English people are second class citizens

[NotAnotherScarf]

Aibu To be annoyed about so many Facebook posts about celebrating st George's day being racist. No one post this for st Patrick's day, st Andrew's or st David's.... Hogmanay and burns night have parties

By celebrating being English, passing democracy to the world, Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, TV, the jet engine, the internet... railways, the industrial revolution, beer, the Beatles... All should be celebrated.

Yes we did some shite things...but white slavery (20+ million), the Holocaust, programs in Eastern Europe. King Leopold of Belgium hunting African people. The depopulation of parts of the USSR, the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia.....all things that in the last 125 years England has nothing to do with...yet people like to think that we who celebrate our Englishness are scum.

Who am I punching down to, please tell me where I have

Umm, how about patriotism = vandalising roundabouts @Cherriesandapples1, that’s what you think. You only reverse ferreted when other posters held you to account for your prejudice. People only have to read through your posts to see your condescension.

I never said patriotism = vandalising roundabouts.

You're missing the point.
No, I don't think that every pub landlord, owners of a country manor or the ones on housing estates are racist and also paint roundabouts.
If you don't understand what people are saying, I'm not sure what else to say to you. 🤷‍♀️

The flags outside migrant hotels are nothing to to do with celebrating and everything to do with racism.

Maybe be proud of the things that are actually British?!?!

Democracy - Ancient Greece and then France
The Internet - USA
Beer - Mesopotamia

English people aren't scum - arrogant perhaps but not scum.

yes that’s true @dizzydizzydizzy and is racist and foul. As is defacing roundabouts etc. but that’s very different from flying the flag in your garden on St George’s day. That’s what @Cherriesandapples1 doesn’t get. Painting those who celebrate St George’s day as automatically racist is contemptible.

!!
Im referring to the OPs own words, and interpreting them.

Again try to find a post where I've said celebrating St George's Day is automatically racist. Quote my actual words

The poster is referring to being English not British.

I don't understand the obsession with St George's Day. I grew up in a very English town, with all the usual patriotic things - standing to sing the national anthem before shows, tea parties with Union Flag bunting, the now King came to visit and the whole town lined the streets. We also had the carnival and mayday parties and the Mayor's events and a Town Cryer. But I do not recall ever doing anything for St George's Day.

I'm not Catholic, why would I celebrate a Saint?

What is your point though?
Certain flag fly-ers are OK ... because you say so.
Others are racist twats... because you say so.
Is that it?

Painting those who celebrate St George’s day as automatically racist is contemptible

Nobody's doing that though!
FFS 😂

You certainly have a point. In my experience though, celebrating St George’s Day has always been incredibly low key and virtually nobody apart from maybe churches, guides/scout groups and town halls put flags up. All of a sudden, in the last few years, many people are claiming they are celebrating. I honestly don’t think it would have occurred to them, had it not been for all the debate about immigration. It’s often mentioned that Americans routinely put flags up in their gardens - nothing wrong with that - but it is new here, which makes me suspect that many people who do it here have ulterior motives. But maybe I am a big unreasonable cynic!

George is not all that he seems. Or perhaps more than he seems. Google "green George folklore'...

I think he's migrated to Mayday, or was always there.

"Where is St George
O where is he oh?
He's out in his long boat
All on the salt sea oh..."

Maybe they think they're a guffy dick.
I'm Scottish and take people as I find them.
Act like a prick you'll be treated as a prick and stands no matter where someone comes from.

You're not cynical the only guy I knew that went to a St.George march in London in the 90s was a member of C18 and was from Scotland.
C18 was an extreme right organisation for those that may not have heard of it.

The internet was invented at CERN which is near Geneva.

Not really.

"The internet" as in TCP/IP came from ARPANET which was a US design to allow communications across unreliable networks.

What most people mean by "the internet" is the series of protocols that run on top of TCP/IP that enable things like email, web pages, hyperlinks and all that lovely value-added goodness that has made "the internet" in 2026 practically unusable. They were developed across the world, including CERN where Sir Tim Berners-Lee developed HTML, and HTTP(S) around which websites are built. This essentially is the "world wide web" or "www." bit that you see as part of a Unique Resource Locator in the address bar of your browser.

Even Irish whiskey?

Never known anyone to drink non Scottish whisky here 😂

Though at least St Patrick stepped foot in Ireland and did a lot of converting its people to Christianity.

St. George #checks notes# slayed a dragon 😂

I think it's more that you find my view very confronting. Fair enough: it's a sensitive point. But that should just be a reminder that any national story isn't the entire history.

First you said I was relying on an anecdote and making a sweeping claim based on it. You seem to have retreated from that into technicalities. And you've resorted to insults such as the claim that I'm uninformed but you haven't been able to show what I'm uninformed about. An Irishman shooting, say, Aboriginal Australians for their land wasn't indigenous there. He and others like him were invading colonists, like the rest of them, maybe statistically more likely to have reasons pushing him from his homeland, and his descendents (e.g. me) benefited. Those are the nuances of history. Writing him out of the script and accusing me of minimisation is pretty silly. Colonisation was a worldwide phenomenon and the Irish were part of it. They were also colonised. This is only hard to comprehend if you want to reduce these things to political slogans and shout. I remember about thirty years ago it was common in Scotland to take a similar view, ie, the bad stuff was nothing to do with them and besides they weren't independent either. There's a more accurate view now.

the claim that I'm uninformed but you haven't been able to show what I'm uninformed about

You think there was an Irish state before 1801 so really there's little point in further debate with someone that doesn't know basic historical facts.

Apparently St David was born in Ireland, and St Patrick in Wales.