Do nations have characteristics?

Europe's 'sick man' France dealt another blow as manufacturing contracts

Manufacturing activity in France contracts again in July, raising concerns about the health of Europe's second largest economy.

Who feels a certain schadenfreude  when reading this....certainly not probably the next UK Prime minister the ingénue Ed Miliband, who on Hollandes election by a naïve (and now deeply regretful French electorate) that Monsieur Hollande's election was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

How elastic is Miliband's loyalties his moral moorings are assigned to wherever there is political opportnity.

 

However onto national characteristics, and this is not a solera (one is not grading wines)

 

Do nations have characteristics

Overheard at dinner parties and other such gatherings.

 

 

What is it with the French?

Are they arrogant is that a fair charge. I can only give an 

anecdotal view and I have found them to be, shall  we say not very

'sympa' .  Time to insert the liberal rider, 'of course, they are not all

like that.'

 

Are Brits on holiday fat drunken slags and aggressive tattooed

Neanderthals, as the Germans

claim, well I can only give an anecdotal view, which is yes.

Time to insert the liberal rider, 'of course, they are not all

like that.'

 

Are American in the main adolescent?

I  can only give an anecdotal view, which is yes.

Time to insert the liberal rider, 'of course, they are not all

like that.'

What one does not hear.

 

Am I biased in my views and, do I suffer from lumpen thinking?

I can only give an anecdotal view, which is yes.

Time to insert the liberal rider, 'of course, I am not always

like that.'

Here is a view

• Englishness Identified: Manners and Character, 1650-1850 by Paul Langford
  Oxford, 389 pp, £25.00, April 2000, ISBN 0 19 820681 X

The Americans have ‘American exceptionalism’. The French have ‘l’exception française’. The Germans have ‘der deutsche Sonderweg’. The English, on the other hand, have no equivalent catchphrase: it seems they take their exceptionality so much for granted that they don’t even bother putting a name to it. Does such a thing as ‘Englishness’ really exist? Most current thinking on national identities suggests that it doesn’t. Apparently innate and immutable national characteristics, the argument goes, are mere illusion and representation, a funhouse mirror which shows observers nothing but distorted images of their own desires, fears and preconceptions. To think of these characteristics as ‘real’ is to indulge in the deadliest of present-day academic sins, ‘essentialism’, patriarchal godfather to racism, sexism and all other noxious ‘isms’.

In 18th-century France  in what some would term a typically  arrogant manner used the term , ‘une conversation à l’anglaise’ which was their  slang for a long silence.. Sacre bleu!

The English were generally regarded as lazy and along comes the Industrial Revolution and they are regarded as most industrious an so on and on and on...