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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To feel really annoyed and offended when someone insults my country

65 replies

1a2b3c4d · 30/11/2015 17:52

I have an acquaintance who has lived in my country since childhood, yet constantly complains about how it is so very backward, there's nothing to do, the people are boring, our accent is horrible, etc. She also likes complaining about the majority religion and how we are all so stupid to follow our faith and so on.

I'm sorry, but if you are going to mouth off the whole way through uni and then on Facebook as well, why don't you just go back to England? Thought so... you don't want to leave your nice tax-payer funded job and luxury house. Shut up then.

Not all 100% wrong, but I've lived all over the world and my home country has so many good things about it. It just feels like a personal slight sometimes.

Rant over.

P.S. It's not in N.Am.

OP posts:

noclueses · 01/12/2015 01:23

you either love a country or you don't (with all of its faults) - and it's not to do with whether you were born there or not. Thankfully we have a choice where to live nowadays, and to CHOOSE where is our real home as opposed to having no choice of where we are born.
So to sum up if we criticise something about the country we love and choose to live in - it's fair play as then it's home, but not ok to criticise a country to locals if we don't like it/don't know it well, as that's rude.

Atenco · 01/12/2015 01:27

I'm an ex-Pat in Mexico, but I really hate it when foreigners start criticising Mexicans. I have a friend whom I otherwise love but he talks about a population of over 110 million people as if they all came out of the same defective mould. He criticises Mexican plumbers for example, when I have had much better luck with Mexican plumbers than I ever did back where we came from. I myself have had no trouble here complaining about the government, probably be more tricky if I tried to defend it.

noclueses · 01/12/2015 01:28

Kaluza - mice indoors? really? I'm sure you find mice indoors in any village around the world at times, but the vast majority wouldn't tolerate them in the UK, and you wouldn;t see them in cities, esp in flats occupied by functional people (i.e. grown ups who can look after themselves to a civilised standard generally, i.e. the vast majority).

IrishDad79 · 01/12/2015 03:11

KaluzaKlein; "carpets indoors"

Eh, where the fuck else are you supposed to have them, the front lawn?

FayKorgasm · 01/12/2015 03:27

Hmm I hope it's not Ireland she's slagging off or she'll be cruising for a bruising.
I like England but I don't love it like I do Ireland. It has many faults as does every other country but I keep thme to myself.

FarticCircle · 01/12/2015 03:29

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

foragogo · 01/12/2015 03:29

Im with him on the carpets in bathrooms though. That was very stupid and backwards of us.

TheDowagerCuntess · 01/12/2015 04:08

Complaining about the 'majority religion' is a bit of a clue!!

When I lived in the UK and was around my fellow countrymen/women slagging it off, I just stood there cringing, at least if there were Brits present. It's just so unnecessary. Nobody is impressed by it, it's a total conversation killer, so why do it?

ottothedog · 01/12/2015 04:22

So at what point does a person become 'a local' rather than 'a foreigner'? This place does sound quite parochial if living there since childhood still makes you 'a foreigner'. Poor woman - no wonder she's not happy. She lives somewhere since childhood but is still expected to treat the place as somewhere 'not belonging to her'

EchoOfADistantTide · 01/12/2015 04:38

I prefer my host country to my home country (UK) Sorry!

I don't slag the UK off though. I leave that to my Dad who's lived there his entire life and still does today

noclueses · 01/12/2015 11:57

there is nothing wrong with that Echo! we don't choose where we are born so why the heck are we obliged to love out country of birth/childhood!

I'm opposite to you, I love the UK but don't love my original country even though there is some fondness, the vibe of it and mentality was all wrong for me personally so I had moved 24 yrs ago when young. I like other countries for visits, but it's only the UK I see as my true home. It doesn't mean I can't be critical but it's the same as not liking some habits of a person you love (but would never swap them anyway). I do hate it when I hear people seriously slagging the UK, be it foreigners or some Brits - just move if it's the wrong place for you, people who love it don't want to hear it!

noclueses · 01/12/2015 11:59

I mean i'm the same as you Echo really - willingly moving from my original country, obv just meant we aer opposite in liking the UK. Good thing we can swap like that!

gabsdot · 01/12/2015 12:09

I live in Ireland and I'm guessing the OP does too. It's a great little country :)

I know what you mean though. I have a friend who often moans about living here. She is American and I know she's homesick but still. The worst was when she complained about the maternity hospital and how when she had her other baby in the US she got loads of free stuff whereas in Ireland she got nothing and had to provide everything for the new baby.
She had arrived in Ireland 7 months pregnant and had then had all her pre and post natal care completely free on the Irish taxpayers dime. She told me that if they had stayed in the US the medical bills for having the baby would have been 15K because they had no insurance.
I pointed this out to her and that shit her up for a while.
No where is perfect but I do think for some people the grass is always greener.

claraschu · 01/12/2015 12:23

I always complained about my country (USA) until I moved here. Now I stand up for it, because people are so absurdly and ignorantly prejudiced against it.

I think comments about how things are different/ not a problem/ approached from another perspective, etc in someone's country of origin are interesting. Maybe it is seen as me slagging off the UK when I talk about the diversity and flexibility of American schools, health food stores, and summer camps; I just think it is bizarre that lots of people can't conceive of a different way of doing things from the one they grew up with.

hefzi · 01/12/2015 12:39

I don't think the issue is the slagging off per se- everyone's allowed a moan, ffs - but (from the OP's post) it's more like the constant slagging off.

Whiney and negative people are a pita, no matter what they are having a whinge about: but inevitably, when it's about something personal to you (say, your country) it pisses you off more.

I wouldn't be friends with someone British who constantly whined on about how shit things were in Britain either - firstly, because negative fuckers wear me out, and secondly, there are a hell of a lot worse places to live: I feel very lucky to be British and enjoy the freedoms that living in the UK affords me.

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