What symbolises the best of British?

joanlawson

Which cultural icons do you think symbolise the best of British and make you feel proud to be British :?:

In the poll, I have used ten symbols identified in a recent study produced by the think tank, Demos. Please vote for your two favourites.

I could only use 10 in the poll on here, but other things the study found were British sporting achievements, the Beatles, courteous and generous behaviour, volunteering, and altruistic acts.

Joan

prefabkid47

Tody wrote:

There are so many things that make Britain stand out as a great nation.

The first one it seems to me is the Labour party. It's nice that in this horrible times, when so many nations like the USA and Germany for example have given up on multiculturalism, compassion etc., there is one nation where the left is pretty much alive - that nation is Britain.

Secondly, I really like the BBC, its programmes have educated millions of people all over the globe. Think about Frozen Planet for example.

Literature - absolutely amazing - Charles Dickens, the Bronte sisters, etc.

Cuisine - give me more!

So many things indeed.

I must say the NHS is an icon but it does need reforming, sorry - all these waiting times, all the waste...it's no good.

many of the 'labour' politicians are only left wing on the surface,in their private lives they are as about left wing as Margaret Thatcher intent only on feathering their own nests!!

mellman01

I wouldn't say multiculturalism is a positive it's totally the opposite that's why other countries aren't carrying on with it as it causes far to many problems is costly if you do it our way and allow any Tom dick or Apu to come in regardless of skill or motive our children will be dealing with this mess long after were gone, we should only allow skilled people to come here and only if we can't employ one of our own first, it's how Australia New Zeeland Canada etc do it. And anyway what exactly is the end result your looking for with it?, are you after creating Little Bangladesh in London so you can pop in their of a weekend to "enjoy" a different culture as if society is just a theme park, what do you want to see as an end result anyway a grey homogeneous blob with no real defined culture or what?, you should never mess with the social fabric to fast or to heavily as your playing with fire if you do, 7/7 was a result of such actions and the fuel was Blairs love of invading other countries for sport, and anyway why don't the multiculturalists argue that Africa or the middle East needs more Anglo Saxon white immigrants to make them more "diverse" odd that the door only goes one way?.
Now onto money, We have a debt so massive it will be left to our children and their kids to pay it off, if you haven't clocked it were bankrupt and a sizeable part of the blame goes to Dear old Gordon Brown didn't create an economic miracle he simply simply borrowed billions and like a bankrupt with a credit card he maxed out and simply splurged new Labour also filled the low skill low paid jobs with cheap immigrant labour while they allowed 5 million people to sit happily on their a****s sponging of the dole.
We have no sizeable industry Thatcher destroyed it and the hopes of many New Labour were just as stupid instead of making real jobs they created a false boom by flushing borrowed money into the economy, Brown is also the reason why our Pensions are in such a mess as he raided them for tax purposes and now you can't get a final salary pension due to his actions and worse your going to have to work until you drop or as they hope die in harness
They also took us into illegal wars and dragged the only thing we had left in this world our good name through the mud, and what about Doctor David Kelly?, who shot the messenger I wonder, as the old saying goes dead men tell no tails. Now the smiling assassin aka Toni Blair a man who has blood all over his hands is now a peace envoy for Palestine yet can't go there as the Palestinians hate the guy and have told him thy'll kill him if he does, they see him as a Christian invader who sent our troops to invade two Islamic countries, personally I can see their point, it's a sick joke.

fayrose

Can't vote for any of those Joan. :???:

My choices would be

1. After all the waffle and moaning, when the chips are down and help is REALLY needed, the ordinary, gutsy British people step up to the plate.

2. Ridiculous and wonderful sense of humour, able to laugh at themselves and to enjoy the absurd.

valval

i would have said the people as one of my choices and nhs as could not went for national trust did make me think val

joanlawson

Please note that the symbols of the best of British in the poll are not of my choosing. They are the ones which were identified by the Demos study.

Judging from the comments made so far on this thread, I think that one very important symbol of being British, which we should all value greatly, is freedom of speech.

In the words of John Milton, one of our greatest British poets:

“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”

joanlawson

rehab44 wrote:

1.Shakespeare

I am finding it difficult to pick any Joan, I have reservations about them all.
Shakespeare: I was forced fed this at school, I didn't understand it then or now, no doubt people will say I am uneducated slob, I don't understand particle physics either.

Ah, you just think you don't understand Shakespeare, but you do really :!:

If you cannot understand my argument and declare "it's Greek to me", you are quoting Shakespeare. If you claim to be "more sinned against than sinning", you are quoting Shakespeare. If you act "more in sorrow tha in anger", if you "wish is father to the thought", if your lost property has "vanished into thin air", you are quoting Shakespeare. If you have ever refused "to budge an inch" or suffered from "green-eyed jealousy", if you have "played fast and loose", if you have been "tongue-tied" - "a tower of strength" - "hoodwinked" or "in a pickle", if you have "knitted your brows" - "made virtue of necessity", insisted on "fair play" - "slept not one wink" - "stood on ceremony" - "danced attendance" on "your lord and master" - "laughed yourself into stitches", had "short shrift" - "cold comfort", or "too much of a good thing", if you have "seen better days", or lived "in a fools paradise", why, be that as it may, "the more fool you", for it is a "foregone Conclusion" that you are "as good luck would have it", quoting Shakespeare. If you think "it is high time", and that "that is the long and the sohrt of it", if you believe that "the game is up", and that "truth will out", even if involves your "own flesh and blood", if you"lie low" till "the crack of doom" because you suspect "foul play", if you have "teeth set on edge at one fell swoop" - "without rhyme or reason", then "to give the devil his due" if the "truth were known" for surely you have a "tongue in your head", you are quoting Shakespeare. Even if you bid me "good riddance" and "send me packing", if you wish I was "dead as a doornail", if you think I am an "eyesore" - a "laughing stock" - the "dwvil incarnate" - "a stony-hearted villain" - "bloody-minded", or a "blinking idiot", then "by jove" - "o lord"- "tut, tut!" - "For goodness sake" - "what the dickens!" - "but me no buts" - "it is all one to me", for you are quoting Shakespeare...

