Britain searches for a national motto

By Mark Rice-Oxley, The Christian Science Monitor

The French have their "Liberté, égalité, fraternité." The Americans have "In God we trust." Even tiny nations like Antigua and Fiji have stirring calls to nationhood and faith.

Not so Britain. But the government has now launched a quest for a national maxim. The BBC and the Times newspaper jump-started the process by soliciting suggestions on their websites.
"Once Great: Britain," offered one contributor. "Americans who missed the boat," read a second. "At least we're not French," quipped a third.

Upon first taking office, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that he lived by his high school's hallowed maxim, "usque conabor" (I will try my utmost).

But one respondent to the Times' survey turned the joke back on the prime minister by offering a fake Latin motto—"Dipso, fatso, bingo, ASBO, Tesco"—which neatly addresses the country's contemporary problems with alcohol, obesity, gambling, antisocial youth, and materialism.

A Monitor mini-survey revealed a similarly jaundiced view. "Get blotto, play the lotto, that's our motto," was the only printable response.

The government says it has plenty of worthwhile suggestions. But clearly Brown will have to "try his utmost" to convince his nation that it's a worthwhile exercise. As one contributor put it, "We're British; we don't do mottos."

Readers of the Times newspaper (London) offered more than 1,000 suggestions for a new national motto.

Here is a sampling:
Best before nineteen-thirty-nine.
May contain nuts.
Wallowing in a postcolonial miasma.
We made other countries great.
One nation under the thumb.
Dentistry is not our forte.
Hanging on in quiet desperation.
I want my country back.
No problem left untaxed.
Overpriced, overweight, overcrowded … over.