England and Saint George

OK, I've just come back from the pub and I really have to comment on this St George's day bollocks which the media has hyped up and has consequently ruined my evening's drinking. St George may be the patron Saint of England, but that's no excuse for every pub blasting out 'patriotic' songs at full blast, or for for people wandering around with crosses painted on their faces and wearing stupid fucking hats. It doesn't evoke any spurious spirit of 'Englishness', it just makes you all seem like a bunch of retards. Over the past few years there's been this growing pressure in the media for St George's day to be 'celebrated' in the same way that the Irish celebrate St Patrick's Day, or the way in which the Welsh commemorate St David's Day. There's actually a very good reason why it never has been - the fact that St George's identification with England is purely arbitrary. Unlike St Patrick, St David and St Andrew, Georgie boy has no connection whatsoever with the country he supposedly represents.

In point of fact, George is a bit of a whore, as he's also the patron saint of half of Europe, including Russia, Germany and Greece. In point of fact, we used to have an English patron saint of England in the form of Edward the Confessor, but he wasn't sexy enough, so St George ousted him. This obsession with celebrating St George's Day is just another example of this insidious, and very unpleasant, nationalism which has been creeping into public life for the past few years. I'm always suspicious of people who feel the need to indulge in displays of over-exaggerated 'patriotism' - it's usually a sign that they have no sense of personal identity. Consequently, they have to fall back on crude racial stereotypes to try and provide themselves with a sense of self worth. It's all bollocks, anyway. The fact is that, since the Act of Union which formed the UK as a political entity, there has been only one nationality in these islands: British. English, Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish - they're just ethnicities. Which is why 'Black British', 'Asian British' and 'Jewish British', for instance, are just as legitimate expressions of British nationality as 'English', 'Welsh' or 'Scottish'. So, next April 23, just kick the St George's Day shit into touch and allow the rest of us to enjoy our evening.