How To Feel British

Prime Minister-in-waiting, Boris Johnson, said this week that he wants immigrants to feel more British. This was swiftly followed up on Twitter by appeals on how this can be achieved. For instance, a French lady called Martha, currently living in York, made this appeal: “If any of my English followers have any tips on how to ‘feel British’, I’d appreciate receiving them.”

As a native Brit, being half-Irish / half-English, university educated in Wales, a previous resident of the Republic of Ireland and having lived in Scotland since 2000, I should have some insights to offer you Martha. 

One of the first things that an immigrant needs to learn is stop speaking your mind. If something is rubbish, for God’s sake do not complain openly about it, especially to the person responsible. Simply smile, say ‘It’s fine’ or ‘it happens’ and work around it, even if this is at some personal inconvenience. The time to complain is to your friends and colleagues afterwards, when the possibility for fixing the issue has long passed. Phrases like “Can you believe it?” or “what a jobsworth” can then be freely thrown around to anyone within earshot.

Conversely, if something is really good, never offer praise. It might be the most amazing pleasure one has ever experienced in life but the highest acceptable compliment is to nod and mutter “not bad.” If one must, a slight smile is permitted. 

In the workplace, never, ever volunteer or offer constructive criticism. If one can imagine being a sheep, and your place is in the centre of the flock, then just keep that image in mind at times of decision making or crises. Never allow oneself to take on greater responsibility, especially without extra pay. Acceptable answers to requests that should be made someone in a more senior position are “Sorry, I’ll have to speak to my boss” or “Out of my pay scale mate.” The reason for such negativity is that British employers seldom go in for this no-blame culture that is popular across Northern Europe. If something goes wrong, someone must be the cause of it. At best, ownership of a mistake will be a black mark against your record and can lead to something worse. Remember, in the television show The Apprentice, any time a candidate has owned responsibility for a failed task, Lord Sugar has fired their arse. 

Someone schooled in American English might have ended the previous sentence with “fired their ass”. This of course is a mistake and someone who has been educated in US English has to make the effort to adjust their language accordingly. Chips are crisps, not French Fries. Biscuits are not cookies. It is trousers and not pants and no, we Brits do not sit around on our fannies, as they are otherwise employed elsewhere on the female body. Make an effort to match one’s language to the local region and do not point out the glaring inconsistencies in a native speaker’s own usage of American English (see examples within this text). The British are seldom well educated in English grammar, making it extremely difficult for us to learn foreign languages as we usually have little idea what is happening with our own. As Tolstoy said, an Englishman in inevitably in the right because everything he says and does is right. This especially goes for spoken English. 

On a related topic however, we Brits love word play, especially when linked to cultural references. Such games can be downright silly but reduce the Brits to tears of laughter, much to the bemusement of foreigners in the group. As an immigrant, you might never get the joke. Don’t worry about it. English is the most public language in the world so perhaps it is only natural we have made it incomprehensible for our own amusement. My best advice would be just to relax, be happy to see us happy and when your finally do start getting the references, then your have finally cracked the English language. 

Do not take offence to the question “Where are you from?” as it really is a statement which means “You are not from round here, are you.” Owing to never having an East Anglian accent, it was a question that I was constantly asked when growing up in the town where I was born. Except in the largest and most cosmopolitan of cities, Brits has a curious sense of regional identity which is linked very strongly to accents. “Where are you from?” might mean that your accent comes from a town twenty miles away where the local inhabitants tend to have a bit of a funny accent and, therefore they don’t speak proper like we do. Yes, I know it is a pain answering this question and immigrants often feel it is a prequel for something nastier to follow but usually it isn’t. We Brits ask each other that same question all the time. Only when the question is followed up by something like “And when are you going back?” is rudeness or sarcasm justified as a response.

