Britain for the British?

Bear with me while i paint a picture, though though imcomplete, of Britain's place in the world. Now this may seem like alot of information i'm about to throw at you, but don't worry if you dont' take it all in, just as long as you remember there was alot, that should be fine for my purposes, and there is a purpose to all i'm going to tell you.

Alfred the great, 8th son of the previous king, at one point, ruled only a small area in the middle of a swamp, before he unified a large chunk of this island to become the first king of England, his grandson going on to become the first king of the British.

Ahh, Britain, Proud Britain, Great Britain, Formerly heading the British Empire. At it's height it was the largest in history with with Britain at the top, heading up a population of around 460million people, and a aquarter of the earths total land mass. We achieved this, as can be seen in Disney movies, by planting a flag and claiming the land, becuase the locals hadn't done so yet. There may have been a few wars or something, but that's just being picky.

aaanyway, stuff happened, america went all angsty teenager and left home, japan nabbed the south eastern asian colonies, and after World War2 we slowly started giving back independance to all these countries, ending with the return of HongKong to china in 1997.

What are we left from all this? Well, the Common wealth of Nations, not that we techincaly head it or anything of course.

The commonwealth of nations, formerly the commonwealth, formerly the british commonwealth is an organisation of 54 independant states, all but 2 of whom were formerly a part of the british empire.

antigua and barbuda
australia
bahamas
bangladesh
barbados
belize
botswana
brunei
cameroon
canada
cyprus
dominica
gambia
ghana
grenada
guyana
india
jamaica
kenya
kiribati
lesotho
malawi
malaysia
maldives
malta
mauritius
mozambique
nambia
nauru
new zealand
nigeria
pakistan
papua new guinea
rwanda
saint kitts and nevis
saint lucia
saint vincent and the grenadines
samoa
seychelles
sierra leone
singapore
solomon islands
south africa
dri lanka
swaziland
tanzania
tongo
trinidad and tobago
tuvalu
uganda
vanuatu
zambia
united kingdom

I suppose you could call it The British Empire 2.3, in fact I shall, for the rest of this blog.
Being that they are part of The British Empire (2.3), i'm sure all any and all brits reading this knows something about most of them besides whether to pack warm clothes when traveling there.

No? I thought not.

The Queen, our queen, Elizabeth II, queen of Great Britain, is the head of the commonwealth.

She is also the monarch of 16 of the members of The British Empire 2.3, this group collectivly being informally known as the commonwealth realms.

These countries are:
Antigua and Barbuda
Australia
The Bahamas
Barbados
Belize
Canada
Grenada
Jamaica
New Zealand
Papua New Guinea
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Solomon Islands
Tuvalu
United Kingdom

Obviously this group must have an even closer relationship to the UK, them being part of The British Empire 2.3 AND having the same monarch.

Hmmm...


Thing is, you ask someone on the street to name anyone in the commonwealth of nations, who is under 30, say, you'll probably get no more than

australia
canada
jamaica
new zealand

For the most part at least, and that's after you've had to explain what the commonwealth of nations actually is, and probably come right down to referring to them as the former colonies

And does the average brit know anything about THESE countries? You'll probably get something about the Kiwi's being sheep shaggers, the australians being criminals and canada being cold.

Now i come to the point of this Blog. See i didn't forget about it, i just had to get all that out of the way first.


Alot of people go on about Britain for the British, and being proud to be British, and mixing these ideas in with thinly vielved ignorance and racism to come out with something that has passon,it really does have passion, but there is very little substance, becuase even at what could, in these people's eyes, be seen as it's best, it's Greatest, it's most powerful, Britain stretched across the globe, encompassing people from more nations than i could even FIT in a list.
From it's humble begginings being pulled together from an island in a swamp to first form England around 1200 years ago and within 2 generations having the kings of Scotland and Ireland recognising our king as their...Overlord, for want of a better word, We've come all this way, contributed to and altered the world on a massive scale, through 'inclusion' of others.

Dispite the fact that most of it came through conquest, it just seems that as a country we are all ABOUT the mixing of cultures and assimilating them into our own, and if those people who say they want Britain for the British, really want to make england in the way they think it shoudl be, maybe we should find them a small island in a marsh somewhere in the west country and let them start again.