I am not anti-American

An Englishman, an American and a Canadian walk into a bar in Bangkok - and nobody could tell the difference, because to any non-occidental they were culturally indistinguishable from one another.

The Captain's mailbag usually has at least one or two patronising messages along the lines of 'tut, our American cousins eh', or 'when are going to go a bit easy on the Americans?'. You'd really have to be British to believe that I am in any way anti-American. For the past 60 years, the English have been labouring under the ludicrous misapprehension that they're in some way still globally relevant or important, and for the last 20 years have had the belief that England is in some way the intellectual superior of North America. Hence it's very easy for my British readers, when I comment on the latest act of hypocrisy or incompetence from this side of Atlantic, to believe that since 'it could only happen in America', I'm being anti-American.

Just to put an end to this preposterous fallacy, consider the following:

Information
The Sun remains Britain's most popular 'newspaper'.

Political naivety
Despite a recession, the poll tax and increasing tory corruption, the British still voted John Major into office.

Personal responsibility
It's always someone else's fault when a British driver is fined by a speed camera.

Violence
Britain, the peace-loving home of tolerance and fair play, is also the country that gave the world happy slapping

Freedom
Compulsory ID cards. Enough said.

The USA is far from perfect, but it at least it doesn't need a lot of pompous, lazy, uneducated has-beens from England to defend it.