[DontWantYourBloodMoney]

This sort of thing seems to happen in most societies, although for the most part it will just be banter. Personally, the nicest person I've met was an Australian man in Greece with arms the size of tree trunks whom we thought was about to mug us but actually high fived us and stopped for a chat.

[adobe]

(Original post by medbh4805)
Those titles are automatic after a certain amount of posts.



Firstly - I'm a lesbian And secondly, what does any of this have to do with people making jokes about your nationality?

I'm not a bigot, or a bully - in fact I was bullied quite severely when I was younger, indeed because of my sexuality as well as other things. You clearly have a massive chip on your shoulder and are being seriously oversensitive. It's no wonder you have difficulty in the UK - people simply aren't going to pander to your ridiculous hypersensitivity.



I'm not British and I'm not heterosexual, and I'm from a country which has suffered immensely under British rule. But I'll tell you this:

Get your head out of your ass and get a sense of humour.

arent the irish a pathetic lot. blaming british imperialism for your own genetic shortfallings. african countries are underdeveloped 'because of the brits' but australia, new zealand, and israel are all thriving...why is this? answer = because the people in those countries make a successful country..
the irish have proven how pathetic they are, once again bankcrupt just like the famine all over again, except this time you cant blame the brits. altho im sure youll find an excuse.

oh and was your great grandfather executed along with the rest of the IRA in the first world war?

[ckingalt]

(Original post by LiterallyInsane)
Aussies are a joke I still do not understand why the aboriginals have less of a right than a white Aussie. I am literally baffled how is't possible that those who have been used and abused in the past and are native to the land gets treated like dirt?

What rights do the white Aussies have that Aboriginals don't have. You would not be baffled if you judged their treatment based on their behavior and not their native origin.

I'm not racist. The past treatment of the Aboriginal people was appalling. The transgressions involved with "the lost generation" are unforgivable. There is no doubt that the aboriginal people would be better off had western civilization never come to Australia, but it did. There is no going back even if we wanted to. The aboriginal culture has not been able to adapt to western culture. The majority of their behavior within the confines of society is an embarrassment. That is not a racist generalization, that is a fact. The Australian government has made attempts to rectify this situation by making concessions and providing subsidies to the Aboriginals. It doesn't work.

At some point, when the father's sins becomes the grandfather's, it's time to quit feeling the guilt or anger and move on. If you are baffled, it is because you fail to understand that in everyday life normal people react according to what they see and know everyday. They don't react according to what they have learned and understand as having occurred in the past. It may not be fair, but it isn't necessarily racist either.

[Jamil1987]

(Original post by wildcolonialboy)
dmeI've been a bit troubled by some of the conversations I've had, and some of the things that have been said to me by Brits about Australia; what is deemed acceptable in what would normally be fairly polite, insubstantial conversation.

I'm keen to know what TSR members think about this; I've had a couple of conversations end awkwardly, and I'm keen to hear people's opinions. I apologise in advance for its lengthy nature, and props to anyone who reads it.

I moved to London in February from Sydney, where I was born and grew up; I consider myself an Anglo-Australian (in that I'm both a dual citizen, and the cultural orientation of my family was more immediately British, because of social background and our dual nationality).

Essentially, when the subject of my Australian origin arises, there is a good chance I will have to listen, yet again, to some inane stereotypes about Australia and its history, and often have them thrown in my face as if to somehow imply that it reflects poorly on me.

To provide one example, someone asked me how I could possibly be so well spoken (others can judge the extent of my vocabulary, and rhetorical skill, or lack thereof, but I do have an accent that is quite soft with a slight RP lilt which some Brits take to be well spoken). He asked who in Australia would be capable of teaching me to use words with more than four or five letters. It's as if Australians were not the highly urbanised, well-educated, long-lived, healthy society that it is,but some backward frontier plantation. It is even more bizarre considering that Australia is now wealthier, better educated, and longer-lived than Britons. Putting aside the issue of accuracy, it's as if it's still the 1890s in the minds of these people.

This has started to disconcert me a little, insofar as I know when I meet someone, and mention I'm Australian in response to a question about my origin or accent, there's a good chance that I will have to endure the same old canards being trotted out, and a possibility that they'll be used in a way I feel is actually quite offensive (and that the utterer would not dream of insulting the national origin of, say, a Pakistani or a Chilean).

