Tuesday 18 December 2007

"Our country"

"Our country" is a much bandied around term. Usually anecdotally by white people in the street when anything vaguely multicultural is mentioned.

"Oh, I don't think that'd work in our country..."

You get the point.

But it's bollocks, really, isn't it? Where do you draw the line of belonging?

I mean, ownership is a religious or capitalist idea, depending which way you're looking at things. Either some God (whichever) owns the Earth and sort of lets us borrow it indefinitely or a government owns a country or piece of land and looks after us and it.

The concept is horrific, either way. I mean, do fifth generation Brits have more 'right' to the country than forth generation? Because they've lived here a bit longer and 'own' the country a bit more?

The thought makes me shudder. Although it is quite fun when you find a racist and point out a lot of 'immigrants' family lines in Britain go further back than theirs do.

"Our country" is a pointless term. This country has never belonged to any one 'people' when it comes to ethnicity or anything like that. We're a lovely mongrel nation. The NHS, for example, has always relied on expertise from overseas to augment homegrown talent. The World Wars were labelled as such because of how many 'foreigners' from the Commonwealth fought for the freedom of good old Blightly.

So, please - don't use the term in the sense I'm implying. Unless you're planning on looking silly.

1 comment:

Bertie Humbug's Ranto-O-Matic said...

My dear fellow i think you've spent too long in the Mandela bar with a bunch of beret wearing Socialist Worker types.

The fact is, this is our Country, we whose families have been here for countless generations. We wish to see this country run well, reflecting decent values and this means a number of things and immigration is just one of them.

Immigration has to be strictly controlled. Are you saying you want a free for all? If not, you want control too. Do you want to see the population boom to calamitous proportion? No? Well immigration is the reason why that's happening.

If you take the red filtered glasses off, the truth is out there I assure you :0)