It could be that I am not worried because the one bird that has been proved to have the strain was found on the other coast.
It could also be that I have adopted the same attitude as most Brits - stoical.
What I have noticed since I have lived here is the almost total absence of drama connected to these kind of issues.
It is one of the most surprising discoveries for me living here. When Diana died I was in awe of the amount of people who went to her funeral or who put flowers down and all the display of emotion. I had always been told that Brits are reticent and do not like these displays of emotion at all!
What I have learned is that there is a lot of emotion going around in this country, births of babies of MP's are shown on the national news, deaths of famous people (hero's like George Best) seem to be shown for ever and loads of display of emotion around these subjects.
Compare that to the emotion about the London bombings, I was so impressed with the way that was dealt with, how quick the police got onto the leads of the people who did this. Awful to see all these hurt people but somehow there wasn't that much emotion nor drama attached to it, not by the media and not by the victims. It was all about 'OK, this happened, it is absolutely horrific but we now have to move on and not let it get to us'. 'We are British'.
And now..the bird flu...
Did you know that in other countries the poultry consumption has gone down dramatically? And that France for instance still is 20% under the normal level?
So not in the UK, mind you, sales have not been affected at all, there were even more eggs sold than normally (well.. thinks.. it *is* almost Easter I suppose :))
I saw a short interview on the TV asking a woman 'Are you going to still eat chicken?' and she answered 'Of course! I am British'!
Which made me think where that remark came from? What does it matter if she is British? Bird Flu doesn't seem to care a lot which country it lives in! Then I realised.. it is not that, it is the fact that in times of aversity this is how to behave. You DO NOT give in, you defiantly go with the flow and do what you would normally do and at the same time 'combat' whatever it is that is threatening you.
I bet there is huge historical reasons for this :-)
3 comments:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/tvaradarajan/
See! I could work for the Wall Street Journal! :-)
Well John and I decided that as he wasn't going to take his defrosted frozen sandwiches back home (as freezing defrosted bread again is not good) and as he couldn't feed them to the birds anymore out of danger for his own life he would throw them at them from the car with the motor running....
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