Brit Buffoonery ...

Regular readers of these ramblings will have noted the preoccupation with a certain strand of Brit behaviour abroad ... wandering along the Algarve a certain antipathy was detected, though it was hard to elicit any overt expression from the locals ...

Now a very incisive blog appears from a Portuguese bloke living in Manchester long term, where he nails it with this: "... that omnipresent racist British superiority that is all over this society".

You can read the whole thing at: 1pennyand2cents.blogspot.com 

The same thing shows up here on the Costa del Sol and triggers something ... which has crystallised significantly politically with a referendum yesterday in the UK, which polarised people around quite narrow issues, fear tactics to the fore, progressive arguments for a different politics buried in a toxic narrative ... doubtless things will settle down and carry on, more or less the same ...

Talking to integrated expats expands the critique ... the Andalusians very welcoming, very appreciative of the money coming to the area from the expats ... happy to charge special prices for those not bothered to learn local language and culture ... Susie suggests they see us typically as buffoons, which is perhaps a word more for the English than other Brits ... like Bertie Woosters trickling down the class system (and this stereotype does aspire to rise above the commoners,embrace shallow symbols of ostentatious wealth) ...

Well, this xenophobia has to work its way out of the national psyche eventually ... collapsing 3D worlds will see to that ... just checking that shadow from time to time, looking to transcend it through embracing international structures ... not necessarily bureaucratic ones reinforcing Northern European hegemony ... Global Eco-village networks maybe ... building from the bottom up ...