Now, perhaps the hardest thing to achieve for some immigrants is to enter into the British drinking culture. Those who are unable to drink alcohol for religious reasons are at a special disadvantage here. Outside the most formal of evenings, it is socially acceptable for Brits to get so drunk as to be a complete embarrassment to ourselves. Sorry about this but get used to it. Over the decades, many governments have tried to change things through taxation and tighter laws, drink-driving being a good example. Unless they are completely teetotal (a very rare thing for a Brit) or a recovering alcoholic (the only socially acceptable excuse not to drink), at some point you are going to see your British friends pissed - as in the English sense of being drunk and not the American of being angry. One understands that for the younger generation, illicit drugs are a socially acceptable alternative to booze, or even along with it. Either way, once work is done, us Brits love getting off our tits on abusing alcohol, or even several substances at the same time. 

There are many things to love about being in Britain. As an immigrant, that is why you are here. This is also the reason why I have not written about our virtues: they are well known, self evident and it is impolite to boast about such things. Instead I have written about the other side of being British: the negative and sometimes the self harming side. No nationality has a monopoly on either virtue or vice. Remember that it is often geography that forms a national personality and that Britain is a group of islands. Some of us Brits still seem to cling to this notion as some kind of comfort when, in today’s global world, being an island nation is a hindrance rather than any help. To understand the British, one has to see us, warts and all. If after doing so, you would prefer to live by your own cultural values instead of ours, I think most people would understand. I certainly will.

Britain and Brexit

This is a personal note, a reflection of my experience of the UK, Ireland, Europe and beyond. It is from both the head and the heart.

There are many disadvantages to growing old.  Hair goes grey, bits start to droop - if not actually drop off.  One has also lived through history and, in the context of the European Union debate, that is a rather valuable asset.  Polls lead us to believe that the older the person, the more likely one is to vote Leave.  What I would like to know is what on earth they are smoking because I too remember England before the EU and frankly it was a bloody miserable place.

By the early 1970s, Britain was dying on it's feet.  As a nation, we had won the war, lost the Empire and lost the peace.  Britain ship building technology was stuck in the 1950s and great yards were losing contracts to Japan.  Japan was also starting to dominate the motorcycle and car industry.  When the first Honda mopeds came to Britain in the 1960s, manufacturers like Norton, Triumph and Sunbeam laughed.  By the mid-70s, there was no more laughter.  Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha dominated.  British car manufacturers took longer to fall but fall they did and not just to the Japanese.  European manufacturers like Volkswagen,Fiat and Renault were hitting the budget and mid-market areas hard.  Avengers, Singers, Maxis and Allegros didn't stand a chance.  Even later efforts like the modern-looking Rover 3500 were underpinned with an ancient Buick chassis and suspension.  

Now that is not to say that the situation for the UK magically improved once Britain entered the ECC.  No, it took time.  The Conservatives would claim sole responsibility for the turnaround in the nation's fortune but they were greatly helped by the balance of payments from both the oil industry and trade with Europe, especially in the 1980s.   It is the fall in oil and gas production that has been a major contributor to the trade inequalities that we see today.

Europe started to change our politics too.  The emergence of the Greens in the late 1980s was directly inspired by politics in Germany and The Netherlands.  The voting systems of our European neighbours have been felt in non-Westminster politics, especially in the smaller home-nations of Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.  By sticking to the nonsensical and unfair first-past-the-post system, England is falling far behind in terms of citizen representation.

It was during the 1980s I first started to travel regularly.  My brother was serving in the military and was stationed in Germany.  They did think a bit differently.  This was the first time I saw cycle lanes.  It is sensible: dividing cycle, motor and pedestrian traffic from each other simply makes the roads safer for all users.
Another thing was that the food was just better quality.  Although the 1980s started to see an improvement in UK restaurants, at the time many were still pretty dire.  Nowadays we take a plethora of cuisine types and high quality that is available to us for granted but it was not always so.  In my birth town of Lowestoft, I remember just a handful of foreign alternatives: mostly Chinese, some Indian, with a couple of Italians and Ffrench (the name of the restaurant, not a typo) for Continental dining.   The first cappuccino coffee bar didn't arrive until 1990 and was set up by an Italian electrician who had been blackballed by local management from working in the Japanese-owner Sanyo factory.  (The Japanese had decided to invest in the UK in order to circumvent restrictive French import practices.  British social practices did not change however).

