I live a perfectly happy and comfortable life in Blair's Britain, but I can't work up much affection for the culture we've created for ourselves: it's too cynical, too knowing, too ironic, too empty of real value and meaning.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
What I like about Britain is that I can live a normal life here.
We don't need to chase a nostalgic rendering of Britain as it never was and never can be: we need instead an understanding of who we really are and what a happy, prosperous, just nation might look like.
It would be a sad day if we British stopped being cynical, but you sometimes wonder whether we overdo it.
The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy; they want to be right.
Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true.
I could give you a long list of things I like about Britain, but essentially what it comes down to is that I feel about Britain the same way I feel about my wife. I'm crazy about my wife - we just kind of suit each other. I wouldn't say that she's the most fantastic human being that's ever lived, but she is for me.
I was brought up in Britain, and I'm very proud of my Britishness and my culture.
You're always more critical of your own country. People will talk about stuff in Britain, and I'll go: 'Aw, it's not that bad,' but at home, it's different. It's inside you.
I think people in Great Britain are a bit jaded sometimes.
Although I've been living in the British Virgin Islands for some time now, I have never stopped caring passionately about the U.K. and its great people.