Yet another complaint

[Luddite]

Yes, Aart, but you have to try really hard to be a foreigner in your own country.  

Not in England mate.  And until the coming of the railways, 'e be a furriner' applied to pretty much anyone not from your village.

There is the famous tale of a traveller in the 1700s heading up the Thames from London who stopped at a local quay about 10 miles outside the city to find some food.  Upon asking a local woman where he could buy some eggs she replied, 'i'm sorry sir, i don't speak French'.  So many of those local languages have been lost...

As an expatriate 'Ampshurrman' living in the goodly north eastern County of Durham, i only have another decade or so of residency to be eligible to apply for my passport and citizenship.  Many of the folk (Gerodies, Makems, Monker Hangers, Pitmatics) I work with stand ready to kick me south of the Tees the moment i do anything 'foreign'...

As to the southern image of the north, i agree and i always assumed that everywhere north of the Thames was a windswept moor populated by cloth-capped, whippet owning, pigeon fancying savages covered in coal dust and speaking funny.  Oxford was the other side of the world so going north of that was off the map...  

Every trip i now take returning to the south makes me realise that it's the south that is populated by savages.  Miserable, ignorant, grumpy unpleasant savages (cheer up for crying out loud!).  
I shall likely remain a southerner until i lie in the ground, but i wish my folk had retained the sheer decency of the north...

Consider this last fact:

America is a nation of 200,000,000 people founded by folk drawn from every part of the world, and they have fewer accents, dialects, and languages than the 60,000,000 wonderfully squabbling people on the whole British Isles...


PS:  I'd point out that London has very little to do with England, Wales, Cornwall, Scotland, Ireland (either bit), Mercia (check it out, it has its own movement http://www.independentmercia.org/), or Britain.  A wall around the M25 would be most useful to keep the troublesome, Hellish nation of London seperate from the rest of us.  


EDIT:

Personally I LOVE all the different accents we've got in the British Isles....Apart from ONE...And I'm not going to insult anyone by letting you know what it is !!

It's Scouse isn't it?

THE WORST accent on the planet.  No exceptions.

And i married one, albeit tempered with the 'Army brat' accent.  Gawd luv 'er.

Of course the best accent is my own...

[Aart Brouwer]

PS:  I'd point out that London has very little to do with England, Wales, Cornwall, Scotland, IReland (either bit), Mercia, or Britain.  A wall around the M25 would be most useful to keep the troublesome, Hellish nation of London seperate from the rest of us.   

I'm sure most Americans feel that way about Noo Yok, most Dutchmen about Amsterdam, most Germans about Berlin. Three-quarters of France hates Paris with a vengeance, &cetera.

Cheers,
Aart

[Orcs]

Three-quarters of France hates Paris with a vengeance, Cheers,
Aart

Only three-quarters of France hate Paris ! - I thought apart from the Parisians they all did.   Mind you the Germans like Paris - Thay keep trying to live there

[Luddite]

To be fair, by that measure, there's evidently a lot of places the Germans like.   

Two cracks at the world title...nice try Berlin, etc...

[Aart Brouwer]

Only three-quarters of France hate Paris ! - I thought apart from the Parisians they all did.   Mind you the Germans like Paris - Thay keep trying to live there

My dear boy, quite a few Frenchmen pretend to be Parisians, even if only 10% are the real thing. 

Cheers,
Aart