I can still remember the absolute shock I felt when I realised once and for all that almost everything I'd grown up believing about Britain was wrong.

I'd been on a long, long journey to that point: a leftie since the mid-90s, but it took me until 2015 to finally accept it.

Maybe the very first step on that journey was being taught about Culloden at school. "That's ethnic cleansing", I spluttered. I was stupefied.

But there's this reassuring, self-enforcing bubble that most Britons live in. "We're Britain - we're decent. It can't be that bad"

But it IS that bad. We ARE that corrupt.

The English language itself is the most manipulative, insincere, inauthentic language ever invented. It is literally designed to manipulate; it's the opposite of honest.

We grow up being taught that:

- The Empire 'civilised' the world
- Scottish, Welsh and Irish history are all somehow irrelevant
- Everything bad that Churchill did is just whitewashed totally
- We have a 'proud history' of 'tolerance'

Tell that one to all the people we've slaughtered down the centuries.

Tell that one to the Chagos Islanders.

Tell that one to all those Jews turned away before the war began.

Tell that one to our veterans even now.

My God: even Elizabeth I's reign, which encompassed much conflict, bloodshed and repression, is just glossed over as part of some national myth. And as children, most of us swallow that myth - so it perpetuates itself.

Of course, almost every country has a national myth. Almost every country's national story is built on lies - because history is written by the winners.

About the only exception anywhere is Germany: brutally honest about its past in a way Italy or Japan are not.

But also in a way the US, UK, and so many others with horrible imperialist pasts (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal - or most of all, Turkey) are not.

If a human being can't be honest with themselves about their past, they will have problems. Serious ones.

The same applies with nation states. In Britain, apparently, it's OUTRAGEOUS to tell the truth about and confront our past - which only makes you realise how much so many have to hide.

Britain has always been classist and elitist from top to bottom. Always been a chumocracy.

The patronage which the Prime Minister still bestows even now goes back centuries and centuries. Britain's always been a place where it's not about what someone knows... but WHO they know.

The City of London? It's the money laundering capital of the world.

And so many overseas British territories are up to their necks in tax avoidance that one day, someone might realise that Britain is the tax avoidance capital of the world.

If it wanted to stop it, it could. It refuses to.

"But we're Britain! We are good!"

No. We're not. Even our laughable sporting tradition of 'fair play' is basically a cover for our own nefarious acts. We boo diving footballers cos they're foreign but flying elbows from 'honest British lads' are 'part and parcel of the game'.

Right now, in the face of the worst global pandemic in a century, we are opposing developing countries being allowed to make their own vaccines. Can you imagine that?

THAT's the kind of country we are. THOSE are the 'values' we're built on.

Money and property. Might is right. Greed is good. That's why England is home to the Greed Is Good League - and woe betide anyone threaten that, as we all saw last week.

And the world's most individualistic culture, the US? It's based on 'English liberty' and English law.

The US just carried on what we started. Also: look around the world.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, India, Kashmir, Pakistan, Ireland, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, South Africa... our imperial pawprint and the chaos we caused is absolutely EVERYWHERE.

What do we think we were doing in all those places - and so many more besides? Doing 'good'?!

No. We were pillaging and stealing EVERYTHING. As we still do now in a neocolonial world with the same winners and same losers.

When I look on from Uruguay - a supposedly 'Third World' country, which has a functioning welfare state, which has a functioning government, which has a functioning democracy where everyone's vote counts, where people are kind and friendly - all I feel at Britain is disgust.

The influence of the British national myth is extraordinary even now. All over the world, very much including here, people still believe it. They still imagine that Britain is a good, fair, decent place.

But good, fair, decent places don't have ever-spiralling homelessness.

Good, fair, decent places don't stigmatise those fleeing for their lives.

Good, fair decent places don't bomb those poor people in the first place.

Good, fair, decent places care about OTHERS.

Britain still has its fair share of decent, caring people. But they're shouted down, drowned out, by chancers and crooks and narcissists and bullies and sociopaths and out and out parasites: in politics, in the media, across many different industries.

The culture and environment those people grew up in is what produced them. And continues to do so. Boris Johnson is just an emblem of it; no more than that.

Some people really *do* have a never-ending financial tap at their disposal.

Some people really *are* above the law.

No 'decent country' anywhere savages legal aid or destroys the welfare state like Britain has; no 'decent country' would ever elect a man as venal as Johnson either.

But again, look: what happened to Major, Brown, Miliband or Corbyn? They were crushed.

What happened to Blair, Cameron or Johnson? Slick-haired oil salesmen, the lot of 'em... and they all WON.

FPTP or no FPTP, we get the politicians and leaders we deserve. Far too many British people actively *choose* this - because it fits their view of the world.

"I'm alright, Jack". That is Britain. That, for the most part, has always been Britain. Even our only truly socialist government ever was gone within 6 years... because people wanted things.

Then they wanted more and more and more. Thatcher wasn't an accident: she was the result

And it really doesn't matter how appalling the Prime Minister's conduct is if people's house values continue to rise. That's the bottom line.

So is a culture in which leeching landlords are renamed as 'entrepreneurs' and 'business geniuses'.

'Affordable housing' - what does that even mean?

Almost always, it's unaffordable - and almost always, it's set against a majority of new developments which is MUCH MORE UNAFFORDABLE.

That's funny: I thought the market was about supply and demand?

But it's not. Because if it was, there would be supply to meet ever-rising demand.

Instead, it's more like a Ponzi scheme. That is what crony capitalism is; a corrupt Ponzi scheme. With the UK close to global leaders in that parasitical enterprise.

It's all wrong. All so, so, so wrong. The miserable, angry, truculent little island with the saggy waves, grey lifestyle and the rich urinating on the poor every single day.