What is wrong with identifying as British?

Why do so many people now insist they are Welsh/Scottish/English and not British? We live on a contiguous island, what's wrong with dual identity? And why do people always look for ways to divide themselves up? Seems like divide and rule works well....

Reply 1

StriderHort

'British' tends to get interpreted as 'English' so no wonder people wanted to push away from it and keep their own identities considering England was mostly the one trying to stamp them out in the first place.

Reply 2

EuropeanIAm

Original post

by StriderHort

Ok but that doesn't account for the number of English who reject Britishness also. We are an island, Britishness is intuitive. The little Englanders are profoundly narrow minded and depressing.

Reply 3

StriderHort

Original post

by EuropeanIAm

Ok but that doesn't account for the number of English who reject Britishness also. We are an island, Britishness is intuitive. The little Englanders are profoundly narrow minded and depressing.

I'm not so sure about it being entirely intuitive when you look at the origins and histories of the separate countries where tension remain to this day.

I believe an element of the English believes that 'British' dilutes them, it contains all the women, foreigners and swamp peasants, more or less.

Reply 4

Jebedee

The first step of robbing people of their identity is to coax them into identifying as British. Then it'll be European. Then some sort of hunger games numerical faction.

Reply 5

EuropeanIAm

Original post

by Jebedee

The first step of robbing people of their identity is to coax them into identifying as British. Then it'll be European. Then some sort of hunger games numerical faction.

What nonsense. There's no slippery slope to European identity. British is better than factionalism because Britain is a contiguous island and the most successful political union on earth.

Reply 6

StriderHort

Original post

by EuropeanIAm

What nonsense. There's no slippery slope to European identity. British is better than factionalism because Britain is a contiguous island and the most successful political union on earth.

It's possibly the most successful because one country holds power over the others and won't let them leave....

Reply 7

Jebedee

Original post

by EuropeanIAm

What nonsense. There's no slippery slope to European identity. British is better than factionalism because Britain is a contiguous island and the most successful political union on earth.

By what metric do you claim that it is the most successful political union in the world exactly?

Reply 8

EuropeanIAm

Original post

by Jebedee

By what metric do you claim that it is the most successful political union in the world exactly?

Economic prosperity and mutual benefit

Reply 9

PinkMobilePhone

Chat Forum Helper, Life & Style Forum Helper

I identify as British, because ethnically I'm not English.

I was born in France. My dad is French.
My mam was born in England but she's a first generation British Pole as both her parents were Polish.

So you won't ever see me saying I'm English because I'm really not.

I'm British though, it says so on my passport.

I do understand why people identify as English / Scottish / Welsh / N. Irish though - to be more specific. I mean we could all just say we're European but we don't, we state more specifically a country. We could just say we're inhabitants of Earth but again people like to be specific.
Try telling someone in Yorkshire that he's not a northerner and you'd be called mad. People like to be specific.