Scary Terrorists, Not

[sierra_le_oli]

It doesn't pay to immediately comment on things like the failed terrorist actions in London because it takes a while for solid facts to surface above the nonsense. However one thing was quickly clear: these guys deserve a zero for effort. The Register has an article by a bomb disposal guy on why their methods sucked (via silly_swordsmanWingnut's route to and from

Comments

[furrfu]

Stiff upper lipness:

http://www.retrotogo.com/2006/06/keep_calm_warti.html

[gmh]

I noticed those a couple of weeks ago.

Part of me wants one; part of me has a definite resistance to wearing anything depicting the crown.

(...and part of me says "well, really, why do you feel as though you have to Make A Statement at anyone else anyway?")

I suspect that the English stiff upper lip is viewed largely as a middle-class product of empire these days; something that never really existed per se except in self-regarding media portrayals such as Mrs. Miniver, Brief Encounter and Swallows and Amazons.

It's also an intellectually-manufactured idea; straight out of the Stoic school via Empire-era Oxbridge; if you read up on histories of the Blitz and so forth, it becomes clear that the majority of people involved were no more inclined to a 'stiff upper lip' than people are today.

...and yet I know some English people who are like that to some extent

[sierra_le_oli]

Great poster, but I must also confess to a slight twitchiness about the crown. But I didn't mean it for us, but for all those excitable people in the media.

I disagree with you about the stiff upper lip, though I'm sure it's been mythologised to a certain extent. There is a definite difference in how much the English in general are prepared to complain compared to the Dutch, French and a number of other cultures I'm familiar(ish) with.

The stiff upper lip was also taken to New Zealand by English colonial settlers and I observe a similar difference in how Kiwis don't complain compared to Dutch, French, etc. (Although that's also because the Kiwis have been influenced by Polynesian laidbackness, but of course cultural character traits don't live in isolation.) The positive and negative side of it you mention is exactly what I think of when it comes to Kiwis.

[ailbhe]

Is it stiff u--er li-or "mustn't grumble"?

Nice!

[anonymous]

Great link, I really ought to read the Register more (quite apart from all the other stuff I should also be reading more...), I've used it in my own blog. If this is what Al Quaeda is up to, then indeed the war on terror is won, and we can start doing sensible things again instead of filling the news with lazy clowns like these :) We need more sanity!

ttfn,

Michel