@Nightlystroll
I don't get this thread. When Shipman killed all those people, Fred and Rose West murdered those young women, the truth behind the Hillsborough disaster was revealed - were you embarrassed to be English? Why allow a small bunch of thugs to make you feel ashamed of our beautiful country. On the contrary, you should be proud of how English people have pushed back against the behaviour of an abhorrent few.
I think there's a distinction, but the lines are blurry...
In the case of Shipman or Fred and Rose, we can fairly easily put these down to extreme outliers in terms of human behaviour. They aren't unique, but per capita, they are so rare, we can reasonably assume them to be individual cases.
In terms of patterns in groups (such as football hooliganism, or excessive drinking, drug taking, sexual trends etc), then we can look at other populations and see some similar patterns of behaviour - so we know it's not unique to England, but at the same time, we can also look to our culture (which may also be shared with those other populations) and question what it is that makes a significant number of people behave the way they do.
Germany has hooligans, drug issues, gambling problems... as does, Sweden, or France, or Greece etc. So we know there is commonality or a 'normalness' about such behaviours, but what we do not fully understand is what drives that behaviour, and if we, in England might have specific issues that might cause MORE hooliganism, or MORE alcoholism etc.
People shoot each other the world over, but some countries have a significantly greater problem than others. It's a shared problem, but the degree of it differs.
The USA might have a fairly high gun crime rate compared with (say) Canada, but it might be lesser than that of South Africa.
It is not enough to say 'other countries have the problem too'. Of course that's true. But we have to look to our own country and say 'but how can we reduce OUR problem with it?'. We might never eliminate it, but I'm sure we can increase, or decrease it depending on how well we seek to understand and manage it.
Racism is a world wide issue.
Racism exists in all cultures, across sexes, across religions and ages.
There is very little to be gained from 'whataboutery', but there is so much to be gained from trying to improve our immediate neighbourhood. It's starts with me, then my friends, then my neighbourhood, then my region and country... and hopefully, someone in France, and Italy, and Sweden are doing the same thing.