Re: British Say US Is Violent, Money-Hungry, Uncultured Nation
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Originally Posted by Wurm
"[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]...a majority of the Britons questions described Americans as uncaring, divided by class, awash in violent crime, vulgar, preoccupied with money, ignorant of the outside world, racially divided, uncultured and in the most overwhelming result (90 percent of respondents) dominated by big business."
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I would be interested to see how they viewed themselves by comparison.
With respect to many of those points I think those Brits must have been looking in the mirror, or indeed the 'Mirror'. Case in point, I live in Hackney, but I spend a fair amount of time around Southfields (near Wimbledon)... Hackney has a fairly high proportion of folks belonging to "Ethnic Minorities" and immigrants, it is a pretty poor area. While the driving can be scary around Hackney, here in affluent Southfields it is aggressive.
I've had two near death experiences in 3 days on my bike here in Southfields, on both occasions the drivers knew full well what they were doing, but figured my life wasn't worth an extra couple of seconds of their time. Incident #1 was turning right into a minor road, as I indicated my fingers got smacked by the wing mirror as I slowed to turn (and yes I did look behind me to make sure that they were holding station before I started to slow down)... Incident #2 was in Richmond Park, a recreation area that does allow cars to travel through it at a maximum of 20mph. I was descending a hill (at well over 20mph) when a car pulls alongside on my right (with just 6" to spare) into a right hand bend, it's tires are squealing with the effort of making the turn (ie: it's going to T-bone me at any minute) and there is a *tighter* right hander just 20 yards ahead... They backed off at the last minute, but the point is they left me with no where to go, I didn't even have enough space to let them by, and they were aggressively trying to push me into the verge at over 30mph.
Certainly the indigenous population around South London are greedy and violent. Dominated by corporations ? Sure; they have two fantastic delis that serve coffee and fresh cakes and they still go to Starbucks and pay more. The picture is much happier around Hackney, but there is a far lower proportion of inidigenous population around there.