I didn't really care at all at first, but when you experience what is probably the 500th instance of these stereotypes being raised, as if this is the sum of your personality and your nation's character, it becomes quite irritating and a source of vague distaste not just for the people involved. What makes it disconcerting is that these are not the dregs of society, imperialist nutcases or BNP types. It has even become acceptable in public discourse by the Prime Minister (ridiculing Julia Gillard's accent; that required a particularly notable lack of class and common decency). I've had people on the Guardian website assert that "Australia has no culture", and that 'It has not produced any artistic or cultural works of note or value, ever'. Even those who claim to be well educated, sophisticated and cosmopolitan are profoundly ignorant and bigoted on this subject.

To me, it feels analogous to being German and having Hitler raised every time you mention you're German; it may not be as insulting, but it smacks of the same kind of myopic and parochial triumphalism and a kind of exalted ignorance (which is probably a perfect recipe for a second Splendid Isolation, though I imagine it would not be by choice this time around).

To have someone imply that you're the descendent of criminals, when in fact your forebears were free settlers, is quite unpleasant because of the inferiority implied in the question; no one cares in Australia, but here it's like they're beating you with a cudgel that has the words "You are a serf" carved onto it. It is also quite an ill-informed understanding of convict transportation. I'm personally not descended from any convicts, but even those Australians who are would only be so in very small proportion. Transportation was ended in New South Wales in 1850, a time when the number of free settlers arriving was dozens of times larger than the number of convicts arriving (there were about 150,000 convicts transported in the eighty years between 1788 and 1868; by contrast, we had about 500,000 free settlers arrive from Europe and North America in the 1850s alone). It also shows a callous ignorance of the structural economic forces and legal framework that prevented people from earning a living and criminalised their survival. To imply that those convicted and transported for offences are somehow unworthy or lesser individuals has unsettling fascistic and eugenecist overtones.

It's as though they're saying, "Without us, you are nothing. And even with us, you're still only slightly better than the scum from which you descended". It's as though they're attacking the very legitimacy of Australia's existence as in independent nation, the separate life we have lived for many years, the efforts many of my forebears and their fellow citizens and British subjects put in to create a peaceful, prosperous society of which Australians are justly proud, and which surpasses Britain in many ways.

The irony is that while these people pour scorn on Australia, in fact its economy is quite sound compared to Britain's, it is far more prosperous than Britain (GDP per capita is now about 20% higher), it accepts far more immigrants than Britain (a country three times its size) in most years. It feels like... being a Pole and having your country rubbished by a Russian; a country of notably lower living standards, less democratic, a more rigid economy along with some extra police state characteristics for good measure, and being rubbished on the basis of some view that may have been true in the late 1940s.

These are invariably people who haven't travelled to Australia, but should know better if they insist on bringing up Australia's history every time they meet an Australian. I mean, when I meet someone from a country I haven't been to, I usually ask a few questions about where they're from in the country, say something like "Oh, don't you have the such and such there...", try to find some common ground. Here, what you seem to get is someone telling you what they *know* about your country, despite never having travelled there, and often doing it in a ghastly impression of the accent in question (didn't Marx write about that being an English trait?).

What is most galling is the arrogance; apparently well educated, sociable people have said to me, "We still own you" (their basis for this claim is that the Queen of Australia is our sovereign; again, they operate on misunderstandings and urban legends, and fail to understand that under the Australian constitution only the Governor-General can exercise the powers and prerogatives of the monarch). There seems to be a free-fire zone in which people are allowed to say the most unpleasant, conceited, bigoted things as long as it's about particular countries (like Australia, or the United States). I think sometimes they forget that Britannia no longer rules the waves.

My final point (aplogies again for the length); a couple of times recently, I have put a bit of pepper and the gloves and fired back, and tell them I think what they're saying is a bit rude and quite ill-informed (and inviting them to travel to Australia). They reply that it's "just a bit of banter@, by which they mean to say I can't take a joke.

