Is Great Britain still great?

The simple answer is.. no, it is not great. It hasn't been great for about sixty years.

The country that our forefathers fought to preserve is going down the pan, and their memory with it. We the British people should be ashamed of ourselves. Even politicians are now being commercialized, land is being sold offshores and there was even a suggestion of selling off the White Cliffs of Dover to a French company. Very patriotic!

Firstly, We spent roughly five years spilling our guts all over Europe in defence of democracy, liberty, freedom of speech and the traditional way of life that we all revered. We stood fast in the face of the enemy and watched as our husbands, brothers, fathers and nephews were shipped off to die in the defence of this nation just because some bloody maniac wanted to rule the world. We stood together and we won. We were a proud nation and one that once feared throughout the world. Now look as us.. just look at us. We're a complete mess! .. and don't give me that tosh that it was the Conservative party just because a general election is coming. We are all of us to blame for our incompetence in dealing with the matter in hand.

We are so damn passive in our outlook. Only the other day I heard someone say "This country is a mess. I just want to shoot that George Brown!". This person was clearly uneducated and didn't know her *** from her elbow. People like this should simply be deprived of the vote. Nobody reads manifestos and a lot of young people, refuse to vote on the grounds that they find the government incompetent and/or don't know anything about politics. THEN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Don't sit back and do nothing, it's called laziness and we're all turning so lazy with our 9-5 outlook on life. Whatever happened to pride in our work, pride in ourselves. It makes me sick!

Then there's the money scandal, unemployment is rife (particularly for young people aged 16-25), University fees have gone through the roof, the rich are being targeted with obscene amounts of inheritance tax (money that they worked for and were already taxed on). Look at our roads and our streets. Jeepers! You'd think we were living in the slums of Darjeeling. We pay our taxes to preserve our roads and our libraries and not only do we have hoodied yobs who vandalise our streets and threaten our children but now we have this ******* knife culture which is slowly aroding our sense of safety and securty. The politicians are completely incompetent, I say sack the lot of them. They're all high and mighty, freeloading graspers. GET RID OF THEM!!

Then there's this so called PC society, that has been squabbling among each other for years. If I want to call a "spade a spade" I ******* well will. It's not a shovel, it's not gardening implement, it is a spade. The Oxford dictionary will back me up here. If people come over expecting to live with their culture and in their way of life, then don't come here. This is not India or Bangladesh, it is Britain and no we're not changing our street signs into Hindusthani for your convenience just because you don't have the common decency to learn English. **** you! If you don't like it piss off! If you want to wear a burkha or a symbol of your religion.. fine! GO TO A RELIGIOUS SCHOOL! Rules are rules and are there to be obeyed. This racism palava is getting tiresome. I have ginger hair and I have been teased about it but you just get over it! Along the way people are going to say things that aren't particularly pleasant.. especially in schools. That is life i'm afraid. People are just being wrapped up in cotton wool and don't know how to defend themselves anymore. The fact of the matter is, I have been teased because of my hair myself.. I don't take every Tom, Dick and Harry to the European Court of Human rights. It's our way of life, deal with it. If I complained in their respective countries, i'd have my head chopped off. Good grief! You can't even defend you're own home anymore without getting arrested and being accused of assault or worse, you are the one who is causing a public disturbance or "racist!". It's lunacy and the sooner these laws are reversed, the better for us all. I mean come the **** on people, wake up and smell the coffee.

Then there's the insult that is Europe, binding us to their laws and customs. As I say, our forfathers fought to preserve our way of life and we are now forced to kowtow to hidden enemy called Brussels. Do you know that that is exactly what Hitler envisaged? A greater Germany under his command. Now we have a United States of Europe with a Premier at it's head and you know what? It's an insult to the memory of the fallen. Why didn't we just let Hitler take over? We didn't, because we had a sense of national pride and we protected our own. We went through hell on Earth for the defense of the realm and we won. "Lest we forget" - Yeah right!

We need to stand up for ourselves and stop this lunacy now!

Given the geographical 'Great' as being Big, as mentioned elsewhere, and ignoring the diatribe from Anon, who won't even identify him/her self, Britain is Great.

But we Britons, (and big Britons as well!) have a shocking ability, which has developed in the past 30 years, for running ourselves down. We also build up our heroes, then, having set them on a pedestal, we do everything we can to knock them off again.

And we moan about the most trivial matters. It's almost become our national pastime! All of which makes us 'Grate' Britain!

So why are we still Great? Look around the rest of the world, and see how well off we are! We don't have the climate disasters that beset so many other parts of the world. We have freedom of speech that is the envy of the world. We have a decent standard of living (well most do, and many of those who don't, have made conscious life-style choices) We have so much to be Great-ful for in this country.

