Is britain normal?
Lately I feel I’m the only British person left on this site. Has everyone else in Britain become normal? Tell me please, how British are you?
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I describe myself as American by birth, but British by choice.
I know there are a lot of British-born people who would say that makes me not _really_ British. My response to them would be that they're only British purely by chance. I'd also say that after living in the UK since the late 1970s, I've been here a longer than a lot of people who were born in Britain.
For many years, I didn't really pay a whole lot of attention to what was going on in the States, but I have to admit that I've become unhealthily obsessed with what's been going on in the country of my birth over the last four years. All of that just makes me certain that becoming a British citizen was one of the best choices I've ever made.
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I'm half-British, and I've never been in Britain. My Britishness is all over Britain: England, Scotland and Wales. :) And yes I'm a British person who's normal. And yes Britain is normal, most British people act the same as everyone else in their main city in Britain, and British people vary depending on what part of England, Scotland or Wales they're from. A Londoner doesn't act or look exactly like a northern Englander, and a Lowland Scot doesn't act or look exactly like a highlander. British people are tribal, English people belong in English tribes, Scottish people belong in Scottish clans, I think Welsh people are all the same.
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We are kindred spirits, I failed my a levels and only got into uni because I phoned one in clearing and made the admissions guy laugh on the phone.
Uni was such an anti-climax after 2 years of hype, it was full of international students who barely spoke English and nerds who looked like they were gonna shit themselves if I tried talking to them. I was clearing out my room over Christmas and getting rid of old Knick knacks, papers and photos and only found one photo from uni worth keeping. It was a big group photo from an end of year trip to the Peak District and I haven’t spoken to anyone else in it in 3 years.
Basically formal eduction is bollocks.
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Social changes, economic forces and improvements in transportation mean that there's been a fair amount of genetic mixing in the UK over the last century. But when researchers have done DNA testing of people whose ancestors were all born within 80 miles of each other in the late 1800s, they found very distinct clusters of genetic markers.
So, in genetic terms, the Scotland of your ancestors was distinct from the rest of the UK. Politically, of course, Scotland has been part of the UK since 1707, but how Scots define themselves has been a matter of debate for many, many years. I'm certain there won't be many people born in raised in Scotland who would call themselves English. I suspect that much less than half of those living in Scotland would primarily identify as British, and the majority would say they're Scots first, British second and Europeans third.
British genetic patterns would seem very weird to Americans, where just about everybody has recent ancestors who lived somewhere else.
I live in the southwest corner of Wales, and the county is all of 25 miles from north to south, and 30 miles from east to west. The researchers found that the genes of those from the northern side differed from those in the southern part.
That can be directly attributed to the Normans conquering this corner of Wales nearly a thousand years ago. They established the precursor of English as the local language in the southern part, while most of those in the northern part of the county remained Welsh-speakers. This language barrier reduced marriage between those from the two sides of an invisible line running across the county, and the effects of that can still be seen today.
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