Why aren't we proud anymore?

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.

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

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’.

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'

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.

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.

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.

Well, I don't know which countries you are talking of in Europe.

I can only say that in Scandinavia we are quite capable of seeing the ridiculous side of our own countries and critising what is wrong.

The same in my experience applies to the Belgian and Dutch, and of course to the Germans, who are sensitive to criticism because of the Hitler era.

I was very proud to be British in 2012, I think that the Olympics showed us at our very best. Since then Brexit has divided the nation and those divisions are still very evident. As for its handling of COVID, over 60,000 deaths and counting tells it’s own story. The test and trace app apparently won’t be ready until the Winter, we could have joined in with the EU and used theirs, but we know best. New Zealand has less deaths overall than we have in a daily basis. I fear for the country my grandchildren are going to be growing up in but they will be able to buy Tim Tams.

As a teacher I worked hard to pay a small part to ensure that our school was the best it could be and gave great opportunities to our students. Because I was part of that effort I was proud of our school and our students.
As an English woman (although I don't live in England now), I have worked hard to contribute to the prosperity of my area. So I feel entitled to be proud of being English. Your homeland might be an accident of birth but if you invest effort to contribute to society you are allowed to feel pride in it.

Dare I suggest Globalisation, and the EU, has affected many of the peoples of their countries, thinking of the "proud to be..."
I am and always will be, and often say,

I am English, and proud to be English.

The media seem hell bent on running our country down no matter what the government do or say the media turn it in to a negative I was very proud of our country but now it's horrible I wish I could afford to leave but the problem is which country is any better

I think the press and media are a lot to blame, in the way they portray our country withthe need they put out . With BBC bias......

I so agree with this. Let us be a bit proud of our country.
I’m fed up with being told all the negatives, fed up with being told we are all racists.

I feel that there's no point posting on here.
The German family I'm friends with complain about Germany, my Polish friends about Poland, Irish about Ireland and so on. Certainly there was plenty of complaining about the USA even years ago when we lived there! I don't honestly think it's very different.

It’s an accident of birth ( where we are born) but I am proud to live in the UK, nowhere better.?

I think its a national trait to be self deprecating and we do it so well. I am happy to be British with all our ups and downs. We have produced many great people and for a small island achieved so much. You are right of course Elegran that doesn't mean that other countries have not done the same.
I currently live in another country but England will always be home although I am very happy where I am. Sorry if that sounds contradictory.

But, vegansrock I hope you aren't saying that being glad that our country has certain good points means we are automatically assuming that no other country has them? That was what some people in that old thread were claiming when posters praised some element that they liked about Britain.

I could, for instance, say that I was glad my late husband had a sense of humour, without meaning that no other man had one!

As others have said, there is no reason to be proud of one’s nationality, which is an accident of birth. There are some good things about Britain and lots of bad things. I hope I can look at the country dispassionately. I live in England, but have lived in Scotland too. I am part Scottish, but feel more English. I have no particular pride in either, nor in the Irish that is a large part of my heritage.

My only true pride is that Shakespeare was English.

paddyanne Your Scottish Saltire is also part of the Union flag of the United Kingdom.
The only country not represented on it is Wales.

The flag of St George has not been taken over by britnats but was taken over by English Nationalists, who unfortunately gave it a bad name y their behaviour.
It's a pity that Scottish and Welsh patriotism and even nationalism is looked on as a Good Thing but English Nationalism is not.
Perhaps it needs a rebrand.

Your post is worth repeating, Elegran.

I'm British and happy to be so.
Some of my ancestors were not but were, I presume, very glad to call this country home.

A few of my points are under threat at the moment.

So glad it was you that said that, Elegran

I read all of that thread and found it very amusing. same bunfight, same protagonists...

FWIW I have no 'pride' in being British, English or whatever, as it's just accident of birth that put me here, but I can never get over what wonderful and extraordinarily varied scenery we have.

That was my point exactly Jabberwok.

No one is saying other countries aren't great, of course they are. It's constantly running our country down that's so depressing!

Valid. Not value. ?

Good posts vegansrock and janeainsworth. Value points IMHO