the English are moral, the English are good, and clever and modest and misunderstood

[freckles_and_doubt]

I have a visa for my English trip, hooray. It arrives all neatly sealed into a silver plastic envelope, festooned with snippy interdictions about breaking the seal unless you're absolutely and positively the person it's intended for. It was an extremely efficient process, done in only a couple of weeks, and automated every step of the way. Collecting the passport must have taken all of a minute and a half. Inside the envelope, however, is not only the passport and the documentation I submitted, but a neat little A5 booklet in red, white and blue, with the title "PLAYING BY THE RULES IN THE UK."

This title is is causing me almost physical nausea, which is disproportionate because the contents of the booklet are fairly straightforward rules for visitors: don't misuse your visa or bring in banned foods and please tattle on human traffickers at these easy numbers. But the positioning of the title gets to me. It's sanctimonious, paternalistic, smug and self-satisfied: it says "We're all part of a police state, isn't it lovely, you will be too." It also has an air of unspecified and inherent menace: you will be good, won't you? or else. The tone is that of a particularly saccharine kindergarten teacher: we're all just do as we're told here, don't we? Or mummy will smack.

I do not like your current Great Britain, it strikes me as neither great nor British. Whatever happened to the great British virtues of bloody-mindedness, eccentricity and up yours? Or is my preferred reading too firmly back in the early 20th century?

In other news, I have written two pages of densely-compacted notes for this vampire/fairy tale paper, only to discover that I'm really only making introductory motions. Hmmm. This topic may be larger than it appears in the rear-view mirror. Also, tonight I embark on STNG Season 3, suggesting I'm rocketing through them with becoming fangirly fervour. The scriptwriters, praise the cosmic wossnames, found a clue somewhere in the middle of Season 2. There is yet hope. And I still rather like Wesley Crusher, possibly on the same general principles as my growing fondness for peaty whisky: sheer bloody-mindedness. There's clearly a lot of early, classic British in my family tree.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

the administration responsible for the nanny-document is gone, long may it rot.

Since it's only been 8 weeks, nobody's bothered with little things like immigration documents yet but I hope they are included in the "scrap this shit" list.

If not, I'll contact my MP. He's particularly bloody-minded and may take an interest.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's paternalistic, New Labour Britain. As for change of direction, it's too soon to tell.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I dunno, is a new order really going to relinquish all that lovely control now that it's in their claws? I shall watch developments with interest, and not with a great deal of hope.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

The new order is a coalition - neither half trusts the other with power.

[pinkthulhu.livejournal.com]

They're looking at repealing the RIP Act (the anti-terrorism legislation which local councils abused to spy on people putting out their rubbish), which is at least a token good sign:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/15/ripa_review/

[grumpyolddog.livejournal.com]

stupid LJ forgot who I am.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

It does that more or less randomly, now and then. Personally I think it's striking for cookies.

Cookies

[egadfly.livejournal.com]

Was that an intentional pun? If so, clever. Rrrrespek!

Re: Cookies

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. I thought it was a sad and obvious pun. I clearly hang around with a low and reprehensible set of punsters, including, of course, your esteemed self.

Re: Cookies

[egadfly.livejournal.com]

Most puns are sad and obvious (I should know!); some are also clever. Merely punning on "cookies" = meh. The fact that LJ does actually forget you for want of a valid cookie = cute. And the sentence makes sense (if silly sense) without the pun, so there's slight ambiguity as to whether it was intentional - which makes the intentionality look cleverer, er.

[schedule5.livejournal.com]

Thank-you for the ear-worm. I would definitely give tuppence for it ;).

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I've had the horrible flat "FLAT!" from the Wales verse resounding in my head all morning. I shall now attempt to exorcise it by singing the Hippopotamus Song loudly to the cats.

In retrospect, it's probably fortunate I'm not actually at work today :>.

[egadfly.livejournal.com]

I apologise on behalf of my ancestral and adopted homeland.

The bloody-minded eccentricity worked better when practised by a smaller middle and upper class. Now we are more egalitarian and there isn't enough space, especially in the cities, for people to simply do as they damn well please - as pleasing as the concept is. Part of the problem is that many of the people from Elsewhere or from previously societally neglected backgrounds have not imbibed the unspoken rules of Britishness (or let's be honest: Englishness), and what they damn well please may be unpleasantly disruptive.

Fundamentally I like this diverse Britain more. It's fairer and culturally richer and more interesting. However I detest the lowest-common-denominator control-freaky "solutions" developed by the previous government. It remains to be seen how those will evolve. I hope we can again become a beacon of freedom, adapted to the more complex challenges of our times. As Europe had to experiment with 20th century totalitarianism to discover it was rubbish, so we have been experimenting with the 21st century version, and perhaps we will learn something constructive from it.

[schedule5.livejournal.com]

Found a site today with a whole timeline of England fighting for freedom :). here

Holy crap!

[egadfly.livejournal.com]

At first it reads like a sweet historically based fable that glosses rather feebly over its internal inconsistencies.

Then you realise: "Oh. Christian Nationalism. How quaint."

Then you see this page and think it's a front for UKIP (anti-immigration nuts).

Then you see it links to here.

[(Anonymous)]

It's actually not just the title. It's the whole idea of supplying such a document. For a tourist visa! I've never been given a little pamphlet that told me how to be a good girl while visiting anywhere else. What a cheek.

scroob

[veratiny.livejournal.com]

The highest proportion of illegal immigrants where I live are apparently British...clearly they did not get a document about playing by the rules!

Chaos could have been averted...although had it my chips would have been served to me by an okker sheila...not a self-effacing young gentleman with a charming Manchester accent!