Quote Originally Posted by Rhyfylwyr View Post
How is it in any way relevant to talk about "Saxons, Normans, Celts etc" when talking about the the UK of 1707 onwards?

As for it being an oxymoron to call the "United Kingdom" homogenous, remember that these kingdoms were feudal creations and in that sense a bit of a blast from the past. The kingdoms of Scotland and England did not denote some sort of cultural or national divide, merely the bounds that various dynasties carved out for themselves.

Scottish nationalism originated as a sort of bourgeoisie romanticism (I'm feeling Marxist today) and has since been propagated as a result of mass Irish immigration which was a detestable assault upon the British nation.

There is one British people, one British nation, and no 'sub-nations' within it!.
I call your hand and raise it. For the record I'm half Welsh... kind of. Because there is Irish and Scottish going back a few generations. Add to that a Welsh great grandmother who was born in America... doesn't change her ethnicity, just geographic location of the touchdown.

My mum is very British, but never call her English.

Disregard the genes, look at some of the cultural differences to an atypical Englishman (which doesn't exist except in a census aggregate)... different language, geography and food are all in big enough variation to say that the average Welsh person is not the same culture as the average Englishman. That said neither is a Northern Englishman and a Southern one. There are cultures and micro cultures within Britain. I don't have to live there, I have an Eastender uncle whose rhyming slang clearly denotes that he has a different cultural heritage to someone from the same city.

British culture is a home grown multiculture. It is a combination of all those other vibrant communities.

As for failure of groups of immigrants to intergrate. Well look at the system. How well intergrated are those who have been born and bred on a council estate? Seems a failure of city planning resulting in systemic social issues.

Sydney has a few infamous equivalent areas. The ones that don't make media headlines are the areas that have government housing more thoroughly dispersed within a homeowner zone. Give kids rolemodels and they can succeed.

Some groups do come to new countries and fail to intergrate or have higher barriers. Typically those who don't move in general society become the least intergrated. Mums who stay at home and look after the kids, unemployed adults who don't mix with others and kids who go to schools of the same group without ever intergrating with mainstream kids.

I see the most important thing for schools is socialisation. Ethics and education are up to the parents.

So it comes to a shock to the insulated parents when their kids who go to school, uni and work in a multicultural society end up dating someone outside of their parents group.

Multiculturalism has it's highlights like foodcourts :) and it's lowlights like insularity. I don't want food that all tastes the same so I'm quite prepared to put up with cultural differences. A foodcourt is a laboratory of an ideal multicultural environment, the variety of foods still has to be prepared within the health and safety guidelines of the state. I also expect like a foodcourt that one can pick, choose and mix to ones content.

Back to Britain. I'm pretty sure Vindaloo's and tea don't orginate in Britain but are seen as very British.

Sometimes the best of things aren't home grown, they are home chosen.