Which European country has most in common with the UK?

Interested   Tue Mar 02, 2010 10:49 pm GMT
In my experience Sweden appears quite similar to the UK in many regards, for better and for worse. Both countries have developed an over-the-top PC culture, both countries have huge socialist government spending on things like television and radio and creating services for minorities, etc. Both countries have this thing about pandering to ethnic minority groups, particularly Muslims. In both countries displays of patriotism from the natives is generally considered unfavourable, and avoided as if it makes you a Nazi or simply a weirdo.

Above all, despite having this passionate desire to pander to minorities at the expense of their own culture, both countries have this strange obsession with their own currencies and rejecting the Euro - if you've come this far in raping your heritage, what's a currency?
John   Tue Mar 02, 2010 11:22 pm GMT
Ireland
.   Tue Mar 02, 2010 11:51 pm GMT
Netherlands
Mariette   Tue Mar 02, 2010 11:54 pm GMT
Romania
Original Name   Wed Mar 03, 2010 12:01 am GMT
Ireland isn't really anything like the UK. Both countries speak English as the main language, that's where the similarities end. The mentality and national identity of the two are very different.
JOjo   Wed Mar 03, 2010 12:37 am GMT
The Netherlands... they both speak English as a mother tongue. ;-)
Skippy   Wed Mar 03, 2010 3:58 am GMT
Definitely not Sweden. UK (ok, and Sweden for that matter) are more open market economies than they get credit for (UK certainly more so, however). And I'd say those from the UK are exactly like the French.

Yeah, just kidding :-D
Revealer of truth   Wed Mar 03, 2010 4:06 am GMT
Probably Poland given that half of Poland lives in the UK.

But if we're not restricted to European countries then the country with the most in common is obvious: Pakistan.
Xie   Wed Mar 03, 2010 4:57 am GMT
The UK has been smart not to give up their own Sterling. It's very obvious that the Euro is being weakened by all the pressure by those less well-to-do newcomers and older members who have serious government debts.

I don't like the pound for being of such a high price as a foreigner, but I guess most Brits wouldn't want to see their economy being affected by the eurozone.

I can only see an interesting phenomenon that countries like the UK and Sweden didn't join the Euro for some sort of self-interests, which now appear to be more rational than ever. If you have a sound economy, but a small population (exception the UK, the third largest population in western europe), why should you bother to join a large party with several huge debtors and poor guys?
Xie   Wed Mar 03, 2010 4:59 am GMT
pardon the typos, haven't posted for quite a while.
brainwashed leftist   Wed Mar 03, 2010 5:05 am GMT
<<If you have a sound economy, but a small population (exception the UK, the third largest population in western europe), why should you bother to join a large party with several huge debtors and poor guys? >>


What do you mean "why"? They're poor, we're rich. We have to give them our money. Besides, we're responsible for their problems. They deserve revenge. And those other countries got into debt because they had a rough childhood. We need to help them out with affirmative action.

How could you not understand? What, are you Hitler or something?
Xie   Wed Mar 03, 2010 5:12 am GMT
>>What do you mean "why"? They're poor, we're rich. We have to give them our money. Besides, we're responsible for their problems. They deserve revenge. And those other countries got into debt because they had a rough childhood. We need to help them out with affirmative action.

How could you not understand? What, are you Hitler or something? <<

You got a good name.

FR Germany (previously known as West Germany) has already borne the twin burdens of former East Germany and the Euro. It's up to Germany (and her neighboring rich neighbors) to take up this kind of, what I see, very moral and idealistic responsibility of taking care of little brothers.

Even an eventual takeover of Taiwan would be costly, not to say South Korea uniting with North Korea. History just repeats itself, and even if a country has been divided for decades, normally the richer side would be politically interested BUT hardly economically interested in the poorer side.

It wouldn't be a lot of fun either to force me to help my own relatives in a "moral" way. That's self-interest.
PARISIEN   Wed Mar 03, 2010 11:34 am GMT
<< I can only see an interesting phenomenon that countries like the UK and Sweden didn't join the Euro for some sort of self-interests, which now appear to be more rational than ever. If you have a sound economy, but a small population (exception the UK, the third largest population in western europe), why should you bother to join a large party with several huge debtors and poor guys? >>

-- Do you *really* think the UK has a "sound economy"?

From the Financial Times:

"There are good reasons for the weakness and volatility of sterling. Among industrial countries, Britain’s economic fundamentals are uniquely awful. As regards public debt and deficits, Britain’s true fiscal circumstances are about as bad as Greece’s reported situation, once we allow for the understatement of UK public debt through the off-balance-sheet accounting tricks of the past decade."
"During the long boom preceding the crisis, fiscal policy was relentlessly pro-cyclical, with public spending rising steadily as a share of gross domestic product. The size of the bank bail-out reflected failures of UK regulation that permitted the financial system’s balance sheet to pass 400 per cent of GDP."
"Britain has four, inconsistent, features. It is a small, open economy, with a large, internationally exposed financial sector, its own minor-league currency and limited fiscal spare capacity. This makes it uniquely vulnerable."
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d58ada72-256a-11df-9cdb-00144feab49a.html

And from the Times of London:

"It says something about your currency when foreign exchange dealers are even prepared to swap it for the Zimbabwean dollar. Yet this was the pitiful fate of sterling yesterday as it suffered its biggest rout on the currency markets for more than a year."
"Apart from the pastings received at the hands of the US dollar and the euro, sterling also fell by more than 1.7 per cent against Zimbabwe’s much-mocked paper, completing a decline of more than 7 per cent since the end of January."
"Some economists are convinced that this could be the start of a sterling rout, with investors losing confidence in Britain’s resolve to tackle the gaping hole in its public finances."
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article7046086.ece
Carlo Scearn   Wed Mar 03, 2010 6:48 pm GMT
Revealer of truth - nice statement, hehe, but actually there are just 1-2 mln Poles in the UK, and the rest ---->38 mln still lives in Poland :P Maybe, we do have more Tesco's and pubs than England, and our winters (except 2010) are becoming warmer and quite rainy :) Poland and UK are also very pro American...which also makes them similar ....
Sweden   Thu Mar 04, 2010 12:32 am GMT
I doubt they have much in common with regards to your bigoted views.

Great Britain (probably not the UK, as Northern Ireland has to be regarded as a colony in a way) went around the world robbing and pillaging from other nations.

Now it has become a reasonably fair nation in a way, but make no mistake, PC'ness will only be allowed to go so far. The powers that be have no intention of becoming non-powers that be.

As for Sweden, well it enjoys the advantages of being a rich Western country, and no doubt will not easily lose that either. But it doesn't have the same racist, colonial history as Britain.

Therefore, if they aren't particularly racist, and are pretty open to other cultures and minorities, it's no doubt because they never developed the same kind of superiority complex, and thus don't feel they have to compensate, but rather that they never felt they lorded it over them in the first place.