Post by Hickman on Nov 28, 2005 3:09:15 GMT -5
[shadow=red,left,300]Why England's f*****![/shadow]
by FRANCIS FULFORD
Francis Fulford: Forthright, as ever
England's F****d. And, before you all get cross, let me make one thing quite clear: the presenters of TV programmes do not choose the titles.
It was a predictable title though, because last summer my family and I were the subject of a "fly-on-the-wall" documentary called The F***ing Fulfords (like many families, we occasionally swear at each other).
And the truth is that it does reflect, in the crude vernacular, my views about this country
What is England's problem then? Or perhaps more accurately: what is the English people's problem? This is a complicated question, but one salient aspect seems to me to be our lack of cultural identity.
Ask a Frenchman what makes him French and he will explode in a volume of speech and much waving of hands. Ask the same question of an Englishman and he will become embarrassed and "um" and "err" like Hugh Grant.
Why is this? I believe it is simply because we are the most successful nation there has ever been.
It was, I think, Cecil Rhodes who said: "To be born an Englishman is to win first prize in the lottery of life." But it is, paradoxically, from that overwhelming success that our current problems stem.
While the Scottish prance around in kilts and the Germans, God help us, force themselves into overtight lederhosen, we English are seemingly bereft of a national dress.
Except, of course, that simply is not true. What has happened is that our national dress - the classic English suit (developed from the practical country gentleman's hunting coat of the 18th century), the tweed jacket, the blue blazer with gilt buttons - has been adopted by the whole world as the smart thing to wear.
The world should be eternally grateful, incidentally, that it wasn't the Germans who dominated the globe during the 19th century, as we would all be wandering around in leather shorts if they had.
Imagine Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, dressed up like a Bavarian at a beer festival. No, on second thoughts, I'd rather not.
Language snatched
But it is not only our national dress that the world has adopted. They have also taken our language which, some time in the late 19th century as our Empire expanded, replaced French as the lingua franca of educated and business people.
And then there are our team games: football, rugby and cricket, all English in origin, have conquered the planet, as have the individual sports we invented such as boxing, snooker, squash and lawn tennis.
So English culture is everywhere triumphant and has become, to all intents and purposes world culture. And therein lies a problem.
Because our culture and customs have been adopted by everyone else we, the English, are left without a separate cultural identity.
Think about it for a moment. The whole developed world - and quite a bit of the undeveloped part - apes our traditional dress, tries, with varying success, to speak our language, reads our literature, and plays, often better than we do, our national games. No wonder we, as a race, have become confused.
A lack of cultural identity, though, is not the whole reason for our decline as a race. Our overwhelming success has resulted in another problem, which on the face of it may seem to be an asset. We don't have a chip on our shoulder, or an inferiority complex.
It is this "chip" or sense of grievance which gives nationalists everywhere their raison d'etre. Where would the Scots be without their constant whining about the Highland Clearances (when thousands of peasants were forced from their homes by landlords during the 18th century)?
Why can't the French survive without incontinent emotional reference to La France and the Gloire de France, celebrated annually with much pomp by the French Army strutting its stuff down the Champs Elysee on Bastille Day?
Because, while they may have had the odd military success against second division countries, whenever they have played in the premier league against England they have, for the best part of a thousand years, been soundly thrashed.
It must, and does, irk virtually every other country that somewhere in their history there is an episode when the English have beaten them up.
Indeed, you could argue that English history is too long. We have been a nation for well over a thousand years, which compares to Italy, which has only been around since 1861, and a united Germany which is even younger.
Spain, it is true, has been a single entity since 1492 and although technically France has a long pedigree, it has to be said that for much of the medieval period the majority of what we now call France was governed rather well by who else but the English.
Succumbed to failure
The trouble with us English is that we have succumbed to the old truism that "success breeds failure". It is not that we are arrogant and complacent, which are often the by-products of success. In truth, in the English, arrogance seems to be refreshingly absent.
Instead, in our case, success appears to have bred diffidence and shame about our origins, a wish to apologise, a desire to please, and a yearning to be loved by other nations and races.
Unfortunately, this longing to be loved has gone unrequited because, as I have said, virtually every other country and race has a monumental chip on its shoulder - and that chip is usually about the historical success of the English.
Which means that the collective wish of most foreign countries is to humiliate us and make us grovel.
Perhaps the single factor which makes me most depressed about the future of England and the English is the craven way we allow MPs who are not elected by us to vote on matters which solely affect England.
I refer, of course, to the massed ranks of Celtic MPs who sit at Westminster and enjoy powers over the English which we, who have ceded such powers to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, no longer have over them. How can any race of people abjectly submit themselves to such a state of affairs, and still hold their heads high?
Only a race, I would suggest, which has lost all its selfconfidence and no longer believes that it has a future.
Only a race that knows, in its heart, that England is f****d.
