Mailwatch(ed) Forum

I love discovering history and people of my own locality, country and anywhere. But St George’s Day is so dull and naff, Michael Portillo’s railway journeys are a more interesting and informative celebration of England.

Yes, and all this spitfire and lions crap just underlines that. It's just so dull, so boringly macho, so devoid of anything resembling fun or humour.

My late dad used to say that the reason WW2 and the 1966 world cup final were so stuck in the English psyche was because they were the last times you could point to something and say, without qualification, that yes, "we" did a good. So it became an all-purpose shut-down. "England isn't what it used to be... - "Yeah but we won the war". "Germany's economy is outpacing ours..." - "Yeah but two world wars and one world cup".

Some of you may remember that during the lockdowns, there were people arrested for travelling outside danger areas to visit pubs in the less restricted locales. Also, when restrictions were lifted wholesale, there was a sudden influx of people to their local boozers.

The photos in the press were most amusing. The pubs weren't convivial community hubs full of all sorts rubbing shoulders while mein host poured pint after pint of foaming nut-brown ale. Nor were they energetic pits of hedonism where attractive young people washed down exotic drinks while dancing to hot Latin beats. No, they were grim looking boozers full of grim looking men, nursing their pints, alone. Men who you just knew would rather be down the pub than putting up with her indoors nagging and doing their head in. Men to whom phrases such as "Shut up, I'm trying to watch this", or "I wanna speak to a man" came naturally. Dullards.

And you can see it in these AI images - territorial, aggressive, and ruining it for everyone else. Would you actually want to be in that pub?

The usual suspects, who define themselves and their crowd by their common hatreds.