http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7391776.stm

Great minds and all that.

Alike and pretty much the same time! Must be twins, separated at birth ;-)

Ho-hum. Someone's got a book to sell. Plus ça change.

>>The latest edition of the Rough Guide says no other country is as "insular, self-important and irritating".<<

England is so insular, they even have not realized that World War II is over. (Some recent posts in this thread suggest this:
http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=35129365)

Of course we're bloody insular - we live on a sodding island!

The whining is beginning to make that island in "Castwaway" seem rather inviting.

Also hating the Germans is just what we do. Like queueing and grumbling.

They killed my dad's budgie you know.

Every year at the launch of the new Rough Guide and Lonely Planet Guide to the UK there's a story like this. The publishers know quite well that there's nothing that the British - especially the English - like more than beating themselves up, and so every new guidebook includes quite a few insulting comments like these. Hey presto - instant publicity! You can't buy that kind of advertising.

What i think is intertesting is that they have english writers for the English book. Surely they should get some foreign coves to do it - after all that's who the book is aimed at - foreign coves.

Footie not soccer'

The nation's favourite pastime also takes something of a kicking.

"Football, footie, call it what you will (no English fan ever says 'soccer')", the Premier League is overpriced and with players "more famous than pop stars".

The guide suggests heading to an "unfashionable provincial" club for the "real experience".

"Macclesfield Town against Rochdale on a wet Tuesday night in February - that's a proper football match," it enthuses.

<<< England is so insular, they even have not realized that World War II is over >>>

as opposed to the folk who constantly say "if it wasn't for us you'd all be speaking German".

To which one can only reply "If it wasn't for us you'd all be speaking French".

Quoi?

I believe that in 17-something the US senate took a vote on whether to have English or German as the first language of the young USA, and English won by one vote. No doubt an expert will fill in the details.

Just think, if it had gone the other way the US wouldn't have turned up 2 years late, they wouldn't have turned up at all.

The UK only finished paying the USA last year for all the weapons generously 'loaned' so nobody should be surprised if we sometimes think WW2 isn't over.

Apparently the German vote thing is a myth.

Patrick is talking about the French and Indian war, which appears to me omitted from the American educational curriculum.

1752-1763, part of the Second Hundred Years war, the British effectively kicked the French out of North America, notably securing the British colonies later to be come the United Soviet of America.

Had the French won, North America would have become a French Colony, and the French wouldn't have come to your aid to liberate you from the British.

It was the financing of this war that created all fuss over taxes leading to the Revolution.

Ingrates.

Tu piges?

"Patrick is talking about the French and Indian war, which appears to me omitted from the American educational curriculum."

Not in my day, it wasn't! (She cackles, thumping her cane on the floor and whacking a teenager with her ear trumpet.)

Oh all right then, the English-German thing is a myth. Says so on google so it must be true.

But I shall perpetuate it just to demonstrate how irritating the English are.

Incidentally, why does the guide refer to England only and not the British Isles? I know some very irritating Scots, Welsh and Irish.

Why isn't travelme participating in this thread?

Is stfc anything to do with Swindon - just curious.

One of our collective hobbies is our real or imagined hatred of the French and Germans. It's what we do -perhaps in a less sincere way than America now appears to hate all things Islamic and before that Russian.