Am I proud to be British?

I should like to be proud of my country but I am not.

The Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty the Queen made me think about patriotism.  Yes I am a patriot and one has to admire the dedication of a monarch who has shown remarkable dedication to duty for sixty years and continues to do so even at the grand age of 86.  This is the case whatever one may think about her wealth and privilege.

But, when I look around me, I am not proud of the slovenly self-absorbed country that we have become.  How many people there are who fantasise that they are some kind of celebrity because they appear on their own Facebook page.  How many waste time by endless tweets on Twitter, filling cyberspace with meaningless and inconsequential drivel.  Read any internet comment page and see massive evidence of poor education.  Look around and you see a nation full of unwashed scruffy people wearing clothes that would be a disgrace at the bottom of the dog basket (which is where many of them look as if that is where they are kept).

Too many are proud of their inability to bring up children properly.  Upholding a decent family life has become old-fashioned.  Many parents are too lazy or too self-absorbed to give the time and attention to bringing up their children properly.  Concepts for child rearing such as being a good role model, setting and maintaining boundaries for good behaviour, providing family mealtimes around a dining table with intelligent conversation, insisting on good manners and showing concern and respect for other people are regarded as old-hat.  This endemic laziness finds expression in expecting schools to undertake what should be parental duties.  The tragedy is that too many parents also think the means of securing the respect of their children is to buy love and by regarding their children as beyond reproach.  Look around and see the children who are not allowed a childhood and, in the case of girls, who are dressed like young tarts.  See how many are incapable of sitting in a restaurant without causing havoc.  Their usual feeding experience is to be allowed to "graze", eating crisps and cakes whenever they like.

Our education system is a disgrace. Just one child leaving primary school without being able to read, write and do sums is one too many; but the number doing so is far, far higher.  Even "A" levels are handed out like confetti to people who, truth be told, can barely write literate English.  We pretend that standards have not been dropped but this is delusional, if not plain dishonest.  There are teachers who decry any notion that learning sometimes requires hard work, whether on spelling correctly, learning the rules of grammar and punctuation or mastering difficult texts.  People want to be famous without having any talent or achievements to justify it.  Tragically, there is a  growing under-class of people who wallow in near-illiteracy and inactivity.  There are women who think they deserve financial assistance for deliberately becoming single mothers when the truth is that what they needed was an ability to keep their knickers up or, failing that, to use contraception.

Dismiss these comments as the rants of an old man, but find out what people in other countries think of the Brits and you will find that I am not alone.