The Greatness of Britain

Britain, as everyone knows, is a thoroughly miserable place. It was would be hard to find another collection of individuals quite so horrendously unhappy in such depressing surroundings. British people are also, as Eric Idle once pointed out, entirely mad (more so when they are not in Britain itself - I suspect being outside of their private world of squalor they lose the last remenants of sanity they might once have had). It is a combination of these two qualities - misery and lunacy - that makes Britain so Great.

Yes, Britain is Great, despite the worst drinking culure in the world (it prides itself on being the only country in the world where it's cool to be UNable to hold your drink), a useless democracy, an antiquated and deep-rooted class structure, and simultaneously the most morally strict and morally vacant society ever, ruled by the Daily Mail underbelly of humankind. Not to mention a history full of the most horrific bigotry, crass obsession with wealth and class, relentless, shameless capitalism, and repeated, thoughtless genocide and culture-destruction of the most appauling kind. Yet, Britain is Great.

When I identified misery and lunacy as the sources of this greatness, I neglected one other significant cornerstone - the weather. Only in a country of perpetual greyness could they have invented tea and post-rock. From the weather, the misery takes a grim but awesome shape, and the lunacy moves to genius. Nowhere else on earth is as conductive to interesting creativity and unprecedented depth of thought. Nowhere else have I been so inspired, nor felt the effects of inspiration so accutely. There is nothing in the world so heart-warming as seeing the poor inhabitants of these sorry isles finding such joy in such misery, and there is nothing that brings one so close to God as doing this oneself.