A Conversation

"Where are you from?"
"I'm actually from Glasgow."
"Is that where you're from?"
"Well, I was born in Dumfries, but I've lived in Glasgow my whole life."
"Where's your accent from?"
"My adopted parents are English, but they live here and I've lived here my whole life."
"You're English."
"I was born in Scotland, I've lived in Glasgow my entire life."
"You're English."

If people want to ask me where my accent is from, that's fair, it's not a Scottish accent, really. Although people living in England have said I have a Scottish accent and even put on a twee old-lady Scottish accent in mockery of me, it's a weird accent and that's fine.

I really, really hope right-minded people will get over the England/Scotland rivalry sometime soon. Now, don't get me wrong. Politically, you may have a point, considering the very real division we've just witnessed following the election. But nationalism is just so fucking boring, for real.

Population-wise, England is about ten times the size of Scotland, which is the second largest country in the UK. That doesn't mean we should sit down and allow ourselves to be marginalised, but it does mean we might have to let the whole Mars bar fiasco go and give a fuck about something a little more important. I think that, maybe, the English flag is on the Mars bar in support of the English team in the World Cup, I don't think it's there to spite Scottish people with regards to a feud which was supposedly resolved, hmm, three hundred years ago. Maybe we should talk about the complete disregard and marginalisation of women in popular sport. Or come up with an actual reason why Scotland is better than England, why Scottish people are fundamentally, intrinsically, inherently better than English people. Why xenophobia is okay when it's against the English. I mean, hey, the Romans attacked us, didn't they? Let's hate on Italy. The problems that Britain has are spread throughout Britain. One fifth of the population living in poverty being one I'm quite concerned about.

I'm basically just very, very bored of the pathetic, useless waste of time and effort that is presuming one's own identity is better than others. The U.K. is better than other countries, Scotland is better than England and Glasgow is better than Edinburgh and the Southside is better than the West End and Strathclyde is better than Glasgow Uni and Hillpark is better than Woodfarm and Shawlands is better than Hillpark and anywhere is better than Hutchy and Rangers are better than Celtic and Catholics are better than Protestants. It's all the same, absolutecompletesheerfucking prejudice and snobbery everywhere and people, in the mad scramble for pride and identity, becoming snobs on the presumption that others elsewhere are snobs in return. Snoooooooze. It's not much of an identity if it's based on trying to prove how terrible others are. Making an angry point about your nationality is fruitless (unless maybe someone refused to believe you were what you said you were, hahahahaaa, I'm so funny).

Having never lived in England and having visited only on holidays and technically having no English blood (though the importance of biology I could dispute on account of being adopted /tangent) it would, of course, be a straight-up, outright lie to say that I am English. I'm not English.
And since the overwhelming majority of people who have spoken to me about my accent seem to be subscribing to some kind of Scottish Nationalist purity law, whereby someone born and raised in Scotland is not, in fact, Scottish, I'm going to deliver a massive fuck-you in the form of adhering to the taboo of claiming that my nationality is British. Ooooooh!

Another post asking the general public to try and be less dickheadish, brought to you by Bo. (Taking my own advice any moment now)

On British culture (sometimes)

I'm so fucking sick of hearing about Jade Goody.

I can't express how much I do not want Jade to die of cancer, largely because I don't want anyone to die of cancer, or of anything else. I'm just thoroughly disappointed in Britain (as I usually am these days) for making a role model of this nasty little woman.

She is famous for being famous, rode into celebrity through a reality TV programme (she didn't even win) and milked it for all it was worth, more so than any other individual who appeared on the programme. She was dropped from an anti-bullying campaign because she was a nasty, cliquey, racist bully on the programme. She's Britain's Paris Hilton. She has spent the last 4 years doing everything within her power to keep the attention on her and is worth £4m as a result.

I can actually understand why she'd want to rake in as much money as possible at the moment to support her sons after she's gone, but my point is that amidst all this Jade Goody sudden-praise, everyone forgets that thousands of good people in similar situations die with very little to offer their family, very little to comfort them, without the moral support of about a gazillion celebrities. They don't get wedding tents, they get hospital beds.

I'm even angering myself by wasting time typing about her, but I've just reminded myself of the time when the House of Commons actually took the time to discuss what needed to be done about Jade Goody when she totally shattered UK relations with India with her whole racist fiasco.

So basically, it's not only the media wasting their time talking about this nasty piece of work when there are actual things going on the in the world, it's our government as well.

MORE COMPLAINTS.
Further on the general state of the UK, this morning, the Metro put four tall, leggy girls in kilts, posed all sexy-like on the front of the newspaper, to advertise what? Golf. I took the newspaper and I wrote "Sex Sells... ...Golf" on it and pointed it out to a girl who is in my class. I complained to her that people are actually stupid enough to fall for this anti-feminist rubbish, to which she replied, "Yeah, and they haven't even got nice legs."

Something else which is ridiculous is the proposal to raise the drinking age to 21. Now, apparently this wouldn't affect anyone who is over 18 now, there'd be a rollover type thing, so it wouldn't affect me personally. What I do care about, however, is the idea that it would become criminal for someone who is legally an adult to make their own decision about whether or not to consume alcohol and whether or not they can do so responsibly. I admit Britain has an extremely complex drinking problem, but the idea that those who create the problem are mostly 18-21 is absolutely ridiculous. Anyone who has waited in the taxi queue at Central Station at 3.30am know that that is ridiculous - we all know the amazingly diverse variety of arseholes who make up the UK's irresponsible drinkers. Infantilising and criminalising our youth, in transparent, brown-nosing imitation of North America is basically going to solve fuck-all.

AND, my final complaint of the day. There is another proposal, to include oral and tactile sex to within the definition of sex, thereby criminalising under-16's who have oral/tactile sex, even if they're not having penetrative sex. So, instead of expanding sex education lessons to include actual things (my guidance teacher said, "no one here looks gay so we're not going to do that bit" then put on the A-Z of sex video which showed a boy pretending to give a lick out to an ice cream.), they're just going to ban any kind of sexual contact altogether. Protecting youth is one thing, but this is just another case of infantilising and criminalising young people and is a result of pure societal discomfort. Parents don't want to broach the topic of their teenage offspring being sexual beings, so they just ban everything sexual that they can think of. Sheer discomfort. I suppose next they'll ban condoms, then they'll ban kissing, lest it send out the message that sex is acceptable. Did you know that there was actual OPPOSITION to the HPV immunisation offered to teenage girls a year or so ago, because it might send out the message that sex is acceptable?

Bloody ridiculous culture.