why are most Pommy's ungrateful whingers
It's in their genes, their DNA...
They're known globally as whingers and whiners
Wierzbicka observes that a whinger is someone who lacks the toughness and resilience that are ideal cultural traits in Australia. According to the anthropologist Bruce Kapferer, the value placed on these attributes has its roots in the founding myth of Australian nationalism: the Anzac tradition. To quote Donald Horne in The Lucky Country, ‘The early explorers, Anzac Day, these commemorate comradeship, gameness, exertion of the Will, suffering in silence. To be game, not to whinge – that’s the thing’.
A perfect illustration of this attitude can be found in the satiric series of Chopper Read skits in the Ronnie Johns Half Hour, a mid-2000s Australian sketch show. In the skits, the comedian Heath Franklin, dressed as the notorious criminal Mark ‘Chopper’ Read, goes around telling people to stop whingeing and ‘harden the f* up!’.
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