Sep 08

Last Night of the Proms

Filed under: Politics — Matthew Revell at 10:23 pm

My mate Stuart often talks about the five best things about the UK. I don’t know if I’d put it in my top five but I love the Last Night of the Proms.

I enjoy it as tradition for tradition’s sake, for overtly celebrating Britishness, for its constancy throughout my life. Making it more representative of the UK as a whole has worked brilliantly and watching people celebrate their regions and regional emblems gives me a surge of pride.

It’s true, this country has some terrible things in its past but that shouldn’t be a reason to forget all the great things. I’m British now and I love my country now. No country’s past or present are perfect; real life is far too complicated for that.
I’m sure I’d love my country were I American, French or Indian. My patriotism is fairly simple: I love being British because it’s what I know and what I do best, not because I believe it elevates me above anyone else.

3 Responses to “Last Night of the Proms”

  1. Chad says:
    September 16th, 2007 at 9:04 am

    Matt,
    I really enjoy the simple honesty of your last paragraph. I hope your content is CrativeCommons licensed, because I’m planning on taking your last sentence, adjusting for geography, and making it my .sig (with full attribution of course)

    Best Regards from the States,
    -Chad in Fresno, CA

  2. Matthew Revell says:
    September 16th, 2007 at 9:24 am

    Hi Chad - thanks :)
    Please feel free to use it in your sig :) I haven’t got an explicit CC statement on here, but that’s an oversight. I’ll put one on today.

    Matthew.

  3. David Dolphin says:
    October 30th, 2007 at 7:19 pm

    Nice post, did you watch the Electric proms?