--- sastry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sat November 19 2005 09:35, Frank Pohlmann wrote:
> > Please take into account that it is just MY
> > perspective and I don't exactly have a lot more
> than
> > newspaper articles as evidence.
>
> Well let me put down my thoughts:
>
> "Triumphalism", vis a vis Germany probably did
> exist in the UK as did similar
> attitudes towards most of the world.
No doubt about that.
>
> Living in the UK in the 80s I observed a very
> British sense of being
> contemptuous of competitor's products - like German
> or Japanese cars, and a
> tendency to quickly claim credit for successes while
> blaming some foreign
> entity for failures.
I came to the UK in 1989 and I found it difficult to
comprehend that this rather small and in the big
scheme of things, unimportant country could have
pretensions of world influence. I had just spent 3
years in East Asia and the UK did not appear on
anyone's political radar screen in either China and
Japan.
I didn't see so much in terms of claiming successes
for themselves. What I saw and perceived was
unremitting hostility to the extent that English
friends tried to pretend not to know me in public.
Etc. Friends from other (non-UK) countries reported a
grave difficulties in finding friends etc.
>
> For example a botched US military raid would be
> laughed at (in public, on TV),
> but a successful US military action would be
> publicised as "US forces that
> had trained with the British SAS"
:) No comment. There are plenty of examples like this
and it is still going on to some extent.
>
> As an Indian I used to be very sensitive to what was
> being said w.r.t. to the
> Indian subcontinent - but Indians were too low on
> the British radar in the
> 1980s for any serious references to come up other
> than being dismissed as
> irrelevant.
Obviously this has changed. I think that Kargil and
the events in 2001 pretty much made it obvious that
the UK didnt have an ounce of influence left in that
part of the world, despite considerable amounts of
hand waving, huffing, puffing etc.
>
> It seems to me that the embracing of the US by
> Britain is a desire to continue
> the impression of British glory, and not have to
> accept or admit the
> geopolitical decline of Britain over the years in
> comparison to powerful
> European (Germany, France) and non-Europen states.
Indeed. Nowadays the UK government still spouts lies
about the UK having the 4th largest economy in the
world. Oh well. I was quite amused when German
economic problems, which undoubtedly exist and the
French riots were used in a fairly inane fashion by
Labour to talk up the British service economy and the
British multicultural model.
And still, that both are in a way results of colonial
history is not spoken about.
But frankly, I don't think that the UK political class
has ever noticed that they are not really that
relevant to the rest of the world.
-Frank
>
>
>
>
>
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