It's the outsiders' view of it, McGrath. We don't care about petty little differences between English, Scots, Welsh, and Irish... We see you all as a bunch of sodding Brits, drinking your fecking Earl Grey tea, and exclaiming "Bloody Hell!" when things don't work out as you had planned.

These are icons we're talking about here, mate. Superficial impressions that register on the ill-informed mind by way of mass media and glib stereotypes. If we wanted hard, cold facts, mate, we'd go to the sodding encyclopedia Brittanica for them. ;-D

Oh, the English also say "mate" a lot when they are having a conversation with someone else and they want to give it an air of familiarity. See the example above in paragraph 2.