Overheard in Paddock Wood

[poliphilo]

White haired old man in Charity Shop: "This has become an indigenous country. They're coming in from everywhere. We're becoming all mixed up. And they bring diseases. Hepatitis B. Ominous times...."

Comments

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

He's talking about the Saxons, right?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Or maybe the Normans or- coming really up to date- the Huegenots.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Sigh :o(

Sometimes I despair of humankind.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It takes a considerable effort to overcome the tribal mindset.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

It does.

One wonders how many people making such comments know anything at all about their own ancestral make-up?
It's all based on that grand old British assumption that everyone else is a foreigner.

Othering........I know it so well.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

My own very intelligent father was worried about immigrants from Mexico "taking away jobs" from all the white people in California. I have no idea why he thought the locals were being shut out of all the lawn maintenance, fry cook and janitorial jobs. So glamorous and well-paying as they are.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

At the moment we're panicking about a threatened influx of Bulgarians.

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

I don't think "indigenous" means what he thinks it does.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It doesn't :)

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

It's those darned indigenous people, building those Long Burrows and setting up stone circles everywhere!

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

This seems to be a typical insular British attitude to the Other. The fact is, we are all mixed up. The British breed itself is part Saxon, part Dane, part Celtic and all shades in between , making us ,in a not so subtle way, mongrels of the world.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's one of the things I really like about us.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Yes! At the last count, I'd traced English, Scottish, Welsh, Breton, Italian, Latvian Jewish and Romani in my own make up but I think I was still English the last time I looked! :o)

To quote Terry Pratchett: 'I earned my indigenuity, I did!'

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

a - what - country?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Imported words can be so confusing.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think the word he was reaching for was "multicultural".

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

I recently sat open-mouthed listening to a work colleague ranting about how this country wasn't great any more and it was all down to the immigrants and how she wished she'd emigrated to Australia twenty years ago.

All entirely without irony.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

People mainly don't question what they read in the papers. It's annoying. If the media did an about face and decided immigration was doing the country a power of good (which I consider to be the truth) the Great British public would follow suit.