The thing is that what makes this country is the people. We have the ability to moan - yes - but we still get the job done. We have the natural ability to make the best of whatever situation we find ourselves in, and as long as we can do that, Britain will always be great.

The term Great Britain was actually used before the Norman Conquest to distinguish the main island of Britain from Lesser Britain (or Brittany in modern English). So the phrase predates the British Empire by many centuries. The modern meaning of great as "excellent, wonderful" is less than 200 years old. By this time, the Kingdom of Great Britain now included Ireland and the name of the state was changed to United Kingdom.

Unfortunately, the anonymous answerer up there ^^ had a lot of truth in his arguments. Great Britain is nowhere near as great as she was in the last few centuries. We have experienced being the largest economy in the world. We used to have an empire that the sun never set upon. We had British people who were, for the most part, respectful. We had a beautiful countryside that was perfectly beautiful and unlittered. We had enormous power in the world and people respected us for that.

We still retain much of that greatness - we own some of the best companies in the world, and the BBC and the NHS are two national institutions that we all feel are contributing massively to our country. We have our royal family, who, despite recent tumbles, are still very popular and continue to embody all our country has stood for for the last thousand years or so. We are strong-willed, labourious and keep up the British way of life we have led for decades, if not centuries.

However, there are many, many problems. I just wish we could all start solving them together...just imagine Britons who are always kind, wild hedgerows that are uncluttered, villages that still have their own pubs and Post Offices, a monarchy we feel proud of, and masses of other things we all want.

What we are lacking is national pride. We used to have it, and many have lost it.

Let's try to regain our pride...and then Great Britain will be restored to its' full greatness that the world has always admired us for.

Sorry for the ramble :)

Great Britain is the name of the island on which England, Wales, and Scotland are situated. However, most Brits will agree that these qualities make the United Kingdom "great":

10 The English language has grown and evolved to become the second most widely spoken language in the world behind Mandarin Chinese. British literature also sets standards for excellence world wide without limiting its scope with an Academy that defines what is "English".

9. A parliamentary system serves as a representative form of government that allows for disagreement, debate, and synthesis.

8. British humour is widely exported but never truly duplicated.

7. British bravery, stoicism, and group spirit shows itself on the battlefield and after terrorist acts.

6. British inventiveness has not diminished as this list of British inventions and discoveries after World War II shows: first commercial airliner, DNA, Hovercraft, hip replacements, disposable hypodermic needles, tranquilizer gun, silent burglar alarm, childproof bottle cap, Bosum, beta blockers, birth control pill, double-jointed baby buggy, stem cells, radio telescope, neuroplasticty, portable defibrillator, hospice care, Human Genome Project, stem cells, World Wide Web, cloning.

5. British reserve nicely balances genuine British politeness.

4. Afternoon tea and pubs show that Brits know how to relax and enjoy themselves.

3. British universities (Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow, St. Andrew's, and the University of London as well as the ever-expanding regional universities) open their doors to a greater percentage of the UK's population than ever before, and they also accept many foreign students.

2. Brits are loyal, yet they can also be forthright particularly when dealing with allies like the United States.

1. Brits have the ability to adapt and to incorporate what is best about other cultures into their own society.

Cheers,

From an American Anglophile

"Great" Britain is an island. It is called great as it has a bigger land mass than "Little Britain" which is the area known as Brittany in France. As the island remains larger than that area of France to this day, Great Britain is still appropriate.

The "Great" is a geographical term, having nothing to do with the country(ies) on that island, nor it's people.

Britain once ruled a quarter of the globe, and now it doesn't... but "Great" in Great Britain is a geographical term meaning "big". The name originally was to differentiate it from Little Britain, which is now Brittany in France. Brittany and Britain are still the same word in French - Brittany is "Bretagne" and Great Britain is "Grande Bretagne".

Consider all those pairs of villages in England named exactly the same way, for example Great Rissington and Little Rissington.

Great Britain is a geographical term to describe the largest island of the British Isles.

It has nothing to do with political greatness.

So the answer is yes

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Whats great about this country?

1 in 5 young people 16-25 cannot get jobs and that is with the figures massaged. Unemployed people are demonised for trying to get a job. People come out of university with huge debt and cannot find work. Several council houses are left abandonned and people aren't allowed to move into them to avoid homelessness. We elected the Conservatives who closed down the pits closed down the shipyards making people unemployed and then calling them lazy. and then there are British people who I find extremely ignorant now!! The only thing Great about this country is our NHS but that stands to get eroded into privatisation. The things which were great about this country are going fast and no one seems to care

Do not confuse great as in best and Great as in biggest Great Britain is the coountry's title not position