These last few years have really started to wear me down. The indiscriminate mass-surveillance, the savaging of our public services by an obviously corrupt government, the blatent hyprocrisy of our foreign policy, the repeated and unfettered fraud of the City of London financial sector that has yet to see anyone prosecuted or any institution meaningfully punished.
I really hate this place.
Move to Greece. They can't afford surveillance.
The list could go on.
Your shame is proportional to your knowledge, the level of reprehensible action is a constant.
The UK establishment are nuts.
Australia? Hmm, wasn't there something about data retention? And maybe Western Australia trying to change the laws so protestors would have to prove that they weren't about to do something illegal when they were arrested?
New Zealand? Baaah.
Aside from lots of sheep, what's wrong with New Zealand?
"All they can do is protect you, so it's against malware or a virus. ... On your computer at home you almost certainly have Norton Antivirus...that is exactly what that is, at a much higher level."
And the good people of NZ decided they didn't mind. Because. I don't know. I give up. It's like the world is determined to make a mess of itself.
[1] http://www.3news.co.nz/tvshows/campbelllive/john-key-defends... (from 8:00 in the video)
At least we have the joys of privatized services now (I'm serious). They are an order of magnitude better than the public railway, gas and electricity infrastructure we had. Controversially perhaps, I've had much better service from the NHS since they moved to a service model.
I'm not ashamed of my identity at all.
Order of magnitude more expensive, maybe. Better? No.
No. Absolutely not. It's much better now. Orders of magnitude better. Every train was late. There were engineering works overruns every Monday and weekend service was so bad you might as well walk.
And no not more expensive. People couldn't afford the train then and regularly took the inferior busses. If you went long distance, it was coach.
Either way you were doomed to a face full of diesel fumes from a Paxman or a Leyland and spend the entire day with your nose running black snot. Incidentally this is what killed my father; he was a bus driver.
I've never been so ashamed to be British.
I accept our history, I'm not ashamed of it, it's history and I wasn't there.
However I am ashamed to be British for the things we currently do.