I accept that for historical reasons, Britain and Australia particularly, and particularly in the area of sport, have what might be described as a sibling rivalry. I would make two points; the first is that eventually siblings grow up. Britain is not the older sibling anymore, of that we can be certain; Australia was the ugly duckling that transformed into a beautiful swan, Britain perhaps becomes the old unmarried spinster? It certainly seems so now that it has turned its back on the Commonwealth to have a fling with a sophisticated older European man, who is actually a spendthrift, lazy wife-beater. Its younger American boyfriend is broke, and all its children have gone to be with wealthy Asian businessmen. Massive tangent there, but I think it furthers my point about Britain seemingly being quite insular and isolationist (and that many of its native-born citizens appear to be as well).

By taking it outside the area of sport, and starting to make it about issues people do take seriously, like their nationality, their heritage and ancestry, their worth as other people see it, one forfeits all "banter rights". Just as one does when you start making racist, homophobic or misogynistic, you can claim it was jocular and the recipient can't take a joke, but you shouldn't be shocked when people don't accept that it is funny, let alone clever.

I strongly believe that when you use these incorrect, misguided stereotypes and irrelevant facts in a way in a way that questions the legitimacy of a nation's existence, the honesty of its people, and generally act as like a dick and express opinions on issues about which you know nothing, then you really are crossing the line.

But.. I would certainly like to hear the opinion of TSRers.

Just by reading this in an Australian accent makes me not take this seriously.

[Sam Walters]

Calm your passions and have a brew. for **** sake.

[medbh4805]

(Original post by adobe)
arent the irish a pathetic lot. blaming british imperialism for your own genetic shortfallings. african countries are underdeveloped 'because of the brits' but australia, new zealand, and israel are all thriving...why is this? answer = because the people in those countries make a successful country..
the irish have proven how pathetic they are, once again bankcrupt just like the famine all over again, except this time you cant blame the brits. altho im sure youll find an excuse.

oh and was your great grandfather executed along with the rest of the IRA in the first world war?

Nah he joined the British Army as a Redmondite and was decorated for bravery after fighting at the Dardanelles.

[adobe]

(Original post by medbh4805)
Nah he joined the British Army as a Redmondite and was decorated for bravery after fighting at the Dardanelles.

one of our useful idiots then eh? good to see

[IndianDancer]

(Original post by Aussie-Pom)
It does seem like you've been chatting to some absolute pricks. The whole convict thing is almost usually used for banter.

Slightly off-topic to your post, but...

I know one stereotype that is true about Aussies, the guys are HOTTT

Schoolies was heaven! 30,000 ripped, hot Australian guys (17-19 years old) in the same place (gold coast), damnnnnn

The only thing I do find to be partially true, is some Australian are racist. Their attitude towards Aborigines and Asians is shocking. Then again, every country has racists but I find it annoying how Australia is labeled as 'multi-cultural' - it clearly isn't.

I'm a Pom living in Australia, by the way.

Asians as in South Asians (Indians etc) or Orientals? or both?

[Organ]

(Original post by wildcolonialboy)
When it comes to overt, public racism with a political agenda, it is pretty much non-existent in Australia, but fairly significant in European politics, and even
issues like mosque and burka bans are passed by parties that purport to be centre-right. Australian political culture simply would not allow such a thing to happen, nor do I see it as likely than any BNP or EDL-like party will emerge in the forseeable future.

Two names.

John Howard and Pauline Hanson.

[wildcolonialboy]

(Original post by AkaJetson)
The 'political culture' here would also not allow that to happen. Also the BNP are very unpopular and generally mocked and ridiculed by everyone.

What's your opinion about the high number of attacks against Indian people in Australia?

I generally think you're massively over-reacting to some light hearted jokes.

It sounds like you're in denial.

This country is full of mad people like the EDL, the BNP, Irish nationalists. We haven't even started on the religious whackos, the people the call for the execution of anyone who doesn't follow their bizarre injunctions, the people who are out on the streets every week calling for suicide bombings, or all Muslim deportation, or an Islamic caliphate, the ones who blow themselves up on trains and kill their fellow citizens... you think political culture here doesn't allow it?

When you have regular demos in Britain by Muslims threatening to murder their fellow citizens, when you have regular protests by white supremacists, don't tell me we have a similar political culture.

I love how you say "high number of attacks on Indian people". It was actually a small cluster of robberies on Indian students in Melbourne. And a significant number were perpetrated by non-citizen Sudanese refugees.

