What in Britain really is British?

There has been a lot of debate on this subject over recent years and it would seem that the British public is being consistently conned into believing that many things we take for granted are British in origin and are taking a possibly racist stance against these things.

Take one of my favourite gripe - our long-winded conversion to the Metric system. Ok, so the metre was invented by the French, but it was designed to end trade problems between different regions where local weights and measures which often differed from town to town were used. The fact that the US and UK who are still non-metric use different variants of the old "Imperial" systems just goes to show how far behind we are. But what's the reason for not changing? One excuse is it's not British. Of course it's not. Nor is Imperial... it is something which evolved from measuring systems imposed on us by the Romans!

We all consider the chip shop to be a British tradition, but the chip wouldn't exist if the humble spud hadn't been brought back across the Atlantic from South America. That said, many Brits are now just as likely to grab a curry or a kebab after a night out at the pub, neither of which are exactly British but both have become a British institution in recent years. I'm betting that many of the people who eat these foods were the very same ones complaining about the number of Asian-owned corner shops in recent years - but the very fact that these corner shops, along with their culinary cousins, are prepared to work harder and stay open longer hours is why their "British" equivalents have been falling by the wayside.

And what about the car? Really it's as American as you can get. I know I grew up believing Ford and Vauxhall to be British companies and many still consider them British cars, but I'm sure that the head offices of Ford and General Motors in Detroit would disagree with you... unless of course it helps them sell more cars. And what about all those other brand names we grew up with? Heinz, Colgate, Kellogs... all very American. I clearly remember the adverts on TV for Milky Bar which until recently pronounced the brand name "ness-L's" rather than the correct Swiss pronounciation "ness-lay".

Even the English language isn't really British. Up until about 1000 years ago the language spoken in Britain was very Germanic/Nordic having been influenced by invasions from that part of the world along with influences from Latin (the Romans). Then when William the Conquerer came over in 1066 French became the "official" language of government and over hundreds of years since they have all merged to make the English we know today.

Our royal family isn't exactly British either. As mentioned above it became French in 1066 and since then it has been effected by marriages to other European royal families. The name Windsor only came about because they felt it prudent to change their name during the wars of the early 20th century because their name was actually German!

And our national religion isn't really British. Chritianity was actually a cult-offshoot of the Jewish religion which was later used by the Romans to their advantage, imposing it on all of the countries they still had influence in in an attempt to retain their power. Through the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church this continues today and from it's seat of power in the Vatican City in the heart of Rome it still tries to influence the day-to-day lives of millions of people across the world. One British monarch did break links from this but merely created another cult which we now know as the Protestant Church of England, but it's still an offshoot of a religion founded in the same place as the Muslim faith!

So, come on Britain. Stop being so insular. Yes, we're British, but we're also Europeans... in ancestry, language and culture. We're part of a world which is modernising, learning to live and work alongside each-other and strive for peace. For pitty's sake stop blowing off steam about all those foreigners taking our jobs and trying to take over our country, we're all the same!