That's true, but there's a fine line between being respectably modest and glorifying mediocrity. While I'm proud of my countries ingenuity in inventing things like the lawn-mower and the Hills hoist, our Opening Ceremony's refusal to celebrate Australian Culture in any form other than the 'freewheeling larrikin' placed it firmly in the latter camp, for me.

The difficulty I have with the 'freewheeling larrikin' as an Australian emblem is that too often it translates into a declaration of a kind of wilful lack of engagement with anything but beer and the beach, which I think sells us tragically short as a nation. I mean, we may not have a history, but surely that means we should be talking up our ability to define the future, rather than the fact that we are a transient blip on the canvas of Western History. Oh well.

Back on topic -

I think that bringing Morris dancing into the 21st century (and to a whole new audience - subsidised or not  ) is key here. Surely after the BoB fly-past (that is, if the fight's not simply re-enacted by rival indie-bands dressed as Spitfires and Messerschmidts...), the English side from 2010 UEFA World Cup Morris dancing to the strains of A hard day's night. Performed by Amy Winehouse.

The problem is that so many of the emblems of Britishness are tied up with idealised images of the past - in particular of Imperial grandeur, and more recently of the Battle of Britain; and of course royalty, where many of the allegedly ancient traditions of ceremony are actually nineteenth-century inventions, dreamed up by desperate politicians and courtiers to try and counter Queen Victoria's deep unpopulararity for most of her reign.  Much of the real richness of our cultural heritage lies in the history from below that our leaders will simply not recognise.  It's actually quite difficult to find images of Britishness that command any sort of consensus, certainly from the present; it's why politicians who talk about defining Britishness end up making fools of themselves, and why our opening ceremony is likely to be condemned to half-heartedness, nostalgia and bland whimsy. 

(Scotland and Wales, it seems to me, have a much clearer sense of their own identity).