When they looked into it, they found that the rate of attacks was no higher than people in similar situations (on public transport, late at night, carrying laptops and or iphones, in poorer areas). These students were at the most dubious "colleges" learning cookery, golf course management and the like. Essentially, they were paying these institutions through the nose because it allowed them to work 20 hours per week, and it allowed them to apply for permanent residency.

I don't think there were any attacks on students going to decent universities (they tend to have security, they make sure their students are not living in dubious areas, the students are perhaps a little smarter... and tend not to pull out iphones and laptops on buses in deprived areas)

And, as with all surperstitious neanderthals, they went *straight* to violence to vindicate their hurt feelings, burning effigies and throwing rocks (and actually damaging an extremely old stained glass window at Flinders street station, I think it was about 100 years old). I side with one of the Indian-Australian community leaders in Australia (you know, an Australian citizen, someone who actually has a right to live here) who said these people are a disgrace and should all be deported.

Seeing the Australian government abase itself before the Indian high commissioner, over what the Indian papers agree was a beat up (and typically, mobs in India burned effigies and threatened this and that) and a cynical manipulation of Indian public opinion, is a stain on this country's history.

Regarding reacting to light hearted jokes, I tend to be fairly active politically, and I want Britain to be as successful and well-managed as possible. People here are extraordinarily ignorant, not just not knowing things, but *knowing* things that aren't true. How is Britain ever going to get out of the mess its in if it keeps trying the same discredited policies that got it to where it is now?

There are probably three countries worth emulating; Norway, Switzerland and Australia. Unless people actually know what is happening in other countries, see what works, what can be applied to Britain, what hope do you have? Britain might be the mother of parliaments, but it's certainly not the mother of well thought out, successful policy.

[wildcolonialboy]

(Original post by Organ)
Two names.

John Howard and Pauline Hanson.

Funny you mention the latter. This is the woman who was run out of office, sued until she was bankrupt, imprisoned, and never been successful in political office again. That demonstrates Australian racism and not the opposite?

Regarding John Howard, name a racist policy, a policy that is *actually* racist, not "It's racist because you don't have totally open borders"

Pauline Hanson is always brought up by Britons who think they're clever and well informed about Australia, when it actually demonstrates the how little they know about anything that happened in Australian politics in the last 15 years.

Enoch Powell! See! Britons are racist!

Doesn't really work.

[wildcolonialboy]

(Original post by ckingalt)
What rights do the white Aussies have that Aboriginals don't have. You would not be baffled if you judged their treatment based on their behavior and not their native origin.

I'm not racist. The past treatment of the Aboriginal people was appalling. The transgressions involved with "the lost generation" are unforgivable. There is no doubt that the aboriginal people would be better off had western civilization never come to Australia, but it did. There is no going back even if we wanted to. The aboriginal culture has not been able to adapt to western culture. The majority of their behavior within the confines of society is an embarrassment. That is not a racist generalization, that is a fact. The Australian government has made attempts to rectify this situation by making concessions and providing subsidies to the Aboriginals. It doesn't work.

At some point, when the father's sins becomes the grandfather's, it's time to quit feeling the guilt or anger and move on. If you are baffled, it is because you fail to understand that in everyday life normal people react according to what they see and know everyday. They don't react according to what they have learned and understand as having occurred in the past. It may not be fair, but it isn't necessarily racist either.

Well put.

What LiterallyInsane didn't realise is that, very uncontroversially, Australian aborigines have been granted rights above and beyond non-indigenous Australians (and I and most Australians support this)

They have had a system of almost allodial land title, land not held in fee simple, but as outright holders, with quasi sovereign status. And this is now supported across the political spectrum.

You have a 500 person tribe, the Thalanyji, who quite rightly refused permission to Chevron to build a $29 billion LNG project on their land, until they had made a good offer (the settlement is private, but is rumoured to be a total package of several hundred million dollars, guaranteed jobs for *every* member of the tribe, payments in perpetuity). In fact, the Thalanyji, even after they signed the agreement, boycotted the breaking ground ceremony because they didn't like the guest list and also wanted some additional money for a so-called Keeping Place for their sacred artefacts.

And I totally support them. It is their land, which they hold under native title, it's inviolable, and the federal government has protected them from any attempts to interfere by the state government. Don't tell me Australian aborigines have less rights than other Australians when just one tribe holds more power over a huge multinational than you would ever see citizens exert in Britain or America.

