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English Bulldog If you’re looking for a symbol of Britishness, this dog’s expression, I think, says an awful lot! Photo: © Jenny RolloIt’s an oldie and it changes slightly each time I read it, but as the Telegraph reprints (sent in by a reader from Bournemouth):
Being British is about driving in a German car to an Irish pub where we imbibe copious amounts of Belgian or eastern European beer, then on the way home stopping to pick up an Indian curry or a Turkish kebab to consume as we sit on our Swedish furniture watching American shows on Japanese TVs.
But above all, being British is our suspicion of anything foreign.
Yet we don’t think we are “foreign”, even when living abroad.
And, despite eating the Indian curry, Turkish kebab and every other nationality of food at home, the moment a Brit goes on holiday, their diet becomes limited to “English Breakfast” and fish & chips. Someone please tell me why!
No wonder the Spanish think we’re eccentric! 
Seriously though, I’d not realized that I’m of one of the “British opinion-forming classes” (actually, I just thought I was opinionated), but I do find the “whole concept of national identity either sinister or risible”. Well, both, in fact.
Like most Brits, I find it weird, but it’s not that I see “flag-waving US patriotism” as “childlike and naive” (well, that too), but mostly I see this as a predominantly right-wing nationalistic activity and decidedly unhealthy. “Helped” along by your president in recent years (to us) it’s come to mean that North America thinks itself superior and apart from the rest of the world - and become a danger.
Ignoring the obvious contradictions here; that we Brits already laugh at ourselves and that we’ve been going around the world, invading, raping, pillaging (or simply becoming expats) and generally thinking of ourselves as superior for hundreds of years, we still do not want to be seen in either of those same lights.
One sees where the childishness comes from too, when, despite “The Colonies” making it abundantly clear that they wished to be independent, Britain just can’t let go. Either through flattering imitation or other means, it seems still hell bent on wooing its former possession, yet at the same time, stubbornly harbouring even longer-held grudges and scepticism against its European neighbours.
The idea of a “unified British identity” though seems to be an oxymoron to start with, because we always were a bunch of mongrels and the situation today, with all of the so-called “diverse” groups does not appear to be any different.
Perhaps “unification” was not always smooth and peaceful, but Angles, Saxons and Vikings didn’t have Brown or Straw (or even a Cameron) to draw them up “A list of bland aspirations with a presumptuous and irritating “Bill of Rights” attached.” Thanks goodness. Nothing could be so false and artificial.
There was King John and his Magna Carta (or “Great Charter of Freedoms”) and maybe that worked then and in the American situation 200 odd years ago.
Maybe the relevance does need questioning now (I don’t mean it deserves to be run roughshod over), because the idea of a Brit demanding their rights under the Magna Carta (or even its new equivalent) just seems entirely ridiculous.
And today in Britain, all the fat-chewing and politically-correcting that would go into attempting to come up with something that would suit everyone and offend none, would be far more likely to evolve into a “Great Charter of Limitations” and - naturally - have the exact opposite effect to the one intended.
Then again, I’m sure my thoughts here are wasted, because we seem totally incapable of remembering history or of preventing it from repeating.
Sponzurz
