The British Abroad

Lock up our tourists on arrival
By Theodore Dalrymple
(Filed: 03/08/2003)


The customer is always right, of course, which is why I couldn't possibly
comment on the case of the Greek take-away owner who served some British
tourists and ended up with a broken leg, while the tourists ended up with an
instant prison sentence.

I can, however, comment on the behaviour of British tourists in general, as
it were, because - unfortunately - I have seen it with my own eyes, heard it
with my own ears and smelt it with my own nose. Suffice it to say that it is
not such as to improve one's opinion of the human race. If there are
worse-behaved tourists in the world than the British, I do not know them,
though I admit the Finns in St Petersburg run them a close second.
Fortunately, however, the Finns are few, while the British, alas, are many.

The British abroad, at least where they congregate in large numbers, are
loud, arrogant, coarse, drunken, vulgar, intimidating and stupid. They are,
not to put too fine a point upon it, the scum of the earth. Endowed by
nature with more than their fair share of ugliness, and completely lacking
in dignity or self-respect, let alone respect for others, they contrive to
arouse a Swiftian disgust in any impartial observer. Alas, this
preternatural unattractiveness is not confined to those who have crawled
from the lower depths of society: middle-class youth now believes it is
politically virtuous as well as psychologically healthy to behave in a
totally uninhibited fashion. Compared with the British abroad, the Germans
are gentlemen.

Can anything be done about it? Clearly not in Britain, for the British have
lost completely the ability to govern themselves. They are incapable of
recognising, let alone of solving, the most obvious of the problems that
beset them. They cannot see themselves as other people see them: if they
could, they wouldn't be as they are. The cause is lost in Britain.

It is therefore the foreigners who must save us from ourselves. It is the
only viable solution. I therefore suggest that the Spanish, Greeks and Turks
form a pact to arrest and place in preventive detention a half of British
tourists immediately on arrival. The fact of being a British tourist at a
resort popular with British tourists should be sufficient warrant. If more
formal charges are needed, conspiracy to vomit in public or to use
threatening behaviour towards waiters and others should suffice. After all,
if they weren't planning to behave badly, they would have come in the first
place: for no young Briton could enjoy himself without making himself
obnoxious to others. Nuisance is nine-tenths of their pleasure.

I am not in general in favour of the taking of hostages, but I make a
necessary exception in the case of British tourists. Families and friends
should be ruthlessly split by the foreign police: half to the beach, the
other half to the slammer. In the event of misbehaviour on the part of those
allocated to the beach, those in the slammer should be physically ill-used.
After all, what are foreign police for except to draw attention to the
contrast with our friendly local bobbies on the beat?

If this policy were relentlessly followed for a decade or two (the British,
being unaccustomed to learn, are rather slow at it) I have but little doubt
that British tourists would become as meek as those flocks of Japanese you
see, traipsing through the museums of the world, following the symbol held
aloft at the end of a stick by their guides.

Fascist foreign policemen of the world, do your duty: beat a British tourist
today!

"ROBBIE" <littleboyschutz.DeleteThis@tiscali.co.uk> wrote in message news:<bgjlf1$pht6b$1@ID-200782.news.uni-berlin.de>...
 > Lock up our tourists on arrival
 > By Theodore Dalrymple
 > (Filed: 03/08/2003)
 >
 >
 > The customer is always right, of course, which is why I couldn't possibly
 > comment on the case of the Greek take-away owner who served some British
 > tourists and ended up with a broken leg, while the tourists ended up with an
 > instant prison sentence.
 >
 > I can, however, comment on the behaviour of British tourists in general, as
 > it were, because - unfortunately - I have seen it with my own eyes, heard it
 > with my own ears and smelt it with my own nose. Suffice it to say that it is
 > not such as to improve one's opinion of the human race. If there are
 > worse-behaved tourists in the world than the British, I do not know them,
 > though I admit the Finns in St Petersburg run them a close second.
 > Fortunately, however, the Finns are few, while the British, alas, are many.
 >
 > The British abroad, at least where they congregate in large numbers, are
 > loud, arrogant, coarse, drunken, vulgar, intimidating and stupid.

The Swiftian psychiatrist (isn't that what Dalrymple is?) is a bit
swift to jump to a conclusion, as I have read elsewhere that the
arrested British family were actually residents of Athens, not
tourists. Be that as it may, I seem to recall our very own GO
expressing some notions about the fact that the British working class
does not travel well overseas. You may even find something on this
theme in the descriptions of World War I in CUFA. And yes, these days
the Flying Brits are much more numerous than the Flying Finns, as any
visitor to Orlando will find, though strangely, the Brits who visit
the US seem quite well behaved, not willing, I suspect, to tangle with
our gun-toting and trigger-happy cops here in Florida, nor to spend
time in our luxurious prisons. Mind you, I believe the Greeks jails
are even more Spartan than their hotels.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->