Deport the English!

Tags

belgium, eec, england, great britain, hungary, immigration, luxembourg, netherlands, poland, satire

I stopped off in a cafe in town for a cup of tea and a slice of cake (English readers of a certain age will have read those last nine words and in their own mind applied a cod cornish accent, but enough of 70’s children’s TV) and through unintentional eavesdropping…or more to the point “do you have to talk so loudly as I’m trying to enjoy a slice of Carrot Cake and a nice hot Earl Grey” overheard the phrase “they have no idea of English culture” as part of a general rant about migrant workers from Eastern Europe. I can’t agree more, your average Polish plumber or Hungarian handyman really doesn’t fit into our work ethic. He will probably turn up when he says he will, work really hard, makes no attempt to rip you off and misses every opportunity to shout offensive remarks at passing women. If we are not careful we will end up losing all of our working class traditions. And imagine if we replace those council office jobs worths with Indian waiters, not only would they be more attentive to your needs, when you got your Council Tax bill, there would be free mints with it.

Those old enough to remember when we first joined the EEC in 1973, in fact few alive at the time will ever forget the troubles. Hordes of Dutch people pouring into the country, forcing us to wear clogs and eat waxy cheese. I was just watching some footage of an interview with a pensioner who said,” It was terrible, One windmill would go up in the street, then another went up next door to the co-op and before you knew it the whole neighbourhood stank of Tulips, people were cycling everywhere and speaking impeccable English with slightly arousing accents.”

“Then it was the bloody Belgians with their strong fancy lager and their yummy chocolates. Next came the Luxembressians?….Luxembients?…Luxuriants?..Luxembourgers, whatever,  remember those buggers with their…well, um…I can’t actually remember any of their grossly exaggerated national characteristics, but that’s what we didn’t like about them.”

We expect immigrants to behave like British people but only to a point, I mean, no British person would tolerate the crap that is dished out to Britain’s immigrant population. Who is it that stands in his fast food shop taking abuse from drunken English youths at closing time? Is it the English chip shop owner who is insulted and intimidated? Is it the English cabbie who has people being sick in his cab and then refusing to pay for the clean up cost? (Mind you I wouldn’t have been sick in the first place if that Turkish bloke  hadn’t sold me a dodgy Donner, but that’s hardly the point.) Imagine if every night hundreds of Nepalese kids were spilling out of the pubs on to the streets, brawling with each other and then staggering off into the English Rose Tea Rooms and shouting “Oi, whitey, turn that bloody string quartet music off.”

Yes, Britain is a small, crowded country. Yes we might need to make some room, but here is the answer. It might sound a bit controversial but lets deport all of the crap English people. Lets get rid of Jeffery Archer, maybe he can go and write books in Western Tibet where he wont be bothered. People like Robert Kilroy Silk, maybe he can revive his media career with a radio phone in, say in rural Moldova. (where no-one has a telephone!) Basically any racist football fan or right wing columnist or reader of The Daily Mail who feels at liberty to swipe at and snipe at racial minorities from their privileged position can do so from a country were nothing works and they have to work long hard hours for low wages. With them gone we will have room for the people bringing new skills and a better work ethic not to mention humility to this country…something in very short supply at the moment. Obviously none of this applies to The french…they are worse than we are and you have to draw the line somewhere.

 

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How does it feel to have won the war?

Tags

austria, battle of bannockburn, battle of hastings, battle of waterloo, belgium, britain first, brunswick, england, france, germany, great britain, hanover, ireland, napoleon, nassau, netherlands, portugal, prussia, russia, scotland, spain, wales, waterloo

You may have guessed by the title of this post, well, those of you that recognise ABBA lyrics, that today is the anniversary of The Battle of Waterloo. Yes 199 years ago today the British Army defeated Napoleon to end a century of Anglo-French political power struggle and more specifically what can be argued as the first truly global conflict that we call The Napoleonic Wars. The battle was so famous that they named a bridge, a road and a railway station after it in what is now a eponymous district in the borough of Lambeth, which in turn lead to songs such as The Kinks Waterloo Sunset, a song that was originally called Portaloo Sunset but released with the more poetic title. Similarly Simon and Garfunkel’s timeless classic was originally called Trouble over Bridgwater before they saw sense, but I digress. I was chatting earlier today with a friend of mine in Dublin about the battle and he raised the very interesting point that although the battle is seen as one of those important dates that British patriotism seems to use as a beacon, such as The Battle of Hastings (when third generation Nordic settlers in France defeated assimilated Germanics on the south coast) and The Battle of Bannockburn (when French speaking nobility from England defeated French speaking nobility from Scotland…and don’t give me all that Robert The Bruce rubbish, his name was Robert d’Bruce) it was actually an example of European unity.

The British army that ranked up to fight our cause consisted of not only British troops, with a significant contingent of Irish, Scottish and Welsh serving within, but German speaking troops from Hanover, Brunswick and Nassau, troops from Holland and Belgium and even French monarchists who had deserted to the allied side. Add to this the Prussian army under Blucher who arrived to turn the tide of the battle and you can see that it was indeed a joint effort. Indeed the whole of the Napoleonic era was one of military co-operation, whilst the British and Portuguese armies were trying to dislodge French forces in Spain, Russian and Austrian armies were doing the same across central Europe.

The point we were getting around to was what the likes of right wing political pressure groups such as Britain First would make of all this. Their flag waving and jingoism that goes along with such commemorations is actually celebrating a united coalition of allied countries trying to dislodge a perceived dictator from it’s midst and in terms of troop numbers, English speaking British troops made up only a small percentage of the numbers pitted against Napoleon’s France. We may have been part of the force that dealt the final blow, but we certainly can’t claim to be the army that won the war.

So when you see these right wing, knee-jerk comments from people that don’t read their history, remember that most often the military victorys that they use to promote their patriotism is more likely an example of countries uniting in common cause, are the result often of age old allegiences that may have roots in older cultural links, ethnic migration and assimilations and if anything stand for the unity of like minded countries, of coalition mentality and of common political goals successfully played out at the highest level. Now that really is something to shout about.