Btw @LiterallyInsane, your claim about going to Australia, and meeting "rednecks" who call indigenous Australians foreigners sounds totally fabricated.

[3mm@]

They are just jealous that they can't have barbequed turkey for Christmas

[wildcolonialboy]

(Original post by adobe)
oh my goodness aussies are soo rude, whenever i met a lad from your country its always "you really are just a bunch of whinging poms arent u" but we dont care about rudeness, infact in a Yougov poll australians came top i think of people most respected by British people.

also i wish soooooooooooo much that we could cut the european retard rope and sail alongside australia and new zealand. many many brits feel the same way - completely disheartened that we've drifted away from the convict countries (just kidding!) and got into bed with the frogs and the krauts.

so, how do u guys feel about us then?

Well, "us" is not really a term I can look at objectively since I am one of "us". Honestly, Australians don't think that much about Britain. Not that we think poorly of it, just that it doesn't come up that much.

Our orientation is towards China and the United States. We might hear every now and then about something in the news, the Royal wedding, phone hacking, but people couldn't really care less what's happening in terms of politics.

Some people have more interest than others, but I think for most Australians, their view depends on whether they have travelled there.

[wildcolonialboy]

(Original post by Nephilim)
Australians are no where near as racist as people make them out to be. And the reason why Aboriginals (in the outback, not in the city) have it harder is because their Elders tell them not to associate with westerners. Therefore they can't have access to normal things and services. As much as I hate Australian culture, I must admit it isn't such a bad country. The only thing I can't stand here is the political correctness on some issues and the complete bigoted nonsense on other issues. Most wonky political policies of any country I've seen .

I appreciate the first section.

As to the second, if you call failing to accept superstitious nonsense about non-existent celestial dictators bigotry, then by all means call me a bigot.

My conscience is pretty clear, and if religious people had any shame for the way they've poisoned the world, they wouldn't dare show their faces in public (I think Muslim women probably have the right idea)

(Postscript: I thought you were referring to my views there, not the Australian government... then again, I am quite solipsistic)

[adobe]

(Original post by wildcolonialboy)
Well, "us" is not really a term I can look at objectively since I am one of "us". Honestly, Australians don't think that much about Britain. Not that we think poorly of it, just that it doesn't come up that much.

Our orientation is towards China and the United States. We might hear every now and then about something in the news, the Royal wedding, phone hacking, but people couldn't really care less what's happening in terms of politics.

Some people have more interest than others, but I think for most Australians, their view depends on whether they have travelled there.

yeah ive heard about your alignment with china.. sounds dodgy, we keep our relations with china as strictly business only, although we do trade well with them, australia and britain really do ignore eachother, although hoards of australian physical education teachers come over here for a short period! but yeah both our countries will become muslim majority countries by the year 2060 anyway so it doesnt really matter does it!

[Glennie]

Fellow Aussie here. The only reaction I get when I tell people I'm Australian is, "I've got a friend who went to Sydney, he absolutely loved it." The nice ones then tell me that my accent's not as strong as I think it is and allay my concerns that spending 10 years in Queensland has boganised my accent.

Jokes about Australia's convict past have always struck me as particularly stupid. Why not just remind anyone raising it where the convicts were being shipped from?

[Wenger]

Well done for using paragraphs, a rare occurrence when reading a 'rant' thread.

[Hypocrism]

How about you chill out and learn to have fun for once?
I'm from New Zealand and let me tell you, unless you can make jokes about your country of origin you are probably a pretentious ass-swipe.

[wildcolonialboy]

(Original post by adobe)
yeah ive heard about your alignment with china.. sounds dodgy, we keep our relations with china as strictly business only, although we do trade well with them, australia and britain really do ignore eachother, although hoards of australian physical education teachers come over here for a short period! but yeah both our countries will become muslim majority countries by the year 2060 anyway so it doesnt really matter does it!

Australia will not be a Muslim majority country in 2600, let alone 2060. And right now it's a Christian majority country (if just in the sense that a majority of people claim the identity and comfort they think it brings without actually walking into a church). Both are equally bad.

But of all the Muslims we might have had, Australia really lucked out and got the liberal, middle class, thoughtful, secular ones, for the most part. Britain can't really say the same, but I always have my escape pod, as it were (Australian passport)