Here’s what Chris pulled out…

Your Majesty, we have met before, remember me?…. I am the lion that stands on your crown, I am the Dragon that is the spirit of your nation, I am the sword that rose from the lake and was given to Arthur, I am the blood that runs through your nation’s veins, I am the breath that your nation breathes, I am the morning mist on the downs, I am the heather on the moors, I am the sun that shines on the Dales, I am the mountains of caledonia and Cymry, I am the white cliffs of Albion, I am the beat of the Morris man’s bells, I am the sound of the pipes over the hills, I am the snow that falls on the meadows. I am the soldier who fought for you, and you father, and your father’s father, and his, I am the Gesith that stood on Senlac field, I am the wise old man you met when you were young, I am the young man your great grandchildren will meet, I am the ghost of the past, and I am the future…. Remember me now?… Your Majesty?
Sigbrit

Sigbrit, we have met before, remember?…. I am the rapidly descending silence every time you walk into a room, I am the pretty Somali girls who laughed at you on the bus, I am the modern world that makes you shit your silly pants in fear and confusion, I am the weird smell of rotting dog food that you leave behind when you do, I am your parochial bafflement at exotic foodstuffs such as ‘sizzling beef in black bean sauce’, I am the look of disappointment glued permanently to your mother’s face, I am your grandchildren’s crippling embarrassment, I am the ghost of your past failures, and I am your dismal future…. Remember me now?… Sigbrit?

“We must continue to strengthen our military relationship …. For when the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack fly side by side, we are greater than the sum of our parts. And together, we can forge a better, safer future.”
————————————————————————-
And George Washington is tossing and turning in his grave…
————————————————————————
Ladies and gentlemen, the noises you hear are not the rumbling of your empty stomachs, its the noises from the grave of George Washinton who is tossing and turning after he heard the above quotes…of mixing stripes with the cross…And the sudden cold wind you have exppearnced just now is not due to the drastic change of weather, its created by the joint sighs of all those dead people who fought for their independence of their stars and stripes from the Cross of the empire,
colonelartist

Whew, thanks for putting my mind at rest. When I heard the rumbling and felt the cold wind, I thought Mothra was trying to hump the Angel of the North again.

The empire is firing the gun thats placed on the colony’s shoulder…And the colony just like many other ex-colonies is happy to obliged..Dead men dont laugh, they sigh….the gales of laughter you hear is actually the people who are standing on the graves of those sighing dead people, and lauging at them…(I didnt say this , Kipling said something like this, I dont remember where but I remember reading something like that, and since I was not paying attention as I was reading it, so I cannot quote him word by word….Calrification to the mods, just incase they do with me what obama did to mccrystal after the pathan within him woke up and he said those things)
colonelartist

After laughing at you lot for so long, I’m actually starting to worry about mods myself… awful lot of mopeds around these days. They remind me of this Constable painting:

That might not be exactly right… don’t ask me to draw it exactly cos I was kicking the piss out of a heron while I was looking at it.

I think that it should be, but that it should include a full expose ( with acute accent on the e) of the mystery religions/ occult religions practised by many of the most powerful people on the globe…e.g those who go to Bohemian Grove and spend so much time trying to persuade others towards their dark tawdry and thoroughly kitsch rituals and immorality towards others.
anti-fraudster

Mon Dieu! Vous parlez Francais? Avec un circu.. ced.. squiggle sous la “c”?

For too long now I’ve assumed that everyone on “Have Your Say” was either a halfwit or a quarterwit so coming across someone this clever really knocked me sideways. Finally, I realise that my blase (with a very cute accent on the “e”) attitude has caused me to miss some truly insightful comments (with a hairy, groaning umlaut on the “o”) .

But anti-fraudster didn’t stop there. He knows all the isms you’ve ever heard of and at least one of his own.

Hmmm …ruralwoman…darwinism? Not without some trenchant criticism on offer about social darwinism and its horrible links with eugenicism, one of the most evil and horrid beliefs out there. It might scare people so would have to be handled with care. Which is always part of the problem. While some religious beliefs e.g love God, love your neighbour, are beautiful and of highest goodness, others options: child sacrifice, puttee, suppression of women, and so on are to the vast majority abhorrent… and can cause nightmares. No use being prissily politicially correct, there is evil religion as well as good.
anti-fraudster

I’d go even further and suggest that eugenicismologists invented the halon women-suppression systems and silly puttee I’ve been having nightmares about.

As an aside, anti-fraudster has so far left around eight comments in that thread, including one where he has a dig at someone for getting the apostrophe wrong in one of their words. I thought that was pretty rich coming from somebody who can’t even get the words right.

