wardy wonder land
Well-known member
- Dec 10, 2007
- 833
well, where is our favorite turk / greek ?
What a farce. Just further demonstrates how completely out of touch the C of E has become.Just heard on LBC that the C of E has postponed it until the 28th for some religious reason to do with Easter
Bugger that - I'm sticking with today! Apparently they moved it six years ago too - missed that at the time.Just heard on LBC that the C of E has postponed it until the 28th for some religious reason to do with Easter
They did it six years ago as well.What a farce. Just further demonstrates how completely out of touch the C of E has become.
These days….Virtually every country in the world is allowed to celebrate their national days, regardless of centuries old wrong doings (and I dont pretend the English are any better than most other countries with regard to past atrocities) .
Its a bit like the "Christmas is banned for fear of offending non christians" bs, Its made up media nonsense designed to stir up the very hatred it purports to want to stop, and non Christians really dont want Christmas banned
Isn't it against the law to say your English, these days?
Where’s the TL;DR bitAs I point out every year, the concentration on celebration of saints days is generally a Catholic trope. After a bit of swapping back and forth during Tudor and Stuart times, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 hitched England's wagon firmly to the Church of England's Protestantism. Only 8% of England's population is Catholic, compared with 40% of Northern Ireland and 69% of the Republic. Those who complain about England not making a huge fuss of it's patron saints day are actually misunderstanding the character of the country. The Church of England does not canonise. St George's Day is a festival, but not a principal holy day. For a protestant country, it's no big deal.
There also seems to be a lack of understanding that not making a fuss is a particularly English approach and the reasons for this. Cecil Rhodes' oft repeated quotation was actually "You are an Englishman, and have subsequently drawn the greatest prize in the lottery of life." Although this level of imperial arrogance is no longer spoken, we have to admit that there remains in all of the English a tacit undercurrent of belief in this maxim. This is generally evident whenever we have to lower ourselves to deal with those from the less fortunate countries (i.e. everyone else in the world). We try not to because we know its not the thing to do, but deep down our national character is based on an unspoken agreement that we're just better than everyone else.
The Americans have a need to shout their patriotism loudly, because it's a flimsy thing undercut by a lack of real confidence in the face of countries with real history. The Irish, the Welsh and the Scots, like a third of the globe feel that they have to celebrate their national identities as a response to periods of history when those have been subjugated. The English don't. It was generally us that were doing the subjugating.
The English character also has an underlying belief in politeness. Crowing about having something that others don't have is generally frowned upon as crass behaviour. Therefore, going out and waving a flag that loudly declaims 'We're English!' is kind of rubbing the noses of those who aren't as fortunate. Every year St George's Day rolls around and journalists write think pieces about why the English don't define themselves without realising that not defining ourselves is the most English thing to do. Englishness is the norm, the correct way to go about things. It doesn't need championing because it's not, like every other nationality, an aberration. It's probably best summed up by Jimmy Carr's joke 'I don't have an accent. This is just how things sound when they are pronounced correctly.' We try to fight it. We try to hide it, but if we're totally honest, that's just the way we view our relationship with the rest of the world: Being English doesn't need celebrating because it's just the right way to go about things.
(All written with tongue firmly in cheek, but there's some truth in it and it offers some explanation of why the rest of the World hates us).![]()
I remember Stewart Lee saying that Richard Herring used to tell him how great Twitter was and he responded that there was nothing he wanted to say in less than 140 characters.Where’s the TL;DR bit![]()