h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A533620

This article explores just why do we British seem to not like foreigners very much. Is it because they are just so unlikeable. Of course not. This article explains one reason why us British do hate foreigners, and is very informative and interesting.

I don't really think this is the kind of entry the editors are looking for. It isn't factual - it's merely based on a number of opinions and supposition. Whether or not they're your opinions or concensual is irrelevant, I'm afraid. Also, you use first-person which is disallowed for the Edited Guide.

Maybe you should do some proper psychological research into this matter. Also, how about starting a conversation in 'ask the h2g2 community' at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/Askh2g2 to explore the reasons why *some* British people seem to hate foreigners so much. In fact, the more I think about it, the more stuff I realise you could put into the entry. I think, ultimately, that you need to put a lot more time into this work, but eventually I can see a good entry emerging!

Hope I helped

It's always a matter of the scope which you take to look at it. Take two people from Germany and Britain: on /Mars/ they are Earthlings and quite surely stick together. The same two people in, say, China or Japan, are Europeans and quite surely stick together. Place them in the UK or in Germany, and one of them is a foreigner and the other not.

Or the other way round:

Two Germans in the UK are Germans, but at home it depends on whether they are a Bavarian and a Prussian. If they both are Bavarians then it depends on whether one is from Frankonia and the other from someplace else. See a pattern? You can go on with that series until you arrive at the smallest thinkable community, the family.

So far for my twopence as a suggestion for writing

Good point, well made. I was merely talking in terms of the entry though - what I mean is, if there HAS to be such an entry, then here are my opinions etc...

By the way - thanks to you I also am now involved in combatting cancer! Damned slow completing just one task though, innit?

Yeah, that was my intention as well, giving suggestions on what I'd expect to read in such an entry

Glad to hear that! Those seem to be really biiiiig tasks. My 866MHz machine has taken some 36 hours CPU time for its first task, scoring 193 points (I still don't know what this score is good for, but why should I). I wouldn't have thought that the download package of 1.8MB or so costs that much effort to process.

This "hating foreigners" thing is a world-wide phenomenon. Here in Australia/New Zealand, while we don't actually hate Poms (Brits), many people dislike them - mainly because they refuse to be assimilated. The Poms go around saying things like. "We didn't do it that way in Manchester". The Aussie/Kiwi will respond. "Wonderful. Why don't you go back home to Britain. It will help raise the IQ of both countries."

A somewhat unsubtle way of saying, "When in Rome do what the Romans do".

And then you have the Septics (Yanks). They are disliked because their loud clothes and colourful language scares the sheep.

"Maryjane, wow, did you see that? These Kiwis have got trees and cars and everything."

Umm.

I'm going to go with the flow here: you've got mass personal opinion, gross generalisations (like that "Germans are very friendly" piece... ) and the whole thing feels like it's being said to me by someone who's slightly drunk in a dingy pub somewhere...

Don't get me wrong - this is a good entry - it's written in a nice conversational style, and it flows well. But it's a good entry for the UNedited guide - and it's unlikely to get into the edited guide without major hack & slash editing...

I'd love to see your stats on obesity in UK/USA, though.

I would imagine you can find those stats at the World Health Organisation's website. I won't post the URL because
1. I don't know it
2. It will probably get removed anyway.

to censorship!

There are good reasons for the british attitude, although i think that having that attitude is wrong. The dislike of germans comes due to being brought up among people who lost relatives in the wars, and also bought into the demonification that occured at the time. Once that mind set has been aquired, it takes a deliberate act of thought to spot the holes in it. The other reason for the attitude relates to having had an empire for many decades. Why bother to learn another language to go abroad, when all of the people who matter have already had to learn yours?

Among other things, one reason many Brits don't know a foreign language is that until relatively recently (the late 70s) most middle-class (and lower) Poms holidayed at home.

English was all you needed to know when conversing with family and friends while sitting on Brighton's shingle beach and when saying hi-di-hi to each other at Butlins Holiday Camp.

Now they gather (in their thousands) in mock-Brit pubs and restaurants in cheap Spanish resorts. Others can be seen communing, in a caring, sharing way, with their mates at overseas football and cricket matches.

Trust me. I have attended a cricket Test Match when the Barmy Army (alleged cricket supporters) were also in attendance.

Two languages in one British head? Impossible

Okay - maybe there isn't any chance of this version going in the edited guide, but at least its got you people talking. Hopefully I will write a new, more suitable entry in the future, taking in all of the information you lot have said. Thanks to everyone.

Glad to be of help
I'm looking forward to reading the revision.

Should we consider moving this thread over to the Writing Workshop, then?


Mikey

I would say so

I'd have said so... Do the honours, Mikey...

That's a pity. I was enjoying teasing the Poms (Limeys - Brits)

Maybe the new yarn could be called "Britain, why xenophobia caused the loss of our Empire".

Yeah - followed by an entry called "How pandering to our American and European masters has prevented us from ever getting another empire"...

Huw...Not pleased with being British.

one problem with blaming xenophobia for the loss of the empire is that xenophobia had nothing to do with it. what lost the empire was fighting forour own independance in ww1 and ww2. after thatyou can't really say no when your subjects ask you for it (although a lot of them would have been better off if they hadn't insisted on rushing it)

Taxation without representation probably didn't help either.

Unkind people may even suggest that extracting raw materials without paying market-price royalties to the indigenous peoples wasn't a brilliant long-term strategy.