Are the British Evil Bastards?

See how easy it is to create generalities about people?

lobbying CIA to include this in their World Factbook's country profiles = urgent and key

i don't listen to them cuz i never listen any records: I'm a music critic!!

Well I'm prepared to recognise that there is a part of me that is in a certain way antipathetic to all these things, bar science. Now if someone were to say to me "WHHATT?? How can you say you have antipathy towards creativity?" I would have a hard time explaining what I mean and probably just end up spluttering "It's just this thing" or something.

I think there are elements of this antipathy/suspicion of bohemianism/ trendiness/'the new' everywhere (try the Midwest, which has good 'scenes' completely polarised from mainstream culture which is hostile to those scenes) which I find *parochial* in the extreme. It's because people are intimidated by things they see as 'way out there' - the shock of the new, which is an old, old story.

I'm concerned that many of the people whingeing about my friend's opinions have probably never lived abroad/outside their country of birth and therefore do not have perspective to comment usefully or with any degree of empathy. When you live in another country for the first time you've got no idea really of establishment thinking and can filter it out or seek alternative company. Not being aware of the rules that bog down 95 per cent of a nation's inhabitants is LIBERATING but you can make some breathless judgements because you are still mindful of the rules that govern the place where you were raised, so it seems more free by comparison. It took me five years to realise what The Rules were here in London/Britain and I was happily oblivious to them, which ensured that I wasn't governed by them (or so I thought; sometimes there are knocks). But once you know those rules it becomes more difficult to disregard them. You feel hampered by the prejudices and in-place networks, no matter how privileged you may be seen to be by others.

The escalator one is just basic common sense. I think I was yelling 'move it or lose it' to obstructors from Day One of my time in London.

Tch, leave Nick alone, he has a right to say these things.

Yes, but surely the point of that piece, the style it was written in and even the LANGUAGE it was written in was to inspire some kind of discourse about it. Critics survey sez UH-UH but when you put your writing in the public domain you've got to expect these things. No- ones having a go personally, I think I should say in case anyone might get offended (thinking of ILE sensitivity threads recently! heh).

I'm concerned that many of the people whingeing about my friend's opinions have probably never lived abroad/outside their country of birth and therefore do not have perspective to comment usefully or with any degree of empathy.

Quite right, I've been on holiday in Spain and France with my parents when but a wee nipper, and visited Canada and Ver States but never lived there. However to say that this renders any comments on Nicks writing useless is rather patronising! I'm quite aware that I don't have first hand experience and why I found this piece interesting in the first place was the talk of different countries/different ways of thinking. However I don't think it went far enough and it tended to point out (scrape barrels, generalise) differences in order to favourably compare them to UK culture instead of taking them on their own merits? I'm thinking rather quickly here cos I'm hungry and want to go to lunch so forgive me if BRANE POWER aint working.

Perhaps I just don't like the part which said "British girls don't like machines". I don't like ostentatious display of gadgetry but that is because I am often jealous I would like those fancy toys myself and if I had the money would WAY outdork Momus heh heh.

Oh, for fucks sake! Criticising something != censorship.

I'm sorry you feel patronised, Sarah, it certainly wasn't my intention. I was just trying to deconstruct what moving to a new country is like in terms of how you deal with your old one: totally relevant! I've never been to Japan either (gnash! grr!) and think that having a close friend who seems so 'sold' on the place has made me a little more cautious and cynical than I might otherwise be. I don't ever feel patronised on ILE purely because of the available knowledge coming from so many different perspectives.

If someone tried to kick up a conversation with me about Brecht and then took my lack of interest as a sign that an entire nation is inherently wrong, I'd nominate him for a good kicking to show him the error of his ways.

Or am I merely reinforcing the stereotype?

Also one man's philistinism is another man's bullshit detection - Brutishness if it exists works in good as well as bad ways, as a kind of bullish consumer contrarianism.

Is this in the context of your problems with girls?

Re. British people endlessly saying "That's not the way it's done here" and seeing that as reason enough not to do something - there was a time, not so long ago, when I'd have agreed with Dave Q (watch "This Is The BBC" from 1959, and be amazed). But not here and not now. The column was full of wild exaggerations and generalisations which I shamefully liked at the time but in retrospect were the beginning of my falling out of love with Momus. A great misfire.

But I don't really have an opinion.

Unwittingly, the essay that we're all referring to suffers from the same build 'em up mentality - at the expense of something, Britain, which must be knocked down - which is part of the cyclical nature of fandom.

I used to regard Momus as a personal hero: I still very much like his records but find quite a few of his opinions questionable, and I don't think I live in his world (or particularly want to, any more). I'm sorry if this is too "masochistically British" for you, Suzy.

-- Sarah P.S. Thanks Kerry, I like you allot too and want to send you a free CD of mine.

Irony number one: Nick was the one who told me about posting on ILM; we've been friends for over a decade. He grumbles intermittently that I really don't like his records but if I didn't I would have binned them by now, all things considered. I think his essays raise several interesting points of debate and think he's a terrific writer, but it bothers me to be labelled as a snob by people I've never met (nor intended to offend) and to see my friend labelled as such, when neither of us are.

" an opulent city lay at my mercy; its richest bankers bid against each other for my smiles; I walked through vaults which were thrown open to me alone, piled on either hand with gold and jewels... When I think of the marvelous riches of that country, and the comparatively small part which I took away, I am astonished at my own moderation."

" India had arguably been a far more meritocratic society before the British Raj settled down to enshrine the Brahmins in such a position of dominance. Nineteenth-century ideas of race also got into the mix ... Indians internalized many of these prejudices, instilled in them by two centuries of British dominance and the drumming into them of the cult of British superiority. I recall reading, as a child, the account of an early Indian visitor to England, astonished that even the shoeshine boys there were British, so completely had the mystique of English lordliness been internalized in India. The young prince, and later cricket star, Ranji, arriving in England as a student, was taken aback by ❛the sight of Britishers engaging in low-caste work❜ (he was assured the stevedores were ❛only Irishmen❜). "

The OG colonial version of Captain Tom Moore type delusional "stand on your doorstep in silence for our boys" Brit hysteria:

After Brigadier General Reginald Dyer had machine gunned down nearly two thousand Indian civilians in cold blood during a nonviolent Ghandanian style protest in 1919 that was known as the the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

Rudyard Kipling, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and poetic voice of British imperialism, hailed him as "The Man Who Saved India".
Even This did not strike his fellow Britons in India as adequate recompense for his glorious act of mass murder. They ran a public campaign for funds to honour his cruelty and collected the quite stupendous sum of £26,317 1s 10d{!}, an astonishing sum for those days and worth over a quarter of a million pounds today. It was presented to him together with a jewelled sword of honour.

If you start with the axiom that the British are the sole legitimate rulers of India and must remain so for the highest benefit of the British and Indians alike, then one of the corollaries is that the British may kill whomsoever threatens that ascendancy and this killing is both good and right. QED

https://www.moretvicar.com/media/product/2018/11/12/3644_19277_w300.jpg

Obviously you haven't fallen for that line of propaganda. But once you've swallowed it the world becomes a rosy place where the sun never sets and the benefits of civilization and progress are extended to the benighted and backward places of the world with exemplary generosity.