Where Europe stops and England starts

The UK is technically part of Europe but the English Channel (a thin strip of water dividing England and the rest of Europe) could be as wide as the Atlantic Ocean.

Ask anyone what continent the UK is in and you can't argue, it is Europe. But ask most people living in the UK if they are a European and they will look at you with the "you have a scorpion crawling out of your mouth" look or at least a little confused and thoughtful.

Why?  Well I think it all becomes a bit muddy and non-factual then, it's just a general feeling...it may be an undiluted amount of imperialism remaining.  We aren't part of anything else, we are Great Britain*.  The European Parliament straighten our bananas (yes I know they come on a plane but they are still ours - get off 'em), they tell us how much hog we can have in our roast, they are interfering money wasting....oh you get the picture...until we want to the part of the EU working directive so we can put our feet up on a Sunday then all is Euro-harmony.  You see : muddy!

We want to be part of the Ryder Cup, we enjoy the crassness of the Eurovision song contest, but do we want to be put in the same cart of people as the cheese eating surrender monkeys? Nope!

The UK population is so diverse. We are Roman, Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Normans (can we try to forget that bit?!), African, Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Bengali, West Indian, Cypriots, Greek, Poles...we are a wordwide mix of cultures and people.  We now have a large Eastern European immigration populous. In my experience the Europeans I know (non-British) are happy to be called European. It's just the non-European Europeans that are non-European - get it?!

So, in summary (for the intrigued Canadians), the UK is in Europe.  The UK population would never refer to themselves are European, unless there was something in it for them and then of course we are!

Clear as mud!!!!  Anybody else want the baton? I think I just dropped it!

*I'll explain the difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and the British Isles another day!!