Brussel's Paper: "Why We Hate The British"

Wow! I ran across this article in that was in a major Brussels newspaper and was shocked to say the least.

I had no idea that there was so much animosity between our British friends and people from Brussels.

Is it really our (Americans) fault as the newspaper states?
Is it more widespread than just Belgium?
Can this friendship be repaired?
Are they our allies?

The Left on the European continent consider Britain to be an American stooge and a Trojan horse within the European Union intent on undermining the welfare state. Their opposition to the “Anglo-Saxons” has developed into a genuine hatred of the British, as became apparent last Tuesday in a diatribe in the “left-liberal” Brussels Dutch-language newspaper De Morgen. Here is a translation from the article entitled “Waarom wij de Britten zo haten” (Why we hate the British so much):

“The Huns are back, and they speak English with a variety of invariably common accents. No other nation manages to spoil other people’s holidays so thoroughly as the British. They do that all through the summer everywhere the sun shines with their unique mixture of wantonness and arrogance, their pathetic addiction to drink, their bad taste, and actually just their ugliness and thickheaded presence. There, that is a relief.

“With melancholy we think back to the days when the Dutch were most in evidence, with their caravans, their noisy children and their legendary stinginess. Or the Germans, who once on holiday, seemed to forget who had lost the war. Our northern and eastern neighbours are discerning aesthetes compared with the born hooligans from the other side of the Channel.

The hateful rant continues here:
www.brusselsjournal.com...

I wish we could just stay on our little island and leave the rest of Europe to there own, If we had had that attitude say 60 or 100 years back, they would all be being controlled by Germans and anyone who doesn't conform to the standard view gets gassed. Most of Europe hates the British anyway, jealousy is a cruel mistress.
Also, isn't this racist against the British? Save them twice and this is what they get. Also, what has belgium ever done to help the world? Thats what I thought.

My two (British!) pennies.

I think it's a fair representation of the image Brits have abroad. Fat slapheads in cheap tracksuit bottoms, trainers and football shirts, drinking cheap Carling and stuffing chips and burgers down their necks. For women add flip flops and scraped back, greasy hair who like to scream and swear at their unwanted offspring.

The Brits abroad have always had a bad reputation - I remember in the 70s British women were seen to be cheap sluts who'd sleep with anyone after a couple of bacardi and cokes.

TV over here doesn't help much with shows positively lauding the antics of drunken hooligans stripping off, exposing their genitals and breasts, dancing on tables, shagging in public, throwing up over each other and passing out in the street. Walk up any 'enterainment centre' in a large town or city in Britain and this is what you can expect to see, with the addition of drunken brawls and punchups reminiscent of the wild west. Unfortunately this behaviour is also exported to many continental and european resorts and cities with the result that anyone speaking with a British accent is tarred with the same brush.

Recently on a visit to Barcelona we were confronted by hundreds of German football fans. Had these been British football fans I'd have run to the hills but apart from the odd bit of tomfoolery I don't recall any trouble. In fact, we sat in the middle of a number of Germans fans in team regalia, who had just lost to Barca, having a nice meal and quiet drink. That's not something I'd envisage doing with British fans after they'd lost a match.

Many a european resort has been ruined due to Brit demands of cheap fags, cheap booze, chips, burgers, fry ups and 'English Boozers'. I often wonder why they bother going abroad.

reply to post by MajjicMouse


yes, but you can't judge a whole populace by the idiocy of a few people.
Admittedly there are some people like this, but every coutry has them.
These people are not like most British people, and there is a name for them, Chavs.

reply to post by BBTBE

I couldn't agree more with you. Unfortunately people do judge the majority of us by the antics of a minority that don't all happen to be chavs. It's the general ignorance of the British and unwillingness to appreciate the language and culture of the countries they visit that gives europeans their negative opinions of us.

I'll only stay in hotels now that cater to Germans or other europeans when on holiday. Every trip, visit or holiday I've ever had abroad has turned sour as soon as the Brits have turned up. I and my husband travel abroad 3 or 4 times a year and don't do the package/all-inclusive thing so it's not like we're getting a limited viewpoint. We're not snobs either, living in a solid blue-collar area and both coming from working class, socialist backgrounds.

