Reasons to be ashamed of being British (the edited version)

Having dared to criticise Czech culture in my last post, I feel compelled to counter-act it with all the things I hate or feel ashamed about in British culture.  But that could take more than one blog post to do.  Thus, I shall compile a little list:

1) There is no tradition of good quality cuisine.  We just steal everyone else's.

2) We claim to be ever so polite but we merely moan and curse inwardly or pass comment, passive-aggressively while waiting in queues.

3) We don't applaud other people's success.  We merely go about finding as many ways in which that success was flawed, unmerited, the result of nepotism or outside help in order to undervalue the achievement in question.  In essence, we don't believe hanging out with successful people means that success will rub off on us, but rather that their success will deny us any chance of our own.

4) We have the worst public transport system imaginable.  It is overpriced and consistently so bad that we use the example of 'a long wait and then two buses coming at once' as a common metaphor for similar such agonising waiting in our careers / love lives etc.  We also brag about having a 'good service' by writing it next to a tube line when that tube line is, for a rare moment in time, not experiencing any delays or service limitations such as half the line not running for the whole weekend.

5) Our appalling record at speaking foreign languages.  Made worse by a government who now thinks it's ok to abandon learning languages at the age of 14.

6) Our despicable habit of referring to 'Europe' as though it's got nothing to do with us and is some entity 'out there somewhere' rather than a continent we are actually a part of.

7) Our abysmal recognition of the advantages of being a part of the EU and the consequent moaning about 'people coming over here and stealing our jobs'.  (If you bothered to learn another language, you could 'go over there and "steal" their jobs' if you wanted to.  That's the point.  We're able to share.  If you make the effort to open your mind to another culture, language and way of life.)

8) Our relationship with alcohol.  Everywhere we go in the world, the British reputation for drinking too much and consequently behaving atrociously precedes us.  The attitude that this is normal, is even worse.  Our language is full of expressions that are acceptable in social circles, even though they are all about being so drunk, you no longer had control of your own body.  Saying things like, "yeah I got so rat-arsed / wasted / pi**ed / wan**red / paralytic / slaughtered / plastered / s**t - faced" in a mock-embarrassed but really quite tickled by the idea way, shows just how acceptable it is in British society.

Don't even get me started on those who come to Prague for stag nights.  I would purposely cross the road to avoid walking alongside people like that.  I should be spending every minute of my day apologising to Czech people for this fact alone.  How dare such an ignorant nation as us Brits use a country for its cheap beer?

9) The British attitude to sport and music in schools.  It costs too much to teach properly and make enjoyable, so we just don't bother and leave it up to rich kids' parents to pay extra for these areas of education instead.  

10) I've saved the best till last: 

The British inability to say something directly.  Such as, "I'm not sure that's a good idea", when they mean, "Hell no!"  Or, "We really appreciate your application for this job but on this occasion we're unable to offer you anything", when what they mean is: "You are totally wrong for this job."  Or else, "I think I might have to cut back on our meetings for a while", when they mean, "I want to stop our meetings for good".  

Worse still is the extreme self-deprecation, ingrained from birth, that dictates you must override any compliment regarding your achievements with an explanation of how you're normally not that good, had help or copied someone else, or it was a total fluke, which really translates as, "Gosh, did you really think I was good?  That's amazing!  Tell me more..."  (If you seriously are that desperate for approval, for god's sake own up to it, show some maturity and say, "Thanks very much for the compliment.  I've been feeling really quite unsure of how much I could manage, so I'm pleased it went so well.")

With all of that off my chest, I can feel a little bit better about daring to criticise an aspect of Czech culture and assure you that I have been, and always will be, rather ashamed to be British.