Re:The last days of Silicon Roundabout
by pjc50 on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @04:38AM
(#28614206)
This may be controversial, but I think most of us Brits, even the liberal-internationalist ones, have enough national attachment to the place that it makes it hard to leave. We can tell you the top fifty things wrong with the country if you have the time, but have no intention of quitting just because it's a bit shit.
The taint of cynical fatalism is the main thing that distinguishes us from the rest of the Anglosphere. It makes us unable to participate in corporate boosterism. And it often prevents us from taking opportunities. Nowhere on the same level as the Russian national character, but it's definitely an important part of British culture and humor.
As is snobbishness about Americans. This dates back to the war and beyond ("over paid and over here" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/unite...), and I suspect this lurks beneath the surface; moving to America would not only mean surrounding yourself with Americans, but admitting that they'd won. (Again, even if you're a liberal-internationalist Brit, Americans are the last foreigners it's OK to be prejudiced against)
Having moved from Cambridge to Edinburgh to secure a better salary/house price tradeoff, I get a double dose of this: Scotland is entirely made of people whose ancestors didn't flee the country in a previous economic disaster (either the Highland Clearances, the end of Empire, or Thatcherism), and that biases people against leaving.
(I've thought about it myself on a couple of occasions; the first time I was young and single and feared moving to a country where I knew nobody, and the second time was yesterday reading a government statement that we're definitely not running out of gas over the winter)
The taint of cynical fatalism is the main thing that distinguishes us from the rest of the Anglosphere. It makes us unable to participate in corporate boosterism. And it often prevents us from taking opportunities. Nowhere on the same level as the Russian national character, but it's definitely an important part of British culture and humor.
As is snobbishness about Americans. This dates back to the war and beyond ("over paid and over here" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/unite...), and I suspect this lurks beneath the surface; moving to America would not only mean surrounding yourself with Americans, but admitting that they'd won. (Again, even if you're a liberal-internationalist Brit, Americans are the last foreigners it's OK to be prejudiced against)
Having moved from Cambridge to Edinburgh to secure a better salary/house price tradeoff, I get a double dose of this: Scotland is entirely made of people whose ancestors didn't flee the country in a previous economic disaster (either the Highland Clearances, the end of Empire, or Thatcherism), and that biases people against leaving.
(I've thought about it myself on a couple of occasions; the first time I was young and single and feared moving to a country where I knew nobody, and the second time was yesterday reading a government statement that we're definitely not running out of gas over the winter)