Being British

Subject: Being British.

It's a difficult balancing act being British, what in fact does it mean to be British ?
Is it an amalgam of Scotland, Wales and England with a bit of Ireland tagged on. Is it reflected in the centralised Parliament, the so called mother of Parliaments where we deal with recalcitrant members of the family with a democratic process, the envy of places such as Catalonia. Is it the dry observance of authority without the use to arms, even in our police force. Is it our talent for not only demeaning others but also ourselves.
If we examine our character, which section of our society are we looking at since we are so class-ridden it's hard to see any resemblance between people coming from a housing estate and those from a leafy village not 20 miles away.
Is it our obsession with history and the part we played in forming what we assume as civilised society,  in this instance I mean the laws governing behaviour, the structure of commerce , rules and an accounting process which doesn't only count money.
As a nation it is suggested that after Brexit we need to invent a plan to reconstruct ourselves, to become noticed and listened to once again. To sit at the high table and have our say. The concern is that we may become a minnow like one of the Scandinavian countries, admired for a working grasp of a just society.  But then we are at a disadvantage as a country. Pretty shambolic, lacking the emotional tools to  understanding how a successful society is made up of the 'sum of its parts' we can hardly be called a paragon  of virtue within our own shores and towards our own people.
Constant mismanagement of our affairs in both politics, in the field of business and in the task of educating our children leaves us ill equipped to weather the storms ahead. Perhaps our only salvation will be to disassociate ourselves from 'competing' and simply run the croft as we used to all those years ago. To isolate ourselves behind the 21 miles of water and make ourselves feel superior. Unfortunately to look and judge from afar is to miss the detail and, as in most matters, it's the detail which counts.
Walking the streets of Newham in the East of London the very essence of the multi -ethnic fabric which has grown here from the time the immigrants landed here. It resembles a Middle or Far East enclave, reflected in the shops and the food from lands far far away. But now there is a difference. A resilience of younger people, the sons and daughters of the immigrant, who are forging their futures in the schools and collages built for them. Confident, and determined they reflect a new generation, not of shop keepers or the unskilled cleaner but of future bosses. They, with the determination of their parents who had not fallen and become infected by welfare but instead had  sorted out a path of their own successfully  inculcated in their young, a work ethic and a will to succeed. In the '6th Form Collage' opened only a couple of years ago they are turning out 6 double star plus graduates, whilst the school not half a mile away, is struggling to teach their youngsters (mostly white children) to read and write in their mother tongue.
Is it in the genes or is it living in a feckless society, growing up on a diet of assumed "rights" that the indigenous kids fail so spectacularly . If everything is given as a "right" is there any point in working, still less studying to gain their own 'right of passage', or will it rather come my way anyway, as a right.
If the mind of the white person is seeped in the banality of the 'quick fix', supported by a mainstream tabloid  press which goes out of its way to coarsen the mind with its short term popularism, then the children of parents who themselves have not matured to any great degree, what chance then the children of these pitiful characters to become pitiful themselves.