One of the frustrations the EU members had with the UK was our inability to say what we meant. Angela Merkel pointed it out a while ago – language, when you’re dealing with 27 other nations, has to be clear and unambiguous. She had no time for the British approach of going “no, no we really mean no, no we’re not….. why aren’t you doing what you said? We didn’t mean no, we meant convince us and we’ll say yes….”
I love the German attitude to social interaction; I have a friend in Berlin who, after a few hours in her company, simply asked everyone to leave her flat. “I need you to go now, so I can have some time to myself” she said, and we all went and found somewhere else to be. I’m still not sure if she was being “german” or downright rude. It was quite alarming the first time it happened. But after I got over the initial shock, I found I really respected her for it. A noticed that a few of my friends from Berlin would speak with a similar forth-rightedness (? is that a word?) that I found shocking at first, but learned to really appreciate.
I was sent this and was told we in the UK needed to take heed.
