the greatest nation on Earth, but who else has a credible shot at the top spot: France? Paraguay? Please. I defy you to come up with a country that deserves the title more.
Del Boy falling through the bar
I don't know why, exactly, but it's on everyone else's list, and, frankly, I felt shifty about putting it this low down
