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Is Aussie Pom bashing harmless fun, or is there real hatred? |
Travel Info When I talk to Aussies they love to hate Poms, they claim it is is good spirits (one guy said it was their national sport) and I can understand a healthy rivalry. But, I recently met some Aussies who changed my mind, they were so rude and spiteful, I know that you get bad people all over the world but they left an extremely bad impression of Australians with me. Are their opinions on poms more widespread? Travel Tips nah... harmless stuff. We poke fun of others, but if you get to know us aussie wel enough you will find that we also are able to take it and laugh at ourselves too. Others WTF is a pom? Wouldn't you rather be playing Pokemon than thinking about this? In many cases, we Aussies are just having a bit of fun with the poms, It is just friendly rivalry, we do it with the kiwi's and yanks too. We get a kick out of 'tit for tat' banter that goes with it and we know you guys take the bait every time. There is a small element in all societies that really do go too far, but fortunately they are a small minority. Usually, our pom bashing is related to sporting events such as cricket and rugby. Many Aussies can trace there origins to the United Kingdom, Some poms I've come across, believe they are a little more Superior to us because they believe we all decedents of convicts that the English sent here in the 1780's and early 1800's, and this attitude stirs up a bit of resentment. Any tourist who visits our country with an attitude of superiority will cop a bit of nationality bashing from the ozzies. Harmless fun. I have lots of friends from England and yes it is usually sports based. Many I have travelled with, some have settled in Australia and many I met in England. I am of Irish background and i said to one of my English friends that "You lot are responsible for running my people out of our homeland and banished us to Australia for the terms of our natural lives. I must thank you for that" He roared with laughter. We also share the same dry and sarcastic sense of humour and I have noticed that is lacking in most Americans. Overall, it's just harmless fun and it is heightened with sports such as Cricket, Rugby and Football Some of the dimmer members of Australian society take this seriously. I have met just one or two. Actually one of them wasn't really dim, that was the peculiar thing. We did have a slew of English people arriving after the second world war and there were a few among them who seemed to have the attitude that they were going to show us how things should be done. Nobody likes to be "instructed" by a new arrival. There also were some who moaned rather too loudly because things were "different". Australians mostly don't care for Association football just to give a petty example. I know of one family that sent their children "home" to a boarding school because of the perceived poor quality of secondary education in some parts of Australia. (At the time in fact they may have been correct.) There were quite probably a lot of things in the UK then that we did not have or did not want here in those times. Some of the English immigrants went "home" as soon as they could. Some of those that did came back. This caused some amusement here. There is also the remains of sectarianism. As late as the 1960s there was a real divide between Catholic (mostly Irish) and Protestant (mostly English and Scots) in this country. It faded a fair bit after about 1965 or so, but sometimes echoes can be detected and there was a whisper of it around during the recent republic referendum. When I was about 10 years old I was told by a Catholic boy that he would not join the Boy Scouts because if he did he would then have to join the army if there was a war and he would have to go and fight for the "bloody British". It does not logically follow of course, but you get the idea behind it. It took me years to work out what he was going on about. Descendants of convicts? More free immigrants arrived in two years during the 1850s than all the convicts that had been sent in the previous 70-80 years. Immigration from one place or another has never stopped. In fact transportation of convicts stopped by 1860 because convicts saw it almost as a reward and because of reforms in the UK. Depends on the individual. Personally, I hate them and their pale skin, lack of culture, ugliness and accent. Hatred? That's a strong word. I think it is a two way street. If an Australian meets a Pom who insists that the UK is superior to Australia the Pom is likely to get a very pointed response, but usually we rub along together fairly well. It is a pity they can't play cricket, though. |
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