Fish 'n' Chips? No thanks!

Porto, February 17th – I took my 14 years old son to the cathedral of my hometown’s sport club: “O Estádio do Dragão”. My favorite football team, F.C. Porto, was playing against Arsenal F.C., from London, UK, the first round of eighth-final for the UEFA Champions League. I had promised to my son, some time ago, I would take him to a football match in the “Dragon Stadium” and, I thought, there it is my chance: a football game with our favorite team against a team representing the creators of football.

My son has been educated loving FCPorto because I was educated, since I was 4 years old, loving FCPorto and also because it is good to educate children loving a champion team! We all wish to be champions, don’t we? So, there was I surrounded by blue-and-white colors, with my blue-and-white scarf worn around my neck, and for some reason, before the match started, I found myself trying to explain to myself why I don’t like English people. I really mean English, from England. Not British, not Scottish, not Walsh, not Irish.

First of all it is very necessary to understand the difference between United Kingdom and Great Britain. Although being an impossible mission, I will try anyhow. Literally, UK stands for “United Kingdom” which is a kingdom… united. “Kingdom” refers to a political regime: monarchy. “United” refers to parts which, for some reason, decided to share something. Now, UK is composed by England (the cruel colonizers), Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. They are supposed to be united but in fact Northern Ireland and Scotland have been kindly invited, by the power of weapons and lots of cruelty, to “get united” to England. Wales is no more than a vacation colony for the royal house members and other British high-society people. Regarding the designation “Great Britain”, this is just the name given to the archipelago also including Republic Of Ireland.

What do I know about UK? A lot of things I would prefer to know nothing about. There is a long historical connection between Portugal and England with very little profits for Portugal, of course. A clear proof of that is the recent “police case” involving a little English girl called Madeleine McCann who was spending holidays in Algarve, Portugal, together with her parents and has disappeared from home while her parents where getting drunk in a local pub… The case seemed to be pretty difficult to resolve but our British “friends” didn’t think so: our Police has been offended, our Justice has been offended, our media have been offended and, at a certain point, I was pretty close to be sure that UK would send Army, Navy and RAF to invade Portugal. All this to undercover a total lack of responsibility of an English couple of (bad) parents.

Some years ago I spent a couple of weeks in two British towns: Manchester and Edinburgh. Scots are very nice people. Yes, they are. English are a crap. Yes, they are. Manchester was an old and dirty town, with no urbanization planning at all, plenty of socially segregated Indians and “cold fishes”. Restaurants had a poor service, food was bad (English cuisine does not exist at all!), hotels staff were rude, taxi service was a mess as much as traffic in general. Is it better today? I have no idea but I do not want to have, anyhow. Meanwhile, I have met several people from England, from Scotland and from Republic of Ireland. Guys, they do not seem to be made of the same material, believe me.

England is the father (or mother) of Apartheid. India is a tremendous example what can English be capable of. They have been there from 15th to 20th century and after they left only the chaos has remained. South Africa (from 18th century), is still, in all aspects, a barrel of gunpowder. United States (the new world) need to thank France and Spain for the help they received to get rid of UK (see United States Declaration of Independence, 1776). However, North-Americans have not yet got rid of a couple of contagious English diseases. What can the world learn about colonization and decolonization through England history? That they are racists? That they are xenophobic? Or, are they an altruistic people thinking only of helping the poors of the world? Every time I think about England I think about leeches. I wonder why…

Port Wine is an English creation. A large British community has lived in Portugal for centuries and a couple of them have found a way to use the northern ills of Portugal to produce a special wine which is today world-wide famous. That is why most of Port Wine brands are in English language. The big Port Wine producers have used for decades the cheap labor of simple and humble people in Portugal working hard to survive. Working conditions were very close to slavery and all profits from wine production were transferred to England, only. The lords of the Port Wine always have behaved as kings in their own kingdom as Portugal have been always very permissive to these sanguinary and snob beings coming from a cold archipelago in the middle of a cold northern sea.

English people do not mix together with foreigners! Everywhere they go they create their own British communities, very much tight blockade. They are only very much opened to other peoples from English speaking countries: USA, Australia and New-Zealand. British hardly have a peaceful relationship with other cultures and they never try to speak other languages. When I was in Britain some years ago, I remember how Scots were very much patient with my “international” English language (a little bit less bad than it is today). I remember most of them have tried to empathize with me and get me integrated in their environment. But those were the Braveheart descendents who hate to be designated as… English. I also remember that English, the guys from England, have shown (they still have) no patience at all with my poor English language. The best I got from these silly monarchists was a couple of them trying to communicate with me using a ridiculous spoken… Spanish language!

Have you ever seen a beautiful English woman? Yes, but it is not easy, is it? For some reason, the rate of gays in England is so high. Or is it because they have got that weird ancient Greek habit of marrying to women but get sex with men? English women are self-convinced. “So what?”, you could ask as English people it is generally like so, but I am just trying to include some more substance to introduce another issue here: family. First of all, I still insist on the premise that a child should not be forced to live with homosexual parents because that is not the normal social pattern (and I hope it won’t ever be!). Secondly, experts in Sociology use to say that weather contributes quite a lot to form a specific social behavior of populations. As the British weather is awful, people should stay together at home longer and like so reinforce the family laces. As a matter of fact, that is not true because British men spend one third of their lives working, one third sleeping and the other third in pubs drinking pints of that awful British beer (mainly the dark one). Our old “allies”, England, usually attack violently what they call Portugal’s 3rd-worldism in many aspects like, for instance, child labor exploitation. I wonder why..

I am still trying hard to understand what is UK doing in European Community! Usually they are very much against everything, they are not much appreciated by all other members, they seem to exist to serve USA interests, not ours, they have refused to be part of the Eurozone⁽¹⁾ and I believe they will keep out only for selfish economical reasons, they drive left while everybody drives right, they still use the same units of measurement they used in medieval England while others have evolved to the International System of Units (SI) and they still insist on “fish ‘n’ chips” as the best meal for human beings while all other members have long since found beef, pork, vegetables, fruits and so on. Actually, UK should be only another state of USA, another star in the US flag.

What good can come from England? Not good wind, nor good marriage. Stuff like Pink Floyd, Genesis, Dire Straits, Coldplay and Muse is the good we still can get from that land of carrots. The match in London will be very difficult for FCPorto because usually UEFA’s referees have something against Portuguese teams and, even worse, this season my favorite football team it is really down. I guess Arsenal will step forward but I would really love if it were not like so.

May the gods be with FCPorto…