Facebook readers! Read the full post with videos here!
My hatred and loathing for my home country of the UK has been well documented both on these pages, on Twitter and in various other places that I’ve deposited little pockets of mental detritus around the Web. The reasons for this are manifold, of course, but the recent US elections highlighted one of the reasons that I don’t feel proud to be British, English, United Kingdomish, whatever you want to call me.
Congratulations, by the way, America. You made the right choice by electing Obama as President-elect, the first black President the US has ever seen (a fact the BBC were fond of reminding us roughly every ten seconds during their coverage). You have elected a leader who is intelligent, articulate and inspirational – a leader who certainly gives the impression that he can make a difference and who inspires trust in the things he says. His acceptance speech made me want to shed a tear and made me feel proud and patriotic… towards America.
I’m sure pretty much everyone has seen this by now, but here we go again:
The man is a fantastic public speaker, it can’t be denied – even if you don’t agree with everything he says, or doubt he’ll be able to get the job done, or whatever… there’s no denying that he knows how to instill confidence and pride in a crowd.
We get this:
This is Gordon Brown. He is our Prime Minister. Our unelected Prime Minister, I might add, who sat waiting for Blair to resign like a rabid dog waiting to pounce on a hunk of meat before jumping in and continuing the mess his predecessor had created.
There are many things I object to about Gordon Brown and his government. The biggest thing that struck me about the US election is that I actually cared about the outcome. I cared about the candidates. I was keen for Obama to win because I supported him as a person, I supported what he stood for and I found him an inspirational candidate. I felt uneasy about McCain and particularly about the Evil Ice Bitch that stood with him with her strangely plastic face. Conversely, I’ve watched several UK elections over the years and not one of them has inspired the same kind of pride, patriotism and edge-of-the-seat excitement that the US elections did. This is largely to do with the fact that our politicians are boring and uninspiring, as clearly demonstrated above.
Couple this with the fact that they seem to make consistently stupid decisions, particularly when it comes to things like criminal rights, education and the like, and I can say with some confidence that I have roughly 0% confidence and trust in our government… and the trouble is that the “other sides” don’t inspire much confidence either. David Cameron is a posh public-school boy who is widely regarded as “out of touch” with much of society. I will likely vote for him in the next election purely because I’ve seen what a hash Gordon Brown and the Labour Party have made in the last few years, but I know that it’s unlikely there will be any great change. Our “third option”, the Liberal Democrats, may as well not exist because they consistently gain so little votes in the elections that their presence is merely an annoyance to the “big two” parties.
Our MPs are fond of that particularly odious brand of management-speak and obfuscation of what they actually mean through dumb buzz-words. (I realise “obfuscation” may qualify as one of those words, but I like it.) None of them will ever answer a direct question. I realise that this is nothing new, but it does little to inspire confidence. Obama has, conversely, in the speeches I have witnessed so far, been relatively plain-speaking and comes across as honest. Time will tell if he can live up to his promises, but at least I’m feeling pretty good about him at the moment.
I don’t see any change forthcoming in the UK. Each new generation of politicians in this country is more boring, dull, morose and out-of-touch than the last. Each new generation is doing more and more damage to the country in the name of being “progressive” and encouraging “diversity” when in fact all they are doing is removing rights from people who deserve them and providing them to people who don’t, like criminals and poorly-behaved children in schools. As a result, the country is becoming apathetic, with little to no respect for authority. There’s no chance of any kind of “revolution” forthcoming because the country is so weary and exhausted by the constant beatdowns and the amount of effort it takes to get a straight answer out of a politician.
I realise this all sounds a bit Daily Mail-ish and for that I apologise. But I wanted to share my thoughts, post-election. I am filled with pride and “patriotism” (for want of a better word) towards America at the moment, but it only highlights the fact that we’re doing it wrong here.
Discover more from I'm Not Doctor Who
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
All true, but not all the fault of the politicians, uninspiring as they are. Apathy is a long-standing national characteristic in the UK (under the guise of “tolerance”. We just tolerate everything…) Americans appear to be a lot more assertive and personality is displayed much more forcefully and openly. We are traditionally a country of repressed sheep. So if its people are like that, there’s not much chance of this country producing many revolutionary leaders.
By the way, Gordon looks and sounds like he’s giving a eulogy at a funeral!
True. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy though. The people are apathetic so won’t do anything about the woeful leadership they’re getting, so the woeful leaders don’t feel any pressure to get any better or do anything more inspiring, so they continue doing their stupid, uninspiring thing, so the people get discouraged, so they become more apathetic… and so on and so on…
Precisely.
this is off point but your the first brit i know that doesn’t have an abnormal sense of “patriotism” and i went to a british school and all my mates were english or british, so basically grew up with brits… and i find it nice to see someone not constantly fly the flag.
anyways.
i find that the british youth is really going down, kids getting stabbed regularly and/or drunk stumbling out of pubs. my aunt lives in east london, and you probably don’t need me pointing the obvious but it’s pretty rough, when i went to visit the day i arrived there was someone who got stabbed round the corner, kids had gotten into a fight and i think that what it raelly boils down to, the new generation isn’t the hopeful it should be, what i am really astonished by is the american change that brought so many of it’s youth into awareness.
perhaps i’m wrong but i haven’t seen that kind of upheaval from the american people, which when looking to the UK is a shame that there hasn’t been a similar movement with their political choices.
btw love the squadron, follow what i can
Spot on, Jin. My patriotism died when I went into teaching in schools, just after university. I saw first-hand what spoiled, self-obsessed little shits British youth had become, obsessed only with themselves and what trappings of perceived “wealth” or “fame” they could get together and I was pretty disgusted. No-one seemed to have any ambition, no-one was interested in school, no-one gave their elders any respect.
The changes you mention really scare me. I got married recently and I know one day I will want to have kids, but there is no way I want a child of mine being brought up in the society in this country at present. There are too many bad influences. Ironically, it used to be America that was seen as the “enemy” of society in this country but now I think Britain is far worse and America is doing a lot of things right in many places, though obviously still not all – it’s a big place after all!
Glad to hear you’re enjoying the Squadron. It’s been a bit of a flood of podcasts recently with Fallout 3, Lost Winds and another one on the way very soon! That may be it for this year though 🙂