Your Country Pros & Cons
Out of context: Reply #39
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- kezza_20
Second stab being serious...
1) England, London to be specific, which not being from London originally, feels like a completely separate country, completely different to the rest of the UK?
2) We have a phenomenal standard of life for our size and ability as a nation. I think that as a country we constantly seem to have the ability to reinvent ourselves. In the past couple of hundred years we have been inventors, aggressors, traders, thinkers, pirates and a few others to mention. The transformation of the UK in the last 20 years from an industrial/agricultural economy to a large service based economy will be looked on in years to come as amazing. This has largely been born out of a brilliant educational system, and the ability to be upwardly mobile. My dad was an immigrant 50 years ago, and has made his fortune here. Not many places where that can happen, and this meritocratic system has been adopted by places like the US, Canada, Australia and NZ. It's comforting to live somewhere where your work ethic and ability gets rewarded whatever your background.
3) If you don't do well in that system, you get left behind. People in the UK moan to much that the UK is shit, and having traveled the world and lived in poorer countries, people don't realize how good they have it. That depresses me. The weather is genuinely shit.
4) A great place that should be cherished. from where I sit you choose what tribes you want to be apart of in this world. England is lucky to have an amazing legacy where it populated large parts of the world with English speaking peoples, and that 'English speaking' club is the most affluent one. If America every took it's eye off the ball and got overtaken by China as numero uno, I believe that Europe and that English speaking club should be far poorer for it and we'd see a dramatic lowering in the standards of life we've come accustomed too. For that reason I hope the US sorts it's shit out.
5) Being white it's difficult to have perspective on racism. Intrinsically I think we are all closet racists in the world. The most appalling racism I've seen is in places like Africa with Hutu's and Tutsis. More Blacks have died at the hands of blacks and more whites have died at the hands of whites in the last century than any black on white or brown on black racism. I think on the whole we've learnt to say what we say behind closed doors and get on with life in the UK. From what I read and hear the worst segments of racism in the UK aren't from us white Angles, but from polish who hate the Ukrainians or Somalis that hate the Sudanese for example. It seems a lot of the world's conflicts and issues are played out on London streets all the time and are getting worse. So racism is getting worse, and race related crimes are rising but they aren't committed by the typical Sun reader (a newspaper) but by one ethnic minority on another. A worrying trend.