I think the English are basically an uptight nation. We work some of the longest hours, for the least pay, the least public holidays, with little job security. We have **** weather for 10 months of the year and we're told that buying stuff that we don't need will make us happy. We've lost most of our manufacturing industry - and the thing that made us a proud nation, 'Made in Britain' has gone. Replaced by a bunch of crooks in banking and finance whilst our great contribution to public health, the NHS is quietly being sold off to private entreprenures.
We have nothing tangible left to be proud of - except our countryside, which is encroached on more and more by supermarkets, out of town retail parks, selling us more **** that we don't need and turning our old town centres with their local businesses into ghettoised ghost towns. Some people try to blame immigrants for it all, when it's actually immigrant nationals who do the majority of public sector jobs on low pay that keep this nation going, whilst benefit spongers sit on their arses moaning about it.
I think England is great, but it has nothing to some broken capitalist dream, former war general or false idolisation of a 'royal' family. My England is in the trees and the meadows, on the moors and cairns, cliff tops and beaches and through the music of the people who live and breathe the land.