Anyway. What’s the answer?

R.E. should get back to text. There are some really really important texts that should be part of everyone’s basic knowledge. For some the text will never come alive. This is the same for all texts.
For some inexplicable and very dumbed-down reason focussing on texts has gone out of fashion. Education without a decent amount of focussing on text breeds an unlearned and malleable generation whose idea of debate is to shout unconsidered and unvalidated slogans from different sides. My children have told me you can pass R.E exams with knowledge of one parable. Textual illiteracy unfortunately. Where are the well-read in the next generation? Who is to blame for this shocking ignorance? Many on this board have little to no knowledge of text, and just loads of prejudice. Once this question is posed in a “should we be aware of important texts?” frame the answer is stunningly obvious.
anti-fraudster

So. Is it all about really, really important texts? Are there very dumbed-down reasons for things not being textual enough any more? How can we validate our slogans? Should we listen to anti-fraudster?

I tried to emulate him and come up with a pithy answer – a different frame for the question that cuts through the bullshit and makes the answer stunningly obvious. Here is the frame I made. It’s the “You’d have to crush me to death under a pile of fossilized mastodon turds, weep remorsefully for an hour over my mangled remains, pull me out by my face, then crush me to death again under another pile of reassuringly expensive, prehistoric tods before I’d even consider paying attention to this pompous ass-hat’s content-free, pseudo-intellectual prattling for a single, interminably boring picosecond” frame.

Having been flying back and forth to Europe several times a year for many years, I have experienced several European airlines, BA being the latest. The multinational cabin crew, while attentive is still multinational (mostly Brazilian, probably cheaper). Regret to say that BA has lost the kind of “British” service one had come to expect. Air France goes out of their way to make sure their customers feel they are in France at 30,000ft as do Iberia and Lufthansa in varying degrees. In any event, BA’s fares are currently not competitive in the face of their rivals on the same routes. A great shame.
Charles Jordan, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Yeah, more national stereotyping on our British Airways flights, please. How about some rigid, posture-correcting seats for starters, and complementary bottles of upper-lip-stiffener handed out after take-off? The captain’s announcements could be heralded by bursts of Elgar. Laura Ashley decor. Window shutters replaced by nets. Maybe they could replace the Brazilians with a surly, disinterested – but above all, WHITE BRITISH – cabin crew that begrudgingly responds to calls for assistance ten minutes after they’ve been made. Drinks could be accompanied by endless free shots that taste like cough medicine, until we’re fighting in the aisles and waving our cocks about, shouting, “wwwwaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy!” while other passengers in bowler hats or twinset and pearls or both look on discreetly over the tops of their middle-class tabloids and tut disapprovingly. For entertainment, 10-year-old boys could be paraded up and down the plane to be spat, sworn and swung at, then locked in the hold until they’re 18, whereupon they’re released anonymously into a humming fart-cloud of hatred and speculation. All this in a pressurized atmosphere of simmering racial tension and repressed sexuality.

There has NEVER been a good reason for ever having an Asian Network paid for by the TV licence payer.

An ‘Anglo Saxon’ radio station would never be tolerated, neither would a ‘White British’ channel be tolerated by the powers that be. And for goodness sake, even England doesn’t merit a radio channel of its own although Wales, Scotland and NI do! So why on earth the Asian community should be so specially treated is a mystery.

Or is it?

- Alan, Bewdley, Worcs

And you know, as a White British (not in Wales, Scotland or NI) myself I find his logic hard to escape. I can’t have a channel tailored to my interests – I mean, what kind of channel would show endless repeats of Top Gear and QI – so no-one should get a channel tailored to their interests. The BBC should identify the Average Licence Payer – Middle-Aged, About 5′ 7″, No Non-White Genes At All, Lives In Bewdley, Worcs – and make only television and radio for that person. But you can’t say that without a bunch of PC drones accusing you of being some kind of selfish white imperialist bastard.

So what do you do when xenophobic petty nationalism goes mainstream? When the rabidly pro-multicultural BBC commissions the White series, Islingtonite haunts like Waitrose and M&S celebrate traditional English cuisine and even Labour ministers are hostile to foreigners just for arriving in Britain. Well, you could always get angry at a dead guy for writing books:

Never heard of him, never read his books. My English school gave me books by English authors to read. Theres enough Americanisation in our culture without having to inflict it on our children. Why dont we remember English authors rather than someone whose work has had little or no influence on Britains children.

[OrangeBugsy], Wiltshire, United Kingdom

It’s a nice thought, but the struggle will never be over while treacherous Communist teachers are indoctrinating our kids to read of their own accord.

