(Photo by Will Coutts)
The British Council put out a report this week called “As Others See Us“. Inside, you can read what 5,000 18 to 34-year-olds from all around the world think of Britain: their love of Brand Beckham, their appreciation of our “good manners”, their adoration of that rich old lady living in a castle in the middle of London. Generally, stock fare they could have saved a lot of time and money on by just leaving a dictaphone in the Leicester Square M&M’s store to see what tourists had to say between spending their entire per diems on confectionary memorabilia.
Videos by VICE
But it wasn’t all nice; respondents also took the time to tell the British Council the most negative things they could think of about this sceptred isle. These included: “Drink Too Much Alcohol”, “Bad Eating Habits”, “Rude”, “Unfriendly”, “Ignorant of Other Cultures”, “Lazy” and “Complain Too Much”. Which all seems a little vindictive. I mean, what did we ever do to you, bar all that unfortunate enslavement and diamond plundering?
It’s never easy to digest home truths like these, but the real kicker is that however badly the world sees us, the realities behind their assessments are often so much worse. Here are a few of the qualms the rest of the planet has with us and the unfortunate truths behind them.
Some guys at a pub in Wales (Photo by Tom Johnson)
THAT WE DRINK TOO MUCH ALCOHOL (27% voted this our worst trait)
The stereotype: Brits are the pisscats of Europe. The only Brits who aren’t permanently drunk are on-duty policemen and 85 percent of airline pilots. If you’re not actively moving booze towards your mouth in Britain, people will assume you have passed out and will start talking about you as though you are no longer in the room. No Saturday night in Britain is complete without hospitalisation. Liver transplants are as routine as Botox.
Why the truth is worse: The sheer evidence of their senses. Only 24 percent of those surveyed who’d never been to Britain thought that the country had a drinking problem. That number rose to 36 percent among those who had actually visited the place. Some of these people are from Russia or Australia. Some of them are even from Ireland. The sad truth is that our name is Britain, and we are an alcoholic.
THAT WE HAVE BAD EATING HABITS (23 percent voted this our worst trait)
The stereotype: If you visit a British restaurant you should remember to order your courses “unmixed”, or else the chef will simply pour all the ingredients into the same steel swill pail, chuck them in the deep fryer and turn them out onto your plate. Meat is just carpet mould that’s got very big. Vegetables are pools of coloured water that have huddled together for security. The closest thing to béarnaise sauce you’ll find in Britain is Tizer. The closest thing to passata is pig’s blood.
Why the truth is worse: The truth is the exact opposite. Which is so much worse. Britons have been gawping into Jamie Oliver’s open gob for over 15 years and have become hypnotised by his guttural vowels into fervently obeying celebrity chefs. They live in morbid fear of running out of fennel seeds. They spend their days wandering around faux-farmers’ markets 50 miles from the nearest tractor, looking for unusual mustards. If this sounds like an improvement, try experiencing our merry hell of fusion-Mexican pulled-pork pasties and you’ll soon wish you could still find someone to sell you a grey piece of chicken slathered in salad cream and imprisoned between two slabs of sliced white bread.
An EDL supporter (Photo by Chris Bethell)
THAT WE’RE TOO NATIONALISTIC (22 percent voted this our worst trait)
The stereotype: Having given the world trains, television, the first computer, DNA, gravity, evolution, The Beatles, the industrial revolution and Morph, Britons feel they have basically won history. No one else need try any more because it’s already settled. Hence, each citizen spends most of their time smugging around as though they personally invented the Spinning Jenny, and expects you to act towards them accordingly.
Why the truth is worse: Britons are actually sad, defeated nationalists. Like the bullies in 80s films who lashed out because they had no real friends, Britons are just confused and sickened by their ongoing inability to find their place in the new world order. So they resort to desperate measures like starting far-right drinking clubs in town centres, or hosting large international sporting tournaments.
