20/08/2025
I get it. You’re angry. You feel abandoned. Me too.
I also get patriotism, the fear of a changing world, and being proud of your country.
Mostly I understand the warm feeling of connection.. I get it at football matches when everyone around me is wearing the same colour.. or being at a family wedding .. It’s what we humans strive for and mostly not with ever really thinking about it.
What is patriotism? Well in simple terms it’s being proud of your country. But doesn’t your country or countrymen have to make you feel proud to be patriotic? I see flags popping up everywhere and that’s absolutely wonderful.. if that feeling isn’t being driven by a negative energy toward other people. Because that is a more complicated brew.. where patriotism gets confused with a much more pernicious emotion.. nationalism. And that has never served any country well.
I watched by chance last night .. the London Olympics opening ceremony. Goosebumps there was .. as we celebrated our proud heritage of building the NHS, our trade unions that fought for the rights we enjoy today.. our paid holidays, our maternity pay and our right to be treated decently at work. Our suffragettes, our miners, our heroic armed forces that for a while.. alone .. faced down the biggest threat to the world it had ever seen.. German nationalists. A people that believed Germany was just for Germans.. and went after the nearest and most convenient ethnic minority. We stood against them .. That’s pride. That’s patriotism.
I hear there’s going to be a demo outside the ibis hotel soon. And I am ashamed about it. A broken country by posh men in suits , undervalued, underfunded, have clearly done enough to persuade you that some poor people in a hotel deserve your anger for the way the country looks now. Do you really believe you can’t see a doctor ( likely an immigrant) or a dentist ( same) or get into a hospital ( kept afloat by immigrants) .. because of migrants? Years of cuts and slashing services, wages and council houses ? Can you really blame the idiot that is Kier Starmer for the closures of migrant lanes and the Brexit that made it worse caused by the previous governments? Can you really talk of two tier policing when the UKIP leader does a sieg heil in the street and old and disabled people are arrested holding placards because they don’t want this country to fund your tax money into a genocide?
I don’t want small boats. I want channels reopened where people can claim asylum officially. I don’t want people hating on people in hotels in our town.. because we have been made to feel intimidated, our answer isn’t to go out and intimidate others. That just not what a good community would do.. and this is largely a brilliant one.
A friend of mine who doesn’t have Facebook was shown last weeks posts by his friend. He text me and reminded me of a few months back.. when getting to Kings Cross at 11pm to get home .. inevitably the next two trains were cancelled and everyone piled on the 12.50 am one, stopping at a million stops with a full bladder. On the train .. was a group of 20 something men. Fighting age I guess some would call it. Fortunately for me .. on a standing room only carriage they were in the next one .. I could see them, frightening women, openly doing drugs, threatening other men and made the journey horrendous for those around us.
Now . Before I tell you what ethnicity they were.. are you absolutely certain that all young men must be judged as the absolute stereotype of all their race? Are you absolutely certain it’s a ‘culture’ thing? Yep. You guessed it.
Don’t judge all people the same. The comments last week about people feeling uneasy must never have walked past a Wetherspoons on a Saturday night. You are being gaslit.. and some of you know it and are enjoying it. But the inconvenient truth is better than a lie to yourself.. unless this situation is handled with brains and not brawn, and respect instead of hate .. and societal nuance over mob rule .. we are done. Us just as much as them. We will lose what is beautiful about being British.. our fair play and our respect for people.
In the absence of good leaders to be proud of our country.. be good citizens and lead by example. We are better than that. Many of you people know it too.. and those people make me feel proud to be from these islands. Be better.
