'I increasingly think we should abandon the idea of Britishness and acknowledge that we're really talking about what it means to be English. Scotland has its own identity. To me the best things about English people are originality, tolerance and, most of all, understatedness.'

I feel this point to be the most important in defining Britishness, as it is well known that are sentiments of resentment held be each, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, but I shall go into this more later.

There is undoubtedly the stereotypical view of being British. The 'stiff upper lip' combines nicely with the concept that we only drink tea and is used to its fullest across the glo

'Being British is about singing Karaoke in Bars, eating Chinese noodles and Japanese sushi, drinking fresh wine, wearing Prada and Nike, dancing to Italian house music, listening to Cher, using an Apple Mac, holidaying in Florida and Ibiza and buying a house in Spain. Shepherds pie and going on holiday to Hastings went out about 50 years ago and the only people you'll see wearing a Union Jack are French movie stars or Kate Moss.'

In result, the Scottish Nationalist opposition was tremendously provoked and grew, and the Conservative Party in Scotland was left as a non-existent idea. Thatcher's, approach also riled Wales into a similar response, but to a lesser extent. She also aggravated Northern Ireland, as her unsympathetic treatment towards IRA hunger-striking prisoners was well publicised due to their plead for innocence and the apparent 'criminalisation' of them. This is believed to have sparked, inadvertently creating Sinn Fein as a major political party in Northern Ireland.

So, is being British about being English? The answer is yes and no. Naturally people who were born and/or raised in England can be accounted for, but as England is becoming a multicultural society, immigrants also have to be taken into consideration. However, the media has portrayed as a problem, due to well publicised stories, such as in June 2000, 58 Chinese people died in a lorry at Dover by suffocation. This stunned politicians and the media to take a more sympathetic view towards immigrant cases. Nevertheless, immigrants have been travelling to the UK, but they have, 'naturalized or already had citizenship as they migrated, as they came from former colonies of the countries to which they moved.' However, there is huge controversy when the word 'immigrant' is used. There is a notion that

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1211
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)