;D 
www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=369777&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=&ct=5
by FRANCIS FULFORD
Francis Fulford: Forthright, as ever
England's F****d. And, before you all get cross, let me make one thing quite clear: the presenters of TV programmes do not choose the titles.
It was a predictable title though, because last summer my family and I were the subject of a "fly-on-the-wall" documentary called The F***ing Fulfords (like many families, we occasionally swear at each other).
And the truth is that it does reflect, in the crude vernacular, my views about this country
What is England's problem then? Or perhaps more accurately: what is the English people's problem? This is a complicated question, but one salient aspect seems to me to be our lack of cultural identity.
Ask a Frenchman what makes him French and he will explode in a volume of speech and much waving of hands. Ask the same question of an Englishman and he will become embarrassed and "um" and "err" like Hugh Grant.
Why is this? I believe it is simply because we are the most successful nation there has ever been.
It was, I think, Cecil Rhodes who said: "To be born an Englishman is to win first prize in the lottery of life." But it is, paradoxically, from that overwhelming success that our current problems stem.
While the Scottish prance around in kilts and the Germans, God help us, force themselves into overtight lederhosen, we English are seemingly bereft of a national dress.
Except, of course, that simply is not true. What has happened is that our national dress - the classic English suit (developed from the practical country gentleman's hunting coat of the 18th century), the tweed jacket, the blue blazer with gilt buttons - has been adopted by the whole world as the smart thing to wear.
The world should be eternally grateful, incidentally, that it wasn't the Germans who dominated the globe during the 19th century, as we would all be wandering around in leather shorts if they had.
Imagine Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, dressed up like a Bavarian at a beer festival. No, on second thoughts, I'd rather not.
Language snatched
But it is not only our national dress that the world has adopted. They have also taken our language which, some time in the late 19th century as our Empire expanded, replaced French as the lingua franca of educated and business people.
And then there are our team games: football, rugby and cricket, all English in origin, have conquered the planet, as have the individual sports we invented such as boxing, snooker, squash and lawn tennis.
So English culture is everywhere triumphant and has become, to all intents and purposes world culture. And therein lies a problem.
Because our culture and customs have been adopted by everyone else we, the English, are left without a separate cultural identity.
Think about it for a moment. The whole developed world - and quite a bit of the undeveloped part - apes our traditional dress, tries, with varying success, to speak our language, reads our literature, and plays, often better than we do, our national games. No wonder we, as a race, have become confused.
A lack of cultural identity, though, is not the whole reason for our decline as a race. Our overwhelming success has resulted in another problem, which on the face of it may seem to be an asset. We don't have a chip on our shoulder, or an inferiority complex.
It is this "chip" or sense of grievance which gives nationalists everywhere their raison d'etre. Where would the Scots be without their constant whining about the Highland Clearances (when thousands of peasants were forced from their homes by landlords during the 18th century)?
Why can't the French survive without incontinent emotional reference to La France and the Gloire de France, celebrated annually with much pomp by the French Army strutting its stuff down the Champs Elysee on Bastille Day?
Because, while they may have had the odd military success against second division countries, whenever they have played in the premier league against England they have, for the best part of a thousand years, been soundly thrashed.
It must, and does, irk virtually every other country that somewhere in their history there is an episode when the English have beaten them up.
Indeed, you could argue that English history is too long. We have been a nation for well over a thousand years, which compares to Italy, which has only been around since 1861, and a united Germany which is even younger.
Spain, it is true, has been a single entity since 1492 and although technically France has a long pedigree, it has to be said that for much of the medieval period the majority of what we now call France was governed rather well by who else but the English.
Succumbed to failure
The trouble with us English is that we have succumbed to the old truism that "success breeds failure". It is not that we are arrogant and complacent, which are often the by-products of success. In truth, in the English, arrogance seems to be refreshingly absent.
Instead, in our case, success appears to have bred diffidence and shame about our origins, a wish to apologise, a desire to please, and a yearning to be loved by other nations and races.
Unfortunately, this longing to be loved has gone unrequited because, as I have said, virtually every other country and race has a monumental chip on its shoulder - and that chip is usually about the historical success of the English.
Which means that the collective wish of most foreign countries is to humiliate us and make us grovel.
Perhaps the single factor which makes me most depressed about the future of England and the English is the craven way we allow MPs who are not elected by us to vote on matters which solely affect England.
I refer, of course, to the massed ranks of Celtic MPs who sit at Westminster and enjoy powers over the English which we, who have ceded such powers to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, no longer have over them. How can any race of people abjectly submit themselves to such a state of affairs, and still hold their heads high?
Only a race, I would suggest, which has lost all its selfconfidence and no longer believes that it has a future.
Only a race that knows, in its heart, that England is f****d.
;D 
www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=369777&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=&ct=5