Incidentally, have you ever wondered how you’d go about starting a sentence with “Would this be the same pope”? It makes for a delightful party game.

Would this be the same pope whose catholic religon King Henry VIII kicked out the country hundreds of years ago?

He has no valid opinion on anything that happens in this country. He’s an irrelevance.

Richard Hill, Birmingham, United Kingdom

When a fat man with six wives and a manky toe shows you the door, you stay shown the door. Put that in your pope-hat and smoke it, Fritz.

Well it seems that the HYS mods have taken pity on horny young war-lovers everywhere and created a thread where they can get it all off their bravely puffed-out chests. Come on little fellas. It’s your chance to shine.

A massive expansion of our Armed forces, this will create Jobs in high tech industries, with good export potential, bring in conscription for 18 year olds, 1 years service to learn self worth, discipline and a worth while trade, be it Cook, Medical, Electronics etc.
Enough resources to allow us to engage in to Regional Wars plus enough reserves for a 3rd emergency response.
Nuclear Deterrent based on SSN’s firing Cruise Missiles, similar to the converted US Ohio Class (SSGN)
Crusader, London

You had me at “massive expansion”.

1. stop fighting America’s wars, we had no help from THEM during the Falklands conflict, why should we care about their interests.

NOT TRUE: The US supplied us with the newest version of the Sidewinder AAM (AIM-9) that gave us an edge over the Argentinian AIM-7, also an Amphibious Assault Ship was put at our disposal incase one of our Capital ships was sunk or damaged.
Iraq & Afghan are the Western Worlds wars, or do you relish the thought of becoming a Shiara muslim State.
Jake, London

Dammit Jake. I was standing proud for a moment there, surface-to air, nearly ready to fire and then you had to go and bring forruns into it. Fucker. Now I’m looking down, somewhat wistfully, at a launch site suitable for a surface-to-surface attack at best.

The people who say we should never fight abroad are viewing the world through rose-tinted glasses. It is an absolutely excellent policy to fight your wars on someone else’s soil. Waiting until the enemy is coming up the beaches is far far too late! We nearly got caught out that way before. Defence sometimes does mean offence. How many lives would have been saved if Hitler had been stopped sooner? It’s easy to be all touchy feely when your protected, but don’t ignore human reality or history.
[numenius], England, United Kingdom

And let’s not forget the exciting world of espionage. We need to get spies in there stealing their secret chocolate recipes before they steal ours.

‘Scrap Trident.’
Jacques Cartier

Without Trident, our country would have no deterrent against invasion or nuclear annihilation. Scrapping Trident is NOT an option.
Paul

Eggsfuckingxactly. The Channel and the army might be able to save us from frenchy fuckers like Jacques, with his “kissing” and “garlic”, but if Godzilla turns up we’re gonna need nukes.

UK at that time had invaded and enslaved 70 countries. My grandpa who was barely a teenager at the time spent a couple of nights in Churchill’s prison for listening to a German broadcast while Churchill was waging a war for freedom of speech.

Ali Kazmi, Rawalpindi, Pakistan

Well perhaps your grandfather shouldn’t have been a traitor against “the forces of democracy and liberalism”, as Nehru himself called the British-Indian armies fighting against Nazi and Japanese totalitarianism, eh?

[hubertgrove]

That’s YOU told Ali KAZMI. Answer THAT one, QUISLING. Yeah.

These people are just human beings like any other. The only difference is they choose to live a different kind of life. We should not discriminate them from others. They have the same rights like every body else. Such laws are very retrogresive and create acrimony for nothing. We should learn to have respect and appreciate other persons lifestyle. We can not all have the same lifestyle. The way we differ in appearance is the same way we differ in thinking.

AUBREY CHINDEFU, LUSAKA ZAMBIA

Aside from minor typos and the fact that it’d do as much good to the world if Aubrey Chindefu had drawn a picture of a walrus on the screen in marker pen, this is an intelligent, reasoned and eloquent comment. I even had to look up ‘acrimony’ and I’m like, really clever. It reminds us, if we needed reminding, that Africa is a huge and diverse place, and the gulfs of opinion can be as wide between two next-door neighbours as they can between Cape Town and Tripoli. Of course, at the close of play, this had all of 3 recommendations because, on the subject of whether Africans should be killing Africans for having the wrong bum-sex with Africans, HYSers aren’t really interested in the African perspective. Not when they could be telling savage, childlike foreigners what to do, anyway.

Are they serious? Seriously? When the rest of the world is trying so hard to recognise Africa as civilized, why do they have to shoot themselves in the foot like this?

licoriceallsorts, candyland

You fucking idiot Africa.