When it comes to eating out it is only in the last decade or so can it be said that the UK has caught up with our continental neighbours.  The same cannot be said for our hospitality industry.  Why is it that the vast majority of our hotel staff are from outside the UK?  No, it isn't because they are cheap labour: it is because the cultural upbringing sees no shame in offering hospitality and service.  I know this is being unfair to those British people who work in hospitality and are excellent in their job but they are the not the majority.  Once past their prime, many British hotels and guest houses remain tired, threadbare and expensive.  It isn't just the climate that drives many UK holidaymakers to foreign lands.  We go abroad for vacation to be treated well.  Hoteliers in the UK employ foreign workers in order to obtain the same level of service that we have come to expect from being abroad.  Many forget to reinvest in the infrastructure.

Many British folk have permanently moved abroad to enjoy the sunshine.  It seems illogical to some that some British immigrants to Spain (or expats as they still model themselves) are voting for Brexit.  There is a reason for this however.  Those people who live abroad and are voting for Britain to leave, left Britain because they don't like the multi-cultural nation we have become.  The evidence for this is in their humour.  If you have ever seen the fanzines in circulation among the British communities in Spain, it is as if Bernard Manning and Roy "Chubby" Brown represent the pinnacle of our culture.  The readership hate modern Britain, hate foreigners and their greatest wish is to be able to assert their self-claimed superiority, insult outsiders at will and wind back the clock to 1955.  They fail to see the irony of their own position and, through their own inflated sense of self-worth, do not realise at a Brexit vote may well put their own position in Spain at risk.  A vote for Brexit defies logic but they are relying upon the Spanish government to act logically in the face of their own defiance.  What if the Spanish also throw caution to the winds and tells the British to assimilate or get out?   Adiòs y per favor vete!

From emigrants to immigrants.  There are many that claim that Brexit will allow us to control our borders and thus reduce pressures on our education and health systems.  It is true that language lessons for those those first language is not English do add to school expenses but has nobody noticed that we have an ageing population in this country?  The school children of today are tomorrow's workers whose taxes will be paying the state pensions of old gits like me.  If the average population continues to get older and there is not enough young workers, the state pension, already less-than-generous by the standards of our near neighbours, will fail.

As of the ageing population of today and the relationship to immigration, I will point out that the vast majority of European people moving to the UK are of working age.  The major burden on the NHS are pensioners, not young immigrants.  It has been stated often that a lot of workers from abroad staff both the NHS and our care homes.  Brexiteers argue that if we limited immigration more British people could work here.  With an ageing population though, what if there are simply not enough working Brits to fill the vacancies of services, industry and the NHS?  We are back to immigration again.  The truth is that, in common with much of Northern Europe, we need immigrants.  It isn't out of pure altruism that the German government have opened it doors to so many refugees.

The question must be asked, what is it that the Brexiteers actually want?  There are a few on the left of British politics who follow the Bennite view that the European Union is all about big business.  I disagree but at least that is a sincere and logical argument.  Since the European Union is the world's biggest freely trading zone, it is good for capitalism.  If one is against capitalism, one should be against the EU.  That is the basic reason for socialist opposition.  Fair enough.

The main driving force for the UK coming out of the EU is not from the Left but from the Right.  UKIP itself comes from a Conservative schism.  With their usual instinct for self-preservation, the Conservative Party has managed to head off the kind of damage inflicted upon Labour in the 1980s with the rise of the SDP but the cost has been the open civil war now being openly fought between those Conservatives who want to leave and those who want to stay.

If the main thrust of the argument is being generated by the political Right, what is it that they want?  The answer is not hard to find: deregulation of the private sector and lower taxation.  One former leader of UKIP, Lord Pearson, even wanted the United Kingdom to leave the EU and go and join the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA).  To be fair that is not on the cards today but does go a fair way to illustrate where their sympathies lie.

