Why aren't we proud anymore?

I live in Wales and personally I think devolution was the worse thing we have done. Just another expensive layer of bureaucracy, the current virus situation has really hi-lighted the differences. We get free prescriptions but I would rather pay and get the superior health service that England has. Screening done earlier and waiting lists shorter.
I agree that in USA seeing flags flying is commonplace, our political system doesn’t seem to energise the population in general- people I talk to feel its a waste of time as no-one listens.

The reason is that we are not allowed to be proud. The PC troop call it racism - and strangely it is only the English who are racist.

Im proud of my country, but I’m ashamed of how we emphasise the bad things that happen here. It’s harder to be proud when you’re depressed.
If you listen to the media or read the newspapers it’s almost always negative-any positives, like Captain Tom are immediately shouted down by folk who have usually achieved less themselves.
Sometimes it’s misleading. According to one report, children not being at school is damaging their mental health. So children being at home with their parent(s) is damaging their mental health? How many parents will admit that?
Stop publicising the vandalism. It just encourages others to do the same.
Celebrate the successes of the COVID crisis as well as mourning the deaths. It’s hard to be a nurse or a doctor or a care home owner dealing with deaths without seeing any praise for their successes.
Celebrate that at least we have the freedom to agree/disagree about sending children back to school-having looked at lists, there are as many who could send their children back but won’t, and many who would send their children back but can’t.
Does anyone know exactly how to do it right?
Be proud of your country -stand up and say it, lobby the media to stop publishing negativity and have at least a day of broadcasting only positive things to be proud of.
You’ll face a hard battle.

I will always be eternally grateful that I was born in the UK, instead of a Kenyan or S African slum, both of which I have visited, or a country where I have to watch everything I say, and I am followed even when going shopping. It might be an 'accident of birth' but to be born and raised here has me giving thanks every day, there is so much that we completely take for granted.

Maybe it is 'civic pride' we mean, 'a feeling of gratification arising from association with something good or laudable'

So someone explain to me, because I really don’t get it.

I am proud of the things I have put effort into and achieved - my qualifications, my job, my home. I am proud of things I have shared a part in achieving - the fact that my kids are nice people, the successes in my place of work. I am proud of the choices I have made that which have been successful in some way - a change of job at the right time, making a new life for myself after my marriage collapsed.

But I can’t for the life of me see why I should be proud of something that I have made no personal contribution to, and no choice about. I was born in the U.K. to English parents. I didn’t choose my parents, or their nationality, or my place of birth. I put no effort into becoming British. What is there to be proud of in that?

I quite like the advantages of being British. I live in a moderately civilised first world country, with buzzing cities and glorious countryside. I benefit from the culture and heritage of the nation. I value the fact that when I’m ill I can see an NHS doctor, and when I’m old I’ll get a state pension. Those are good things, for sure, but I can’t see that I have any right to be proud of them.

Maybe it’s just a language thing. I prefer precision. A lot of posters to this thread seem to conflate ‘I like having this stuff’ with ‘I am proud of this stuff’.

It’s because we are a free country and can say, almost, anything we like!

Mollygo Please tell who has been shouting down Captain Tom? From everything I've seen and read there have only been positive comments.

I can only think that you've been living in a bunker for the last few months. There's been masses of praise on tv and in the papers about the health care workers and lots of people have been doing their best to support them.

eg:

Hotels giving rooms to health care workers who have been distancing themselves from their families

Restaurants who have been cooking and donating meals to them

People who donated money to Captain Tom and the others who have been sponsored for walking, running or whatever.
The young and disabled and the old people and the healthier people in between.

The volunteers who work in food banks and those who have delivered shopping to those self isolating

The head teacher, on the news today, who has delivered 5000 food parcels because his school is closed.

I could go on but it would fill several pages.

I think everyone who posts on here is very well aware of what the UK has to offer. The reason many of us are attacking the government is because we want peoples' lives to improve.

I too am eternally grateful that I was born in this country and not in war torn Europe. I'm proud of this country, especially for the NHS, our tolerant Police, our benign armed forces, past achievements in science, engineering, medicine, the arts and and all our freedoms. Most of us take everything this country has to offer completely for granted and forget how lucky we are. Perhaps a spell of living in a less harmonious place would wake us up as to exactly how fortunate we are!

Aepgirl Sadly we are not a completely free country, certainly as regards the press. Piers Morgan was sounding off yesterday morning about the govt. and it's refusal to speak to Channel 4 News and Newsnight.

