How come Australian's always whine about how whiney the English are?
Talk about cooking utensils exchanging comments about each other's degree of carbonisation...
I think it's a similar thing to the US thing; make one sideways comment about the Lucky Country (like how, even for politician's, they have a bad bunch who make up lies about refugees on boats throwing their children overboard), and the Australian's go potty.
Honestly, this colonial inferiority is pathetic.
How come when someone slags off Britain, the British normally join in?
We are pathetic at most sports, even the ones we invented. We have a pathetic National Health Service, despite the fact we more-or-less had the first one. We have appalling politicians, despite the fact we've had a democracy for longer than most countries have been countries. We have a terrible train network, despite the fact we invented trains. We let nuclear bombs off in our colonies and refuse to pay for the damages. We own places like Gibraltar and The Falklands which obviously belong to other contries on a logical basis, by historical happenchance. We act like we are a world power when we are not any longer, nor have been in the memory of anyone still capable of moving without a Zimmer frame. We have nothing even approaching a national cusine. Our educational system is in crisis despite the fact we more-or-less invented the idea of educational systems. We have a terribly set-up welfare system, which is strange as we've had one of one description or another since the 18th C. Our climate makes 'Four Seasons In One Day' seem an appropriate National Anthem. We pretend we are not part of Europe. We reduce our foreign holiday resorts to shabby imitations of home. We have a history full of corruption and dispicable events (Opium War anyone?). We have a hereditry head-of-state. We have bearly got round to getting the aristocracy out of out upper chamber, and still have bishops there. We use a ridiculous first-part-the-post electoral system which ends up producing a succession of oppositional Houses of Parliments, with resultant tacking of policy with each new government, rather than progressing in a straight line through concensus. We've not adopted the Euro, mainly out of ignorance and pride. We have a reputation for being polite, but can be ruder than any other nationality even when we are being polite and you won't know. The older generations do tend to be emotially proscribed, more like they've had a carrot stuck up their arse than circumscion, not that I'd know what either was like. We are naturally lawless and disregard laws we think of as silly without scruple. I could go on. And it's a real talent to be so screwed up and be the 5th largest economy in the world!
Oh, we produce the most succesful contemporary musicians per head of population than anywhere else in the world, and have done since 1963 almost every year. And English is a de-facto lingua franca which 50% of the world will speak by 2050, which means eventually the English conceit that everyone understands English is you speak slowly and loudly enough will eventually be true. So it's not all bad.
But, you know what? I fucking love the place, so there!
People living in glass paradigms shouldn't throw stones...