THAT WE’RE INTOLERANT OF OTHER CULTURES (22 percent voted this our worst trait)
The stereotype: Britons have a sublime ignorance of foreigners’ lives. They believe that if you’re from anywhere east of Dover you spent most of your early life making T-shirts for The Gap and ingesting a brown liquid that tastes of boiled sandals for sustenance. They presume you gasp audibly when presented with a power-shower and view Argos as sorcery. They seem to genuinely believe the NHS is the only version of socialised medicine in the world, and that every other country just leaves the poor to die in the streets. Sure, they’ll sell you a couple of tickets to We Will Rock You and a Chelsea FC tea towel, but inwardly they wish you’d just fuck off home and stop clogging up the Piccadilly Line with your terrible map-reading skills.
Why the truth is worse: Britons genuinely don’t want to know about your culture because they’re already bored of it. They live in a cosmopolitan, mass-immigrated singularity of foreigners, and frankly they have long since run out of questions about whether they celebrate Christmas in Malaysia or what they call tomato sauce in New Zealand. You could be from Saturn and most Brits would just file you as “sort of South Asian” in their mental taxonomy. They would much rather talk about the differences in culture between Dunstable and Luton than between Russia and Poland. It’s nothing personal; they just can’t be bothered to pick yours out among the Generation Game conveyor belt of ethnicities they interact with every day.
(Photo by Kieran Cudlip)
THAT WE’RE RUDE (17 percent) AND UNFRIENDLY (13 percent)
The stereotype: Most Brits would rather talk openly about their favoured masturbation technique than strike up a conversation with a member of the public who wasn’t already holding them hostage. And if you talk to a British person directly on a train they will generally just raise their shoulders, flare their nostrils and emit a low hiss until you back off.
Why the truth is worse: The horrible truth is that Britons have little or no understanding of other humans. Hence, they assume that starting conversations with strangers could lead to an eight-hour footnoted discussion about York Castle, or whatever, which is something nobody wants when they’re on their way home from work. What these Britons haven’t realised is that other people are also human, and probably also in a hurry themselves, meaning they don’t necessarily want to gab on endlessly either. So the safest bet is to just limit interaction to base necessities and avoid any kind of personal discomfort.
THAT WE COMPLAIN TOO MUCH (13 percent) AND ARE TOO PESSIMISTIC (11 percent)
The stereotype: Britain is a nation of blithering moaners – people who are never happier than when they’re plunging a small Maltese hotel one step closer to bankruptcy with their latest withering TripAdvisor review.
Why the truth is worse: Not only are they moaners; moaning is a traditional form of social bonding in Britain. Like bonobo monkeys picking fleas out of each other’s fur, when you hear a Brit telling you about how bad the service is on First Great Western, he is grooming you. This is basically a form of mutual masturbation and you should always respond in kind, no matter how punctual your last train was. Come to Britain and you will see how this sort of thing goes on all day, every day in tea shops, branches of The Post Office and police trauma rooms.
(Photo courtesy of Bob Foster)
THAT WE’RE LAZY (10 percent voted this our worst trait)
The stereotype: British people employ foreigners to do everything they don’t want to do, from lettuce-picking to coffee pouring. Your average Brit feels he is too good to work any rung lower than deputy-manager of a regional branch of Halfords, and would rather squire around in his free house on his sizeable spare room subsidy and generous universal credit payment instead of working out how to use the meter on a minicab.
Why the truth is worse: The truth is that Britons are actually extremely hard-working, averaging the third-highest hours in Europe. But unfortunately, most of their jobs are in marketing, PR, HR and the rest of the Blair-heralded “service economy” that, strictly-speaking, doesn’t really exist. These people all lead imaginary lives wherein the next tweet sent by the PR is going to make or break the corporate development consultancy’s marketing strategy and result in a middle-manager having to fall on his sword as the stock price is attacked by derivatives traders. It’s an economy that does nobody any genuine good and turns everyone into stressed-out drones who hate their lives.
– – –
So there you go, Brits – the rest of the world thinks we’re shit, and the truth is we’re even shitter than they thought.
More fun stories about Britain:
Dapper Laughs Is the New Breed of British Tosser
