Fed up with Britishness

I've just spent a week in Las Vegas. Probably not the best place in the world to gain a perspective on what's normal and what's not, but I've always found that boarding the flight home - especially if it happens to be a British-based airline - can bring what it means to be British into sharp focus.

Let me pause for a moment and clarify something. I was born and raised in Britain and would like to be proud to be British, but I find myself to be rare in my home country in that I am open-minded and willing to embrace new ideas and ways of thinking, even if they don't originate in my home country. I would like to be proud to be British but having travelled the world this is becoming harder by the hour.

Let me explain... I was born in the late 1960's and grew up seeing a country that seemed willing to embrace the world around it. In the 70's we joined what was then known as the Common Market - now the European Union. The British Empire was finally a thing of the past and in an attempt to join the world community Britain lead it's commonwealth partners in becoming one of the last parts of the world to adopt decimalised currency and the metric system. So, what went wrong?

Well, perhaps it's not such as big a mystery as it seems. If you look back on the last 80 odd years you see a Britain that emerges from two world wars... prior to this our country was a major world power with a large empire. The country was in a financial mess and had to be propped up by the USA, the empire was collapsing around our ears, but to the British people we had stood up against tyranny and had won the day. So rationing continued for many years, things did get better but the cold war didn't help. By the 60's a new generation of adults was leaving school, a generation who had not seen real war, and by the 70's many could see the real benefits of integrating trade with other countries and to do this we had to standardise. The two biggest barriers were our archaic monetary and measurement systems, both of which were difficult to understand and didn't translate well into the base-10 systems used by the rest of the world. Changing our money to decimal was quite easy and, although there were many who objected, happened quite quickly. Although older people still refer to the shilling and the bob very few people still talk of "old money" and you certainly would not see shops displaying prices in Pounds, Shillings and Pence. Metrication is another issue altogether though and although all of what used to be the British Empire made a rapid change to metric, wether it was due to political or economic issues, the process got stalled in the mid 1970's and never regained it's critical mass.

To similar extents the same thing happened in the USA and Canada. The Canadians faltered for one simple reason, the USA. That said, it's interesting to note that while in the UK (considered to be a Metric country by most) it is illegal to put up road signs showing kilometeres or to sell beer in litres, in the USA it is not! But why did this happen to us? It's quite simple really... the people of Britain still live in a fantasy world where they believe they are better than everybody else. Metric is held back in Britain because it's not a British invention and because it is being forced on us by foreigners! This is not actually true but for the British public weaned on a diet of tabloid jingoism it may as well be because although Britain started going metric in the 1960's it's clear to every Sun and Daily Mail reader in the nation that we're going metric because the EU told us to, although we weren't even accepted for membership until the 1970's!

This is only the tip of the iceberg however. There are many things that this country could do to benefit it's people. Open borders like those in other EU countries would give vast benefits to the people as it would make travel cheaper, the officers currently checking our passports and searching our car boots for "illegal" alcohol and tobacco could be freed up to patrol our borders looking for drug smugglers - and could even join a Europe-wide customs force which could do the same thing across the whole of the EU, possibly at a much lower cost to the taxpayer!

Then there's the single currency... a great boon to people in the countries who use it as it's now so easy to buy goods in another country without having to pay the bank their cut every time. Don't believe what M&S tell you that you don't pay comission when you buy your Euros for your booze cruise or your week away in the Costa del Sunny, they make up for it by varying the exchange rate a little in their favour. The banks, of course, have the money to support the anti-Euro cause, as have the tabloid owners who themselves have their money in off shore accounts which would be hit hard if the UK joined the Euro - the Jersey and Isle of Man pounds would have to float free or come under strict tax regiems and the loss to these people would be enourmous!

Oh... and there's the added woe that open borders, a single currency and a single system of measurement would allow the people of Britain to more easilly comparison shop and the profiteering of many businesses and over-taxation of fuel would become all the more obvious.

But although these things would hurt business and government in the short term, in the longer term the British public would benefit. Lower taxation, fewer bank charges and lower consumer prices would lead to a better standard of living, putting more money in the pockets of the public who would have greater spending power which in turn would boost retail and industry.

Ok, so the EU has it's problems... but what large organisation doesn't? Sitting on the fence waving the veto at everything does nothing though, nor do the cries of "Get out now" from the Europhobes... the world is shrinking, advances in communication have created a world where it's as easy to speak to somebody in China as it is in London or Manchester and unlike the days of Empire a long weekend shopping in New York is just as easy as a weekend shopping at the Metro Centre in Newcastle or a booze run to Calais. If Britain is to come out as a world leader in the future it has to join the rest of the world and embrace it's ideas, not sit around singing "Rule Britania" and running away from the hard decsions.

Just remember that while Ford and GM still have to put a mph speedometer in your car it is costing you money. When you can't compare the price of apples in Tesco with those at the market it's costing you money. Wether you use cash or your debit card to buy your lunch in that nice restaurant in Paris or Rome or refueling your car in Belgium or Germany it's costing you money. I could go on...

So... come on folks. Let's hear cries for sanity in the UK. Open the borders with our EU partners (something we did with Scotland, Wales and Ireland long ago with no ill effects), join the single currency that we invented (the ECU was John Major's idea), complete the switch to metric (which incidentally was based on an idea from a man from Northamptonshire), and lets join up fully to the EU and stop listening to the doom mongers who believe the nation will collapse.

I want to be proud to be British and on the day that this nation admits collectively that sometimes others have good ideas and that we can use them to our benefit then I will be truly proud!