LeftLion print ed. #14 - British Citizenship
2009-08-04

Rob Cutforth is now a British citizen, which now completely knackers up the title of his column, the selfish get

Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves! Dum dum something something hey gabba hey! Pip pip, tally ho, cor blimey, anorak, pass the spotted dick. Yes, it’s true, I am now a half-Brit. It’s a weird feeling to become a citizen of this country… erm, collection of states… kingdom… uh, whatever it is.

Maybe us half-Brits aren’t British enough to know exactly what "Great Britain" is. Maybe it becomes clearer after a couple pints of Landlord, a sausage roll and a Glasgow kiss. This certainly couldn’t be less helpful than the citizenship test. Don’t get me wrong, it has some great questions, but surely a question or two on what Great Britain actually is might be as important as the significance of April Fools Day or the make-up of a Christmas pudding.

I quickly learned that being a half-Brit has its own unique challenges. I had unintentionally sentenced myself to a life of inner conflict. I may have been a dirty, no-good foreigner before my citizenship ceremony, but at least I had known where I stood. I ripped into everything British without an ounce of guilt.

It’s all changed now; as a half-Brit, I didn’t know what to think anymore. Bloody foreigners, stealing our jobs… Oh wait, that’s me. Football is the greatest sport there is - If it weren’t played by the biggest bunch of blouse-wearing pansies on the planet. Walking through farmers' fields is trespassing… no it isn’t, it’s my God-given right! Chas and Dave are talentless dicks! No, they’re simply misunderstood! Morris dancing is not an outlet for old, repressed gay men, it’s perfectly rational! Puns are funny! Marmite tastes good! THE BEST BRITISH BEACHES ARE IN ALBERTA!

Like everyone’s favourite schizo comic book hero, Batman, I confronted my duality head-on. I got in touch with my new-found Britishness by venturing out amongst the British public on St George’s (AKA "It’s OK To Be Racist") Day. I had barely stepped off the bus when I overheard a bunch of yobs in England shirts dissing Canadian geese. Not because the birds are horrible hissing guano-machines (which they are) but because they’re foreign. Exact quote: "Fooking Canadian geese, why don’t they fook off back home?" The Canadian in me was hurt. The Brit in me peed himself laughing. How many different races of people did they have to go through before they got to hating foreign geese?

The wild-eyed Canadian in me told me to punch his ignorant limey lights out, but the sensible Brit in me (who sounds just like Brian Blessed) said, "No no, dear boy. Confrontation with his type will end poorly. Why lower yourself to his level? It’s only a bloody goose after all". I figured, being that it was St George’s Day (and that the guy was massive), I would listen to Brian.

I’d had a particularly bad month with the English public at large. In addition to my new goose-bashing friends, I’d been on the business end of a couple bouts of Limey-shouting and some chav bastard had stolen my bike. I’d even had a "Why don’t you fook off back home?" myself. I hadn’t had one of those in ages. Needless to say, I wasn’t feeling particularly British; in fact, I was pretty disinterested with the country as a whole.

It was with this attitude that I attended my citizenship ceremony. I slouched, I looked at my watch and I didn’t sing the anthem. I took the mick out of the other immigrants from Africa, India and China who were dressed in their Sunday best. People who stood and sung the anthem proudly, who immortalised every second by snapping pictures like meth-addicted paparazzi following Madonna’s latest Malawian babynapping escapade. People who were positively beside themselves with joy. The idiots. What are they so excited about? It’s only England, I thought to myself. It won’t be long until they get their very own "Why don’t you fook off back home?"

This month I was really going to let you people have it. I was going to rant about how crap this country is in my column and I was going to go on the Nottingham Evening Post website and give you people a piece of my mind directly. I say directly, what I mean is behind the relative safety of my computer, I am a geek after all and about as hard as an overboiled macaroni.

Before I wrote anything on the NEP site, I wanted to do some research so I lurked for awhile to see what people were saying on the site.

Quite frankly, it lived up to my expectations. My favourite comments included ones blaming the Hillsborough disaster on the Scousers, and pretty much every crime committed in the city on immigrants. That latest stream of racist cack coupled with my recent experiences had brought me to the conclusion that the average Nottinghamian was nothing more than a witless, foreigner-hating chav who made even the most backwoods Alabaman hick look liberal. I’d had enough.

In an article about a woman who was attacked on the tram (an article that didn’t mention the nationality or race of the perp at all), a dude called "Dave" wrote: "If Labour had not of opened our borders to the world's criminals and misfits, and encouraged them to swamp us, most of the attacks would never have happened, including the one above." To which I replied: "I think Britain would be better off if we shipped 90% of the Brits out and replaced them all with Poles." I expected a number of racist replies and had intended on outing them all in the very column you’re reading.

What I got was a major smackdown by a guy called "Macca" and a number of other posters who pointed out how offensive my post was, as well as a number of posts slating Dave and a bunch more expressing their frustration that many of the threads ended up in some kind of immigrant bashing. In fact, as I went back to the other comments on the site I’d read earlier, I noticed that for every racist chucklehead that spouted ignorant shite on the site, there were ten people who condemned him.

After about the twentieth comment chastising me, I explained that I was being facetious, I apologised and reminded them that I couldn’t be racist against Brits as I was in fact British myself. It might sound silly saying that it took a forum on a Nottingham news website to give me my first feeling of pride at being a half-Brit, but it’s true. It reminded me of the good things about the people in this country; like the self deprecating question I always get when I meet a new Nottinghamian, "You’re from Canada? What the hell are you doing here?!" or the good natured raggings or the simple fact that despite the whinging about this city and this country I do in this column, you still read it. God bless ya.

It’s easy to forget how good the people here can be because (like any place) the assholes are always loudest. I felt like a jerk for ripping into my fellow half-Brits in the citizenship ceremony, they had the right idea. I should’ve been grinning like an idiot and snapping photos myself.