Every country has national myths, and one of Britain's most enduring is that of the stiff upper lip. This suggests that Britons are strong, self-reliant types who remain calm and unbending in the face of adversity. Of course, many national myths are just that, and on April 14th a survey instead painted Britons as quivering jellies, beset by fear and anxiety over everything from crime to terrorism, the economy and the pace of technological change.rnOn its face the poll, conducted on behalf of the Mental Health Foundation (MHF), a charity, makes worrying reading. Three-quarters of its respondents agreed that the world is scarier today than it was ten years ago, and that people are more frightened and anxious. They blamed everything from a government seen as keen to hype terrorist threats (an accusation recently made by Paddy Ashdown, a former leader of the Liberal Democrats) to the supposed infantil-isation produced by official exhortations to "mind the gap" at train platforms and eat plenty of fruit and vegetables, topped off by a media that cheerfully regurgitates scare stories in order to shift papers.
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