Oh, I’ve lived in ‘less harmonious places’ - I think Iran during the revolution was about the least pleasant. I’m not short of gratitude for the advantages of living in England as a U.K. citizen. For me, gratitude is not the same as ‘pride’.

I am not proud to be British, I think I our country is in a terrible mess and will only get worse. The Covid death rate, the number of people in poverty and homeless. I can’t see anything to be proud of at the moment. Some of the things we did in the past were awful too. What I am proud of is my children and grandchildren.

I agree with you Dragonfly46, and well said CheŕryTree59. I've always been very proud to be British and would be the first to say so if anyone criticised my Country. It has always shocked me how few people know our National anthem (at least more than the first verse) and seem to be embarrassed about singing it, it's not even taught in our schools.

There are lots of things I don't like about the United States, but their custom of pledging allegiance to the flag in their schools has always struck me as a good way to instill a sense of national unity and pride from an early age.

Regardless of people's colour, race or ethnicity we are a great Nation and we should be proud of our achievements, especially this year. Every country has it's problems and makes mistakes but we have to keep sight of the bigger picture. We should show and voice our pride (just as we did for our NHS) - no-one else is going to do it for us.

I am very pleased to be British. I say 'pleased' rather than proud as that seems to open to criticism. I am also pleased to be English. I am definitely not racist in saying I am pleased to be English. Why has that become a thing?
We used to be a country of stiff upper lip, now we are becoming a country of endless whinging and whining and denigrating our own country continually.

I think we "run ourselves down" because we can afford to. IMHO we have such a strong sense of out national identity that we can criticise ourselves without ever losing that. Other countries have to work at it. cf the USA where children have to sing a patriotic song at start every day. cf Europe where the borders have always been changing. Our island has stayed intact. We don't even bother to put the name of our country on our postage stamps - everyone knows worldwide who we are.

Loving your country and your community is OK. I am a Scot and I am glad I was born here and will die here. I spent a lot of my life in England, married an Englishman and raised my daughter there. No English person ever put me down for being Scottish. They seemed to like me for it in fact. Having a Parliament here and some control over our affairs has been good for Scotland. I would like to see a federal UK because I think the majority of people in Scotland want a different sort of society from the majority of the people in England but there are many links between all the parts of the UK and things we should manage in common, However there is an element in Scottish nationalism that is anti-English. Everything is blamed, not on the UK government, or even those who voted for that government, but on the English as a race. The same people in England would be in UKIP and directing their prejudice against other Europeans or immigrants and so on. It is possible to love your country for its strengths without being blind to its faults, without boasting that it is the best country in the world or without needing to scapegoat other people who have a different identity to you. People are so influenced by the gutter press. I am sure anti-Scottish sentiment in England could easily be engendered if it suited those who seek power. The Sun was anti Scottish independence in England but for it in its Scottish edition. Most generalisations about people are just that. Generalisations. If all English people were the same, how come the gransnetters are so radically divided in their opinions.

There will always be those, thankfully in a minority, hell bent, on living in the past who chose to dwell on mistakes the country made rather than its achievements.My response is why do you stay? so pack your bags and make room for those who will appreciate what our country has to offer.

Where would people go?

Being lucky, which I think I am, is not the same as being proud.

I think it is very sad that we are classed as racists if we say we are proud to be English!!!, and I am not racist, but I am English.

Who's classing you as a racist?

How wonderful to hear from so many of you who are proud of the contribution of the British to our own 4 countries and the wider world. We need to see those people in terms of their choice to be part of our nation states no matter what their background - whether recent immigrants or those of past generations - after all Anglo Saxons a were from Germanic/Scandinavian origins!

Some people seem to be on a kind of negative auto pilot at the moment. Any attempt to put a positive spin on events is very quickly slapped down and a collective misery fest takes over.

When the news was announced this morning that Vera Lynn had died and 'We'll Meet Again' was played, DH muttered, 'I wonder how long it will be before somebody decides she was actually a closet racist, descended from white slave traders and all her music is banned!

He was joking of course but there is a point there.

What made your DH think that merlotgran? He would appear to have a particular view of other people.

On our first trip to Australia, we noticed how many products had ‘Proudly Made In Australia’ on them.

Even the floor mop!

What made your DH think that merlotgran? He would appear to have a particular view of other people.

There you go.

I rest my case.