Did anyone watch that!

Paused on Sky+.

Saw the first bit - main thought was - how can these people be so naive/ignorant...

Available for download at uknova.com

Those that believe there is an element of political correctness or left wing bias in the media acting as thought police could wonder if this program is designed to help erode the publics idea of being English (after all, immigration has occured in England for centuries) in order to help embrace current immigration/asylum population movements.

But that would be cynical.

Plenty of people around echoing those views! Many on here!



Fabulous work by the interviewer who took the piss out of them in a real low key Louis Theroux manner that not one of them spotted!

The really interesting thing for me is that when faced with facts that conflict with their 'delusions' they dont change their mind in line with the new facts they just alter the rules of theri delusion so that can keep believing it!!!

The 'comedian' guy for example having said you need to be 'English' for 12 generations to be really English changed it to 3 after he found he had strong Balkan DNA! The campaigner for English to be a race just retreated into denial and threatened to take legal action!!!!!

You cant argue with irational views with rational ones!!!!

No it wouldn't be cynical it would be wrong. It was designed to show (and it did so very successfully IMHO) that any notion of "Englishness" which was based on some genetic purity argument would be naive/ignorant.

It challenged people to actually think about what it is that makes us English. If it's not where our ancestors are from - what is it? A collection of values or ideals? I don't know but it certainly made a lot (but by no means all) of the people interviewed look pretty silly. It wasn't as though the interviewer didn't given some of them every opportunity to recognise the folly of their argument. They just refused to countenance any rational debate (as Groomy suggests).

It wasn't PC or left-wing at all. I thought it was a relatively fair and funny programme...

[quote="X-Man
No it wouldn't be cynical it would be wrong. It was designed to show (and it did so very successfully IMHO) that any notion of "Englishness" which was based on some genetic purity argument would be naive/ignorant.

..[/quote]

If the same technique was used with regard to any nation the result would I think would be similar. What I find so hard to come to terms with is why this country has to be so out of step with the rest of the world, we should be a garden of edan, according to some, it is not going to work.
My brother is over at moment as soon he will be going to live in Malaysia the things he has to do, in financial and other areas, if they were used in this country, all the worthies would be up in arms. His daughter is going to finish her education in Oz the same applies, why do we have to be so different, we for sure are no better than anybody else. We cant look after many of our own properly why are we so vain as to think we look after others any better

Your global DNA shows you to be 37% troll.

Its IES, island-empire syndrome!

sounds just like religion!

I loved the bit when that old bint was classed as a Romanian gypsy. I think I would sue too! Your right though none of us are pure English and they were sukers.

I didn't watch it. Could somebody please explain how it worked, for example how could anybody 'British' be classed as a Romanian gypsy or whatever?

Surely we are 50% of each of our parents, 25% of each grand-parent etc so surely having a "100% romanian gypsy" great-great grandmother would mean you were only 6.25% romanian gypsy? Maybe a little more if there were bits of it in other branches of your family tree.

And how do they define what is 'romanian gypsy'?????

If I had to try and define it I'd probably go with : a gypsy from Romania.

Well the woman called it would probably define herself as a white woman from England so that doesn't really work.......

And I didn't ask how you would define it, I asked how they did define it

Perhaps I was being over literal, I do that sometimes, without thinking, sorry.

Probably right
What is realy scary is the Americanisation of how people see things these days and its the very people who see themselves as the opposite who are the worst effected, they are so blinkered.
No offence to Tom but the Americans have come to know (via internet) are so insular in there view and hardly any have been out side of their state dont even have a passport

They analysed the DNA of each participant and this revealed certain characteristics which were associated with particular parts of the world.

This led to certain % eg 25% Northern European, 5% Sub-saharan Africa, 30% South-Eastern Europe, 20% Eastern Asia, 20% Middle East.

Then there was commentary from the DNA expert which tried to clarify what that proportional distribution mght mean (ie a "typical" person with this distribution would come from...)



The woman was identified as having typically ''Romany Gypsy'' DNA distribution. Oh and I thought she was in her 30-40s - not really an old bint...

Still confused. I heard of a similar thing recently which showed the English DNA was overall 80% celtic meaning we weren't largely taken over by invading saxons, vikings etc with the surviving celts fleeing to Wales, Ireland, Scotland etc.


But then what is 'celtic'?? etc etc. Repeat to fade.

I think that it wasn't quite as detailed as the Celtic/British distinction.

It was done by broad regional grouping - I assume suffficient to determine general differences ie Northern European DNA characteristics are notably different from Middle Eastern. Therefore it is possible to split it up in the manner suggested.

Was amused at DNA thing as my son has a pretty unique one, wonder what they would have made of him

I thought everones was unique isn't that the whole big deal about, with genetic fingerprinting and such like?

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/a ... /5602/2381

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race#Human ... _variation (I know how much you like to rely on Wikipedia... )

Romani means gypsy--I think. So therefore Romania is full of people that have roamed around a bit,soon to be at Dover. It was on the Life of Brain. ,not the Dover bit,but the Latin translation.

Yes, Roma and Gypsy are synonymous but they don't all come from Romania (in fact they originate from India...)

There are so was told similarities, my sons is on a thing called Hamster (think thats its name) its a worldwide database his has something that should not be like it is and as far as they know there are only 7 others who show the same, 4 of them being brothers. It was explained to us but could have been in latin for all I understood.
But on the bright side it has meant when advances in his problem have been made he is one of the first to benifit as they use him as a fixed point or something

But I think that although everyone's DNA is unique (apart from identical twins of course), there are general similarities in the overall DNA structure (things that make us like our parents etc.) which mean that it is possible to identify geographic origins. Therefore although your son has a uniqu DNA structure, it would still be similar (on a general level) to a lot of other peoples

Isn't the whole point that its our attitudes and behavious that definte being British rather than ethnic origin?

Mind you its so funny how those attidudes can be so different in differnent parts of Britain.

I'm from London, probably the most cosmopolitan city in the world. On a trip to Cardiff last week, within 2 minutes of stepping into a cab, the cabbie was bemoaning the Somalians in the city who he said were "filthy dogs" ruining the place. Immigration was, apparently, the root of all our country's ills

That was a stark reminder of just how narrow-minded huge portions of British the population still are. It's amazing that, not only did the cab driver hold those views, he was perfectly happy to share them with a complete stranger with no qualms whatsoever. Boy was I glad to get back to London.

You must inhabit a particularly nice area of London, it always seems to me from watching the news and so on, to have more than its fair share of racial intolerence not to mention racially motivated crime (including murder). Perhaps all the skinheads have moved out since I was last there as well. And one taxi driver (a taxi driver with an extreme political point of view, there's a strange thing) make Cardiff worse than London.
Mind you its so funny how those attidudes can be so different in different parts of Britain.

To find out more about Englishness and to have a few good laughs as well, I strongly recommend "Watching the English, the Hidden Rules of English Behavior" by anthropologist Kate Fox. A very insightful and amusing book, that I have been plowing through the past few days.
Pakastani immigrants or gypsies, even Yanks, can be just as English as fifteenth generation English, IF they figure out the rules and rituals and follow them.