Thinking of home from abroad 7, September 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in UK.Tags: English defence league, Ex-pats, Expatriates, Expats
trackback
One of my key peeves in this part of the world is moaning ex-pats. Don’t misunderstand me, there is plenty to be angry, exasperated or get fed up about in this part of the world, and I indulge in long tirades at times with my friends and family. But, I realise perfectly well that the UK, home, in my case, is not a bed of roses. I feel that many ex-pats forget this.
To them, ye olde England is a place of lush, green meadows, where children frolic, fish for tadpoles in streams, eat marmalade and say ‘blimey’ a lot. Such an England, I hardly need to note, has never existed.
But it is difficult, as one must not go too far the other way: castigating sunny England as some kind of ‘gone to the dogs’ slum, which comes with the obligatory sentiment that
It were never the same in ma’y day
Such sentiments really quite annoy me. People have been making these comments, that the ‘youth of today’ are a disgrace, since Roman times. Specifically in an English context, I think it was a monk in Jarrow well over a thousand years ago who jotted these sentiments down.
Certainly, when one reads horrific stories such as this one, where a student who asked a group of youths to stop throwing conkers at him was stabbed and killed, everyone surely has a natural impulse to hail the return of the death penalty as the simple, swift and sensible answer (or is that just me?) or one sees this bunch of rabid, unrepresentative misfits in the ‘English Defence League’, it is all too easy to admonish England as ‘gone to the dogs’ but, as they say in these parts, shway shway.
Yes, England has its issues. But name me a country on earth that doesn’t. True, right now with belts-a-tightening and all that, things are looking grim, but Blighty will survive, as she always has.
So, to reach an earth shatteringly dull and obvious conclusion the answer, as ever, lies in moderation and in, dare I say it for fear of appearing grey and dull, in the middle.
The Gulf blog 
Comments»
No comments yet — be the first.