And it's not just young people either! In Crete 2 years ago I had to get up and move from the side of the hotel pool because I had a bunch of 50-60 somethings whining for 2 hours about the heat, the smell, the lack of people that speak English, lack of chips, lack of tomato sauce, lack of bitter, lack of decent lager, blah blah blah blah. I had to stop myself from turning round and telling them to piss off to Blackpool where they'd be better accommodated.

So sorry to go on but it's a fact that the British are absolutely detested abroad because of sum like the above, and it's the decent majority who have to suffer for it.

Don't worry Brit.s. According to this site Belgium doesn't actually exist.

zapatopi.net...

Sweet. Seeing as I'm twisted on gin and there's 2 cop cars outside arresting my neighbour for assaulting his wife perhaps I'm not the best person to comment on British decency!!

Sory, uniformed American here, what does "chavs" mean?

Originally posted by ObamaMomma
Sory, uniformed American here, what does "chavs" mean?

Chav comes from the romany language and it means " child " .
After having spent 20 years living in UK , I can agree with the other Brits on this thread , we do have some problem with these " chavs " .

It is , in essence a class issue imho .

I am British (ashamedly at this time). I lived in Holland for over 2 years. I worked there and enjoyed the whole experience..except..for the majority of other Brits with whom I worked.

Every time the Brits go abroad they take Britain with them and take on the persona of "we-won-the-war" and "two-nil" brainless id10t's who think the rest of the world is some kind of British colony inhabited by unintelligent natives who have one purpose in life - namely, to be around for British amusement.

Some of the Brits abroad accept that in a foreign land we are the "foreigner" hence the privileged guests of the host nation. Many times I've explained to non-Brits the reasons for Brits "having a laugh" by stealing traffic cones, road signs, flags, even a Christmas tree from a village's central display.

It would be nice to be able to say that the majority of Brits would behave respectably/differently to the rest when abroad. Unfortunately, most go on holiday to forget themselves and that's exactly what they do along with forgetting everybody else too.

It's not just the Brits who behave badly when abroad, people from other countries do it too - East Germans, Moroccans, Ukrainians, Italians and many more who seem to upset others more than most nationalities do. We Brits are just better at it.

Most "bad" behaviour is just high humor but some is just damn right malicious. Regardless, the onus is on the "foreigner" to make an effort not to offend the "natives" (too much).

That's part of my opinion. If you want the rest of it, I'll oblige when asked.

As a frequent business traveler I have seen our own brand of "white trash" Wayne and Waynetta slobs (2 of Harry Enfield's characters) all over the world. Unfortunately always loud and usually arguing loudly and profanely in public is a good indicator, to the point where I even feel ashamed to be British myself.
On a recent return flight from Paris I even let a few people jump the boarding line and join me near the front to get away from a squabbling family of Chavs.

What small feeling of national pride I had evaporated a long time ago and I long for a time when this under-class are forcibly sterilised to prevent further breeding. Either that or a BIG lottery win enabling me to move somewhere quiet to get away from the cess pool this country has become.

To be fair to the web page posted, it is actually criticising the racist stereotyping that the paper "De Morgen" had in it's article. It also points out that the article in the paper was written by a member of the (now banned for being racist) political party Vlamms Blok, which is a Flemish nationalist party.

It also goes on to say that had the article been written in the same style and titled "Why we hate muslims", the very same leftist paper, De Morgen, would have been up in arms about it!

What Belgians forget (specifically this Vlamms Blok party) is that without the UK, Belgium wouldn't even exist and would most likely still be part of the Netherlands. Belgium isn't even a real country! It is markedly divided in two between the Dutch speaking Flemish and the French speaking Walloons, who hate each other more than they probably hate us! There isn't a Belgian people, or even a Belgian language. It's a group of dutch and a group of french who happen to live on a strip of land between the two countries.

In my travels, I have been to Belgium and, to be quite frank, it is an utter dive. They haven't really got much to speak about.

Plus, the analogies for the "football hooligans" are quite crap. German, Italian and eastern european football hooligans are far more violent than any british fan, but we have the reputation because it stuck from the 1980's, when there was a problem.

I wager that MajjicMouse hasn't set foot inside a stadium ever, let alone in the past 10 years. My local club, reading, is very family orientated and I have never had trouble. I'd even take my kids, that's how safe it is.