In theory, I love England. I stayed over there for a whole summer in my early teens (1993) and I loved the countryside, the manners, the fact that people actually know how to line up instead of tumbling over each other to be first, the history, and the quiet attention to one's own education. I'm currently on a Bill Bryson kick, and reading his musings on his adopted country have kind of made me homesick for a place that isn't home. My wife and I will be going to France last week (we won the trip, so it wasn't by choice), and we were seriously tempted to spend a day or two of the trip in England instead. I loved how temperate English people seemed to be in demeanor.
That said, a lot of people seem to think the English are degenerates from what they used to be, even if that term may be a bit too extreme. England used to be one of the pinnacles of civilizations and humanity (even if the same attitudes weren't fully experienced in the colonies), and even if certain figures were "bad," they were still impressive people who stayed to the course and let adversity roll off them like water off a duck's back. They sought all there was to know and often with a selfless devotion. I think this is best summed up in the depiction of the English POWs in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five--they have managed to live a relatively clean and pleasant life even in captivity, never letter their spirits falter while the Americans were in self-made squalor and hopelessness. Some of this is an ideal, to be sure, but it wasn't far off from the truth. Old-style Englishmen were the very definition of Men. Now, as someone else has said, a lot of people tend to think they're overly effeminate if not outright gay.
A friend of mine from Germany recently moved to England and found it "dirty and nasty" with everyone being rude and he couldn't wait to leave despite my encouragements. He said the kids placed no value on bettering themselves, complained a lot (apparently worse than Americans in both regards in his view), and the men basically walked around vomiting all over the place because they were so drunk. Another friend said that they've lost much of their old spirit by questioning too many of the things that made them great. They now refuse to take a real stand on anything, he said. Two of the most recent important influences in my life (grad school professors) were English, though, and they break from what my friends say and our closer to what I remember of the English. To be fair, though, both DID have bad teeth. Heh.
We have fish and chips here in Chicago, but, well, it's usually found in pubs that have either an English or Irish flavor. It's been a while since I've actually been to England, but if someone were to offer me a good job there, even with all those (very likely exaggerated) things I've heard, I'd move to England in a heartbeat and I probably wouldn't look back.
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