What a barbaric and ignorant proposition. If Africa wants help from the west then I see no reason why we should not attatch some cultural conditions to that aid.

Killing someone because of a personal and private choice is medieval and reflects the emotional immaturity of African socieities. The West needs to stand firm against rubbish like this. If Ugandans want to oppress minorities with death threats then they can ask the Chinese for billions in aid instead, and see how far they get.

A shocked gay man, uk

I understand you’re shocked, shocked gay man, but do you really think stopping Africa’s pocket money will help? With something as extreme as executing gays it should be a simple case of “grow up or get a smacked botty”.

“Nations do not have a right to execute homosexuals,”

Yes they do. They can kill whoever they want. Fortunately we have bigger guns than them, and should currently be sabre rattling.

Matt, Manchester

Hang on Matt, surely a sabre’s a bit excessive. Maybe just pull Uganda’s pants down and use the flat of your hand. Or bomb it from the skies a bit, whichever works for you.

This is a difficult situation to comment on because, as a white person, I know I should be polite when I talk about black people, mindful of 100s of years of European oppression.

But, while generally respecting black people as a race and a culture, I can only describe the Ugandan politicians who are supporting this bill as primitive, superstitious barbarians.

I hope all the decent Ugandans do not allow their country to become synonymous with violent stupidity. Reject this bill

Rocket Scientist

Congratulations. You’re like, the least racist person on HYS. In fact, I’ve made you a special plaque in the form of a very small swastika.

I’m going to end on another sensible comment because we need to remain positive in the face of such massive, massive bollocks. It works best if you picture Ibraheem Hameed as the scatty but amiable vicar of a small country parish, haring into the church and vaulting onto the pulpit to gabble this short comment at breakneck speed, before dashing off to be somewhere else ten minutes ago and leaving his glasses behind.

Death penalty or whichever kind of sanction it may be for homosexual act, the poor masses suffer from it. It is not an act of murder or it like therefore, let them do what they think is good for them. For all of us are sinners.

Ibraheem Hameed, Khartoum

Cast first stone. Forgiveness. Amen. A sermon for the twitter generation.

And, with the same cavalier disregard for relevance as you’d have for the safety of the innocent, you might also sieze the opportunity to do yet another stream-of-consciousness belch about Everything That Is Wrong With This Country, right in the internet’s face. Thanks to Pete.

Like the rest of this country under Gordon Brown the Royal Navy is hide bound by stupid health and safety regulations. Bring back Vian and the cry ‘The Navy’s here’ when they boarded the Altmark in Norwegian waters to rescue the British prisoners held aboard her.
Phil Adwick

Fucking Gordon Brown, can’t stop messing around with the Royal Navy, constantly wandering into their headquarters at three in the morning, naked but for a pair of socks and a floral hat, waving around pieces of paper with yet more stupid health and safety regulations on them, stupid health and safety regulations such as:

• Don’t fire on civilians!
• Try not to endanger the lives of civilians!
• Don’t kill civilians! Especially when trying to rescue them!

Something must be done to halt these blatant acts of piracy. As an ex military man my response would be to destroy every craft on the Somali shoreline and every craft on the South Yemen shoreline if they support these criminals. If that proves insufficient then level Somalia to glass, leave nothing. They think life is cheap….then let us make theirs so.
Lurcher

That dishonourable discharge still rankles, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately the lawyers run the asylum, where people in authority know it is better to play safe than act. Nobody will sack the captain (teacher, policeman, doctor, electrician) for doing nothing. It’s doing something which leaves you vulnerable to the blood sucking lawyers and the judges. Judges who claim their judgements seem ridiculous but ‘their hands are tied’. Kids sue teachers, yobs sue anyone who intervenes, burglars sue the home owner. Captains of Navy ships would rather see an old couple be dragged off by ruthless pirates than risk making a mistake. And I’d have done the same. Britain is in a hell of a mess, getting worse each generation.
wshrtbe

I think washitterbee must keep this comment on a text file somewhere, and just copies it into any thread he/she/it blunders into, with some token reference to the actual topic clumsily stapled to its balls.

But there’s an interesting twist. Check out the admisson that: “I’d have done the same”. I think this basically translates as: “this country is a massive shitbasket of cowardice and opportunism, and I’m as much to blame as anybody. When is someone else going to come and make it better again?”

Well, we were waiting for you to sort it, wooshtibrubber. But you let us down and now we want blood. You might’ve heard a knock at the door just now – that’s the Royal Navy come to blow your face off with a massive battleship on wheels. Apparently you’re exempt under the stupid health and safety regulations.