feeling proud to be British

When I started this post it was because I felt proud of our heritage and technological achievements. Bits of those planes were made all over the UK so we can all be proud. Personally I can't believe lots of Welsh Scottish and Irish people hate the English. Perhaps I am naive but I will always be proud to be British!

Frankly Absent that cannot be argued with , I would probably do the same if that was my position. Nothing in the whole wide world like family!!

Eloethan , but they all flock here don"t they ??

margaret I agree that you can be proud of personal achievements but maybe you can have reflected pride in others' successes?

I hate the kind of nationalism that is akin to 'jingoism' but think it is good to value cultural traditions etc. I think it is because the English have tended to be the colonialists and , dare I say, agressors, there has been less of a need to preserve 'Englishness' whereas in Scotland and Wales there are traditional dress /songs etc . Defended and preserved because they were under threat .... well it's a theory.

Nonu That was my main reason. I am now a 15-minute drive away rather than 38 hours of flights.

Did you move to NZ to be nearer to the family Absent?

absent I tend to agree with you. I am glad that I live in the UK but I dislike nationalism and the way it is used to divide the peoples of the world.

Merlot

I'm Spartacus very proud to be British.

One can be very proud of this "SMALL" island , I certainly am . What about National Pride eh !!!!!!!!!!

@MargaretX - I'm wit' you, Booboo (Yogi Bear impression).

Being born in some location is not an achievement. I am very fond of my country - most of the time - but pride doesn't come into it.

^ BUT^ what a Wonderful small island this most certainly Is !!

You can only be proud of what you yourself have achieved. You can't be proud of being born in a certain position in a small island off the continent of Europe. How can you be proud of that? Where anyone is born is a matter where the parents happened to be when you were born. So that was Liverpool? Manchester? Suffolk? Glasgow?
How can this game of skittles make you proud?

A winner of a certain sport can be proud that he/ she has won and if you believe they have done it for their country then you will believe anything.

Well, I'm proud to be Norfolk, born and bred. I'm proud to be English. I'm proud to be part of the close family of nations called Britain. I'm proud to belong to a country which is part of that loose wider family called the Commonwealth. But I cannot, however hard I try, make myself feel European.
(And yes, sometimes I do feel ashamed when I read or encounter actions which let our culture down)

Your post has confused me Greatnan

I'm still a bit stunned by the ease with which some people in other parts of the British Isles express "hatred" of the English. This casual racism would be frowned on if directed at other national groups - yet the "support any team but England" approach is so regularly repeated, and rarely challenged.

My daughter has met virtually no anti-British feeling in New Zealand - in fact, she has been overwhelmed by the kindness and friendliness of the 'natives'.
I know from bitter personal experience how the English are hated in certain other countries of the UK - the excuse when challenged being that we had put up the prices of the houses. Apparently, there was no criticism of the locals who were delighted to sell us those houses at inflated prices. My four year old daughter was turned away from a birthday party to which every other child in her class had been invited. It is the only time in my life I have met racism.

Yes - I think there is a mass nervous breakdown here over the cricket. One doesn't mention it in polite company!!

Oh that is interesting joan. They love it when they beat the poms at anything don't they.

Oh, the Pom thing is still around, but not as much as when we came 34 years ago. Pom derives from 'immigrant' to 'Jimmy Grant' to 'pomegranate' to 'pom'. Not Prisoner of Mother England as some would have it.

I think the idea of Friday bath day in England led to an assumption we might pong, but our own observations have been that the locals can be very smelly. No-one has ever dared make assumptions of my personal hygiene , nor my husband's!!

Lovely post joan. The Australians seem to be incredibly proud of their country. Best country in the world etc
The negative aspects of this seem to be that their national identity does sometimes seem to be very anglo-saxon and that there is a lot of anti-pom sentiment (some conflict here maybe?). In WA many people think "poms are smelly" - maybe because they were when they got off boats in times gone by (and Fremantle prison was apparently incredibly vile smelling)
My son was amused when an Indian immigrant said to him "you're a pom but you're not at all smelly!

I think it is good to be proud of what you are and where you come from, though like most of us, I have mixed ancestry, from Scandinavian invaders to Russian Jewish refugees from the pogroms. My husband, sons, father-in-law and many others all served in the armed forces and none did anything to be ashamed of, as far as I know. FiL was killed in the DDay aftermath, and some uncles were killed in that war too: the war that had to happen to remove Hitler and the Nazis.

But mainly, I think the best part of being British is that our complex hybrid language is the world language. True, more people in the world speak a Chinese language than English, but English is so very widespread, and is the lingua franca of most of the world.

Furthermore, our law is the basis of law in so many countries, and is from a great base: not retributive justice, not religious 'justice', but habeas corpus and cold rule of law. I'm especially proud that Britain and much of the commonwealth have abolished the death penalty.

Rory Bremner Radio 4 ' What is Britishness'..really funny, especially the Queen on the Jubilee ride down the Thames, worth a listen.

Mo Farah makes me proud to be British. Also Christine Ohorogu.
The armed forces don't really, other than the fact that they are rather better trained than some. Some terrible things were done in WW2, e.g. bombing Dresden.
As a Welsh person I do get irritated sometimes when the English talk as if we are all English. I think the English also have no idea how much they are hated by some people in the other parts of the UK. I know people who would support Italy or France if they were playing rugby against England.
Looking forward to the Commonwealth Games though, as this is the only time the nations get to compete separately in athletics.

None of my ancestry is British but I was born and raised in London. Does being born in a stable make one a horse? Certainly, I do not feel any kind of nationalistic pride and tend to distrust it in others.

Do those of you who feel proud to be British because British soldiers fought in a war against Nazi Germany also feel ashamed to be British because British soldiers tortured and killed civilians in a war against Iraq? If not, why not? Where is the logic?

As part of my heritage is not English, Scottish, Welsh or Nothern Irish but I was born and brought up in the UK I do say I am British.