Why do people in the UK often pretend they're not in Europe?

[Kasz216]

Final-Fan said:

Kasz216 said:

Lord Flashheart said:

The UN say that "continent" can refer not only to a geographical continent, but it may also be defined on grounds of culture and politics, and Europe's culture and politics is undoubtedly different from Asia.

Or as someone else said "because they made the first textbooks"

I've already rebutted that point twice in the thread as to why Europe ISN'T culturally distinct from asia... to which nobody has offered a proper reply. If you were to divide Asia and Europe into two continents by culture... the Middle East and Indian areas would in fact be part of "Europe". Due to those nations being closer to Europe culturally then asia. When people make the cultural arguement... what they really mean is "White people live here! Non white people live in Asia!" It's an artificat of past racism.

Isn't it true that, although people often think of Asia as "entire Eurasian supercontinent minus Europe", if you actually ask them about it they'll consider India and the Middle East separate entites from "Asia"?  IMO that both supports your point and undercuts your position. 

At the very least wouldn't you agree that when you say "part of Europe" you mean that only if forced to choose between "it's Europe" and "it's Asia"?  BTW I think this whole culture argument is a big mess you might well be underestimating; well, the Middle East is probably closer to Europe, but India ... I dunno, it's pretty different from both IMO. 

I don't see how that actually undercuts my point. Even if they were saw as seperate entities they aren't seen as continents... when their claim is stronger because geographically... at least they are sub continents while Europe is nothing more then a pennisula... even England itself would have more of a claim to continent then England would... due to it not being connected to mainland europe by land. This does bring me around to my central point though that people missed in their rage over geographical and geological fact. Europe as a continent was created out of europeon vanity on sketchy scientific terms... the same is true for the UK not being part of europe. If your going to use subjective measures in place of scientific measures... you can't rightfully say the UK is part of europe since continents then become something simply a matter of opinion... meaningless designations to vaguely define cultural and poltical situations when there already exist better terms for it since terms like this still combine countries like Slovenia with England.