Airwave!

Oh, what a load of fuss! GB is far from perfect, I for one do not want to be anywhere else. Most other countries are far from a good place to live, no proper beer, no green fields (turn up Jerusalem at this stage), no last night of the proms, no two ronnies, (enter the band of the Coldstream Guards), no fish and chips, no Queeny (the Union Jack fluttering in a warm summer day breeze), no....oh **** it, you know what I mean!

Support what is good about GB.

valval

Airwave! wrote:

Oh, what a load of fuss! GB is far from perfect, I for one do not want to be anywhere else. Most other countries are far from a good place to live, no proper beer, no green fields (turn up Jerusalem at this stage), no last night of the proms, no two ronnies, (enter the band of the Coldstream Guards), no fish and chips, no Queeny (the Union Jack fluttering in a warm summer day breeze), no....oh **** it, you know what I mean!

Support what is good about GB.

well said

joanlawson

I worry for my grandchildren, and I wonder what Britain will be like for them when they grow up. You always expect life to get better for the next generation, but things aren't looking too rosy for the future. With an ageing population, I wonder how young people are going to support us all. With the present lack of opportunities and jobs, where's the money going to come from? Those who do have jobs will have to work till they drop to pay for all the rest, and that's going to cause resentment and trouble in the future. They'll probably have to bring in euthanasia to reduce the numbers of old people.

Oh dear, I'm depressing myself now :roll:

dreamdaisy

Beer and proper pubs. That's an easy answer to a difficult question. DD

prefabkid47

dreamdaisy wrote:

Beer and proper pubs. That's an easy answer to a difficult question. DD

We need say no more.......................

prefabkid47

rehab44 wrote:

prefabkid47 wrote:

dreamdaisy wrote:

Beer and proper pubs. That's an easy answer to a difficult question. DD

We need say no more.......................

Oh yes we do need to say more, Beer and proper pubs with voluptuous bar wenches

......serving good pub grub..........heaven!

mellman01

Multiculturalism has made this country more dangerous for the common man, so much so the US and other countries who will be fielding teams in the 2012 Olympics have given us a terror ratting of high due to the threat of home grown terrorists and those we happily import and allow to live here free of the fear of arrest thanks to such radical usurping groups like Liberty.
Just think if we had policed our borders and kept immigration low what a less crowded and less dangerous place these islands would be.

Airwave!

It may be that this country has moved on and holding on to memories of the past may produce a false view of GB?

From my memory of the fifties, smog, gang flights, rockers, mods, very boozy pubs with fights, little money, eating meat that was little more than fat, there was one NHS dr's centre for the whole of the town, dentist was in the same place, I remember coming to at the bus stop after a tooth extraction, blood pouring onto my handerchief! We lived in a unheated, draughty rented house, on an unmade road that had been flooded and needed redecorating every year because of the salt water. Our house was next to the gas works which produced clouds of coal dust and foul smells.

The sixties did improve slightly, riding on the back of my uncles scooter I remember a wave of hundreds of rockers running across the seafront and fighting the mods, pushing the barrow down to the gasworks and helping with my grands weekly coke allowance (she was a gas board widow). I remember a red light coming down the street towards me, it was a mans cigarette showing through the smog. I remember a Jaguar being driven at speed down our road (very little traffic law enforcement then). Need I go on, they were not all 'good times'.

Times have changed, my own children are better educated than me, they have certificates which include degrees, they are better fed, street wise and hold good jobs and live in their own houses, drive safer cars and walk on well constructed paths. My g/c are well fed, their care is taken seriously and they will be well educated with greater knowledge than I could ever hope for. Times have changed, yes and for the better.

Long live Albion!

Airwave!

Lucky? That would give in to the theory that chance is something that allows us to live or die, luck doesn't come into it. No, I have not been 'lucky' in my life.

Concentrating on negatives has little to do with luck, nor is it recognised as a human trait, just a symptom of ill health.

Lastly I should add that todays kids are well informed and are not cowered by adults as we were until we had come of age and learned not to be.

Enough!

valval

why does no one love the parliment in this vote what does it say about how people feel at the moment val

Airwave!

OK, I opened my big mouth, might as well finish it!

Nobody ever said that this moment in time is the moment when we should have a perfect world. There is so much wrong, but there is so much that has improved, if only by degrees.

Parliament of hundreds of years ago was the start of democracy and the push for democracy is still continuing, it may take another century or two yet! We must believe we are doing right, each small word adds to the voices across the world striving for a better world.

Thats it, I'm off to bed.

joanlawson

I've just thought of another symbol of the best of British.....the full English breakfast. You can't beat bacon, eggs, and a good British banger to start the day.

joanlawson

rehab44 wrote:

delboy wrote:

Where's the fried bread, black pudding and tomatoes?

and mushrooms?

I just ate the lot :!:

What about beef stew and dumplings :?: I love dumplings and I think that's a British thing, isn't it :?: