by Ben Davies

Created on: April 25, 2009

I am a European who has lived in Britain all my life, and it seems there are several things the rest of the world has yet to learn about the tea-drinking cricket-loving country.

Chavs. Anyone know what one of those is? You might have similar types of people in your own country, and although I am not one for stereotyping having been stereotyped myself countless times, Chavs definitely do exist. A British chav wears jogging suits and hoodies, smokes underage, sleeps around, drives recklessly fast, basically, cares about no one apart from themselves. They enjoy being hoodlums, setting fire to recycling bins, smashing shop windows etc. But what has this got to do with manners? Obviously, they have none, but their general attitude about caring about no one else can be applied, unfortunately, to many British people. Naturally, there will be some Americans like this, but most that I've met are amazingly generous and caring people.

This is something i saw in a supermarket recently: A woman collapsed in the fruit aisle. She suddenly fell over and the contents of her basket went everywhere. Everyone sort of looked at her then turned around to carry on being ignorant - some people actually laughed. My family and I went to help her, and she was embarrassed more than hurt, especially as she was getting up some moronic youth working for the greedy shop come up and told her to clean up and pay for everything she had dropped and broken. He then went away without offering to help. I get the impression this wouldn't happen in America - please correct me f I am deluded.

A lot of British people are also ridiculously self opinionated, sometimes to the point where it is unbelievable. I was at college yesterday when I told one of my (English) friends about a song I wanted to learn on piano. She interrupted me by just saying "Gay" (oh yes, they're extremely homophobic too). I questioned this, and she just said "Because it's gay." I said I thought it was a whimsical piece of classical music, and she slammed a door in my face! I couldn't believe she did this and it sounds unbelievable now that I've written it, but that actually happened! The point is, she wouldn't accept my opinion because evidently it is worthless (in which case this piece is a waste of time)!

Finally, I would like to end by challenging your British stereotype once more. Do you think Great Britain is a country where everyone says "please" and "thank you" in funny posh accents? Until the age of 8, perhaps, but not often after that. Living here, I know everyone is out for themselves, and if you want to get somewhere here, you need to be British to get there.

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