The Brexiteers claim that to leave the EU is a reclamation of sovereignty but there is no talk from them that we should be leaving NATO, an organisation in which our national sovereignty is almost entirely subservient to the requirements of the USA.  I knew one former Royal Navy navigator who was so sickened by the amount of times his vessel was running American missions that he left the service.  This sharing of sovereignty passes without discussion with those on the Right but give anybody else outside the UK a say in workers' or human rights of British citizens and, apparently, the whole nation is being dragged down by the envious machinations of Johnny Foreigner.

Instead of being strong partners with our near neighbours in Europe, we are told that we should be going it alone.  Make Britain great again!  Reach out to the rest of the world and we will be that great trading nation once again.  Let us make one thing absolutely clear: Britain was never a great trading nation.  We were great imperialists.  Our country grew to the height of wealth through trading with our Empire in a closed market on the most advantageous terms.  Already by the end of the 19th Century American and German industry was out-competing the UK in free trade.   In  promotIng protectionism, the British Empire become our industrial tomb.  When we lost the empire and after nations such as Germany and Japan rebuilt their industrial base after its destruction in WWII, the UK was swept aside.

How are we going to compete toe-to-toe with not only the entire EU, the USA, China and all upcoming nations like Brazil on the world markets?  The answer is in deregulation.  Chinese workers have very few rights and so it will become with us.  Corporate taxation will be reduced.  Personal income tax rates may well fall too but with a rise in VAT: after all, t was the Conservatives who introduced that tax in the late 70s and it is easily avoided by the wealthy who can afford to shop outside the country.   Leave the EU, go it alone and one can say goodbye to the minimum wage,  a month's paid holiday, health and safety at work, maximum working hours and any vestige of working rights.  In a low-tax economy, there is no way the NHS will survive.  This is the grand vision that is meant by the return of sovereignty.

At this point, I would expect to be accused of scaremongering by those who would vote Leave but I'm not and I will prove it to you with a simple example and following question.  When the respective populations of both Norway and Switzerland cast their votes on EU membership, they knew, regardless of outcome, that their own governments and political systems would continue to look out for them and act in their best interests.
Now ask yourself the question: do you trust the UK government with your future, your families' future and to act in your best interest, regardless of outcome of the vote ahead?
If your answer is no, then there is only one logical way to vote on the 23rd of June.

Cast your vote to remain in the European Union.

A Lidl Supermarket bans Polish

I don’t speak Portuguese.  Neither does my family.  So it was with relief that when in Lisbon last year that in the local supermarket that the people made an effort to communicate, even finding a member of  staff that spoke English if the pointing and sign language was not enough.

I don’t speak Swedish but do have a little Norwegian to my name.  No matter: if neither is enough in either Stockholm or Kristiansund, shop workers will instantly switch to English.  They don’t ask if I live there or just visiting; they just do it.

The question I have then is what on earth is going through the minds of the managers at the Lidl in Kirkaldy that have just banned their Polish employees not only speaking Polish between themselves, but have also ruled that they can no longer speak to Polish customers in their own language either?

It is certain that the workers there have better things to do than talk about their managers.  This move is both petty and racist.  It is not as if the Polish workers in Lidl refuse to speak in English to their Scottish customers.

   

More worryingly though is the many comments of support that the ban has solicited social media, such as The Scotsman’s Facebook page.  I would say that opinion is divided fifty : fifty.

To those people who support the ban I say this: next time you are abroad, in whatever capacity, and a store worker makes the effort to speak to you in English, you had better stop them right there, even if you are not able to speak the local language.  Anything else would be hypocritical.  

Update

It has been drawn to my attention that some people are uncomfortable with a foreign language being spoken around them.  Perhaps of working in an international environment for the past eighteen years, I have lost any sympathy with such a view.  There are those which equate other speaking in foreign tongue in their presence with whispering in public.  Really?  The chances are that the people are talking about some other subject, as their body language will usually make clear.  If you are the subject of a discussion in front of you, the chances are you will know.  I see little difference between that and talking about somebody behind their back.  If people are going to be rude, it makes little difference what language they are going to be rude in.  In my experience, most people are neither stupid nor rude so being stressed about foreign languages is a matter of personal insecurity.