I Just Don't Know Do You?

I am delighted whenever Waldemar Januszczak is on the telly educating me on my woeful lack of art knowledge. His style is informative, entertaining and pleasantly humourous. So I couldn't resist pinching his style and writing this a non-academic superficial tongue in cheek glance at “Britishness

The argument to leave EU goes something like this: “We prefer to make our own rules. We don’t want a bunch of senile European mandarins telling us what to do. 

Too many foreigners coming over here getting benefits, stealing jobs and working for less money.”

So! We want out of Europe even though very few if any can tell you the real benefits as to why.  

We might first reflect a little on what is British and what is European. Let us then begin with the dirty word “language”. In Britain the Queen speaks English, “The Queens English” although it wasn’t always that way was it? For those English speaking 'dyed in the wool' xenophobes you can look for yourselves on Wikipedia using the search heading “Lists of English words by country or language of origin” and there you can see a chart with Latin and French at 29% each, Germanic 26%, Greek 6% and finally others unknown 10%. This fine language we call English is and always has been in a continual state of flux. 

Now consider what British ancestral roots tell us about “Britishness”. Let’s start with “We’re not British are we?”  Today, we are Welsh (Britons), Scottish, Irish and something we loosely call English all under the auspices of a once Great Britain. Since the loss of the largest empire the world has ever known our nation is now referred to by other nations as United Kingdom. But we are not really that united are we? Ireland wants its country back. Scotland has a penchant for independence, Wales is a welsh country full of proud welsh people and England has a North-South divide. Then there are all the invasions from the Romans onward who moved the original Britons into Scotland and Wales. Which leaves “Britishness” a combination of Celtic, Norse, Anglo Saxon and Norman. Let us not ever forget those Plantagenets from the French house of Anjou who gave the English three lions to wear on their football shirts. 

At this point I must put our illustrious Oxford English Dictionary to the question, what is a foreigner?  Look at this: 1. A person born in or coming from a country other than one's own. 1.1    (informal) A person not belonging to a particular place or group; a stranger or outsider.

As for remain or leave I cannot offer a decent answer as to which will be better in the long run. Approaching Seventy years old it won’t affect me in the long-term scheme of things. Uncertainty has diminished spending power of the British pound on certain foods and holidays. Who knows things may restore themselves in the future.

May Mr Januszczak forgive me