Insights into the British mentality

I have, as you may have noticed, been on a wild anti-homeland kick for a little while now. Unlike some people, I don’t seem to be able to let it go and, while it should be easier for me, as I’m not actually living in the UK any more, Brexit, 12 years of Conservative austerity/misery, corruption/incompetence and the sheer unlikability of some people I meet have all led me to becoming a little more radical as I age. This man is not so much as a socialist in his youth and a Tory as he gets old as a Militant Trotskyist in his youth and an avenging crusader as he gets older. If I had a cape, I wouldn’t be so much Batman as Fatman.

However, I am always up for a debate and a new theory. I managed, at the same time as my Italo Calvino find, to pick up a guidebook to the Costa del Sol, called, originally, Costa del Sol Inside Out. (For some reason, there is a dearth of guidebooks to the CdS; this one, published in 1988, was the only one I have been able to find.) Oh. My. God. What a find.

If you wanted a backgrounder on why various members of the British public are still the way they are, then you could do worse than this. I started leafing through it last night and have continued, out of a horrified sort of compulsion, this morning. It is incredible. Let me repeat that opening gambit from the blip image:

“Laughingly one could say that until fifteen years ago the Spaniards were mad about our women, nowadays they are just as crazy about their handbags. Mind you, the situation is not as amusing as it sounds. Men’s property is just as much the object of theft and the Spaniards themselves are by no means the only ones with an eye open for loot.”

I won’t even go into the second theme included here (i.e., the casual sexism, where it is worse because men’s belongings get stolen, because let’s face it, what silly things might women have in their handbags? Make up and Tampax or Mills & Boon novels, and insignificances like that, most likely) because there is more than enough to be going on with in the first clause. I mean. Really.

What chance did that generation have, those who had not had the opportunity to travel much themselves, when this was what they were being told? I remember hearing this in casual conversations as I grew up; the Spanish are lazy, the Italians will pinch your wife’s arse, the Dutch are thick, the French are drunks, the Portuguese are insignificant. Then there was closer to home: the Irish, the Scots, the Welsh. The Germans, of course, lost two world wars and one world cup. What. Chance. Did. They. Have?

It is still engrained in the psyche. One of the outpourings of the post-Brexit crime was the return of xenophobia. It was as if being a member of the European Union had kept it forcibly in check, kept trammeled all those things we couldn’t say about European people (not that the English restrict themselves to saying it about foreign people, they also say it about Scousers, Geordies, Brummies, Cockneys, Taffs, the Sheepshaggers­--too many locations to mention by name)--, etc. etc.). Once the “confines” had been loosed, old memories are refreshed, like a sponge being placed in a bucket of putrid water to puff out its chest and spew forth Ingerlund once more. Only now, now that veneer of societal respectableness has been stripped bare, now it is acceptable to be xenophobic, and the government itself is giving you a guide as to how to do it.

I am among the first to say that society needs to have a frank discussion about refugees and migrancy, both economic and climate-induced. We are going to be faced with serious issues in the near to medium future, certainly, I think, within my own lifetime, and people will need help. But, so far the British response, widely condemned by the UN and many countries around the world, has been to close the doors and ship off those who try for a better life to Rwanda. I find it incomprehensible – yet this small snippet of evidence in Costa del Sol Inside Out makes it all too clear how long this has been going on for, and how prevalent it was, has been, and is. I still hear conversations like this every time I find myself in an “ex-pat” environment. I heard it yesterday at Pal’s Bar while I was watching the Liverpool match. The Spanish, said the gentleman of around 70 years, who I assume was a resident, are “genetically incapable of organizing anything”.

Think of that, for a second. This is the nation of Cervantes and Javier Marias; from which Columbus set sail with maps devised in Spain; which colonized and enriched itself by taking over an entire continent and meso-continent; which was devoting itself to art and science and culture in the 16th century, when most of the English were still shitting in the street. (Now there I go, falling into the same trap, it must be a genetic disposition.) Yet, and I imagine this theory of eloquence has a starting point, this must be all down to a freak storm which destroyed the Armada and allowed the British to believe they were God’s chosen people. And the same pap is still spouted today, quite seriously, by someone who sounded reasonably articulate. I imagine how a 21st century equivalent of the Costa del Sol Inside Out would say it.

“Laughingly one could say that the Spanish may have improved during their sojourn in the European Union, but it has not led to any consistent improvement in their organizational skills or time keeping.”


You know what, I’m already pissed off at myself for not intervening into the other person’s conversation and saying how unacceptable it was. But there again, who am I to be anyone’s moral compass? I am still incapable of many things myself and, as Mrs. Ottawacker says with quiet regularity, could do with a kick up the arse myself. “Just like Bishop Brennan,” says Ottawacker Jr.

The ultimate irony of all this is that this contempt for otherness is what will destroy the UK and those that perpetuate this sort of stupidity. Scottish independence, Irish unity, English financial ruin – maybe even the Welsh will be forced to act. And it is all so avoidable. Because really, it is all down to common sense. How can any human being be better or worse than any other because of the place in which they were born?