Tabloid Edition

Illegitimacy and Societies Past

So all these people researching their pasts are finding that out forebears were really rather like us. Illegitimate children, bigamous marriages and so on. At least, that's the Guardian line.

Instead, as the Ancestry findings show, people lived pretty much as they do today. Family life was far from stable, with a high degree of illegitimacy and a fair amount of to-ing and fro-ing within the extended family. (How else to account for all those name changes and secret adoptions?)

Well, yes, sorta. Descended, as I am, from a woman one of whose children has the interesting line on the birth certificate: "Born 11 months after husband's death!" I can see what is meant. She went off to Australia as a gel (one of five daughters and one son of a blacksmith, assisted passage in the 1850s as the Govt wanted to populate the place), married, had children, divorced, hooked up again, another child, then married again (not the father of the last), went to Peru with the railway engineer she had married, he died there and she returned to Blighty with the one (I think) surviving child: who may or may not have been the issue of her last marriage (that last, born in Callao, well, it might be Celts and it might be Amerinds leading to the very black hair on one side of the family).

OK; so far, pretty much as the G says: there were indeed some interesting times then, it wasn't the nuclear nor Victorian family of repute. However, look at the note on the birth certificate.

But discovering that they spent most of their time clinging to the perch of respectability, and sometimes falling off, is hardly the stuff dinner party anecdotes are made of.

Clinging to the perch of respectability. The very concept of falling off. That's really rather different from today, isn't it? I'm not saying better or worse, but I am saying that it's different.

Explaining Blackpool

I once requested the wine list in Blackpool's 'finest' eaterie, to be told 'the wine this week is red'.

Jasper Gerard.

I'm sure that's a very old joke and entirely unoriginal but so what, eh?

Blindingly Obvious

Well, yes:

Population data for the year to July 2006 showed the proportion of babies born to a foreign parent has risen to 25 per cent compared to under 20 per cent just six years ago.
...
Figures from the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) earlier this year showed about six million people living in Britain - one in 10 - was born overseas.
...
Also, the foreign-born population is growing while the British-born population is declining.

We've long known that immigrants tend to have a higher birth rate than indigenes. They're usually coming from places with a higher birth rate and that cutlural idea stays with them when they arrive: actually, the birth rates tend to be somewhere between the averages of the society moved to and the one moved from.

What anyone wants to do about it (me? Nothing) is another matter.

Eeeeek!

Racist jibe of the day: these Greeks really do go overboard, don't they?

One sight of that diminutive figure is enough to send me into raptures of delight that I blush to describe on a family blog such as this. How shall I count the ways? Eyes, wide and bright like saucers of champagne, yet also dark and passionate as goblets of ruby Buckfast. A neck, slender and playful like a faun’s, framed by hair delicate yet supple, like silken ropes of song. Her mouth – the mouth that launched a thousand policy discussions – a mouth that seems to defy the laws of physics, that exists in four or even five dimensions, curving space and time around it into an exquisite event horizon of pure sensuality. Breasts like quivering moulds of vodka jelly, barely restrained by the power suits and prim blouses, with peaks hauntingly reminiscent of Paisley Abbey on a misty, moonlit night. And the lisp – O, the lisp! Each word magically transformed into a teasing, seductive invitation that no mythological siren of yore could ever hope to match. And Wendy knows lots of words; she’s brighter than a brain pie.

Is it the moussaka or the plate smashing that causes this?

Scottish Independence

A pity:

English voters will be given no say over proposals that could end the 300-year-old union with Scotland, the leader of Edinburgh's new nationalist administration said yesterday.

We'd say yes, bye bye, whether the haggis wearers wanted it or not.

Scottish Independence

Plans which could pave the way for the break-up of the 300-year-old union of England and Scotland will be unveiled in Edinburgh today.

Byeeee!

Don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out.

We've Still Got Legal Discrimination

We do you know, it's still legal to discriminate against one group in the UK.

Catholics.

Prague counts cost of Brits behaving badly

That's a Guardian headline, that is:

Prague is renowned for many things: Franz Kafka, the Charles bridge, a peerless astronomical clock, and some of the finest, cheapest lagers on Earth. But the Czech capital has now gained a reputation for something it could almost certainly do without: it appears to be an international centre for badly behaved Brits abroad.

And blamed for this development are the tens of thousands of Britons in stag and hen parties who visit the city each year, according to a report released by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The report, entitled British Behaviour Abroad, quantifies the key problems encountered overseas every year.

Of all the countries surveyed between April 1 2005 and March 31 2006, the Czech Republic tops the rankings of where people are disproportionately likely to need consular assistance.

All of which gives me the opportunity to rerun one of my favourite quotes about us:

Many are in favour of the British men, even if they cause havoc. "If the British take advantage of the cheapness of our city that's OK. It's economics," said Inspector Daniel Kolar of the Prague police. "In any case, they are more pleasant drunk than the Germans are when they're sober."

Social Mobility

Who says we don't have social mobility in England?

Indeed, it gives one a certain warm glow to think that the lads' pin-up Jordan, who lives near Brighton, may put her new baby daughter Princess Tiáamii down for nearby Roedean.

Sad But True

In fact, worse than sad but true, positively depressing.

It appears that not all of the pustulently selfish gits that inhabit our islands are already in government.

Some are in Surrey.

An Englishman's Word

You might want to have a look here, here, here and here.

Yes, the pond life that rule us have found another group they can betray. Surprised?

Others at those links explain it all in more detail and in more temperate language than I can or will. Simply, those who have worked for the British Forces in Iraq are, when the day of withdrawal comes, to be left to fend for themselves in that foetid swamp of insurgents, terrorists, Baathists, Islamists and general random murderous nutters who wish to kill them: as, indeed, they are already being killed.

There was a day when an Englishman's word meant something: not all that long ago as well. I've been a beneficiary of this idea that we are an honourable people who do as we say we will, will do the right thing, as recently as the 1990s in Russia. I've no doubt that my brother, currently working in Kabul, benefits from it today.

There are those who think this unimportant: unfortunately they are also the scum who rule us.

Write to your MP. Email them, phone them. Spread the word. Comment on the newspaper blogs. Write letters to editors.

The French already think of us as Perfidious Albion: let's not go and prove it to the whole world, eh?

Banning Nationalist Emblems

An interesting little snippet: wearning a bandana made of the Cross of St George (the national emblem) is verboeten. Wearing one carrying the skull and crossbones is not.

Discuss.

The British

I'd have to say this is more an English attitude than a British one but no worse for all that:

British values can be found, most of all, in the notion that freedom is our birthright, not something to be handed to us by human rights codes or government statutes.

Cultural Gulfs

With respect to the Litvinenko affair:

I don't understand the position of the British Government," said Russia's foreign ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin. "It is prepared to sacrifice our relations in trade and education for the sake of one man."

Well, yes, obviously. It might be honoured more in the breach than anything else but that is rather what we expect our Government to do. Once the rights of the inividual are abandoned for State or other collective reasons then we no longer live in a free country, do we? Any and all of our rights can be sacrificed to the needs of trade or education: which isn't actually the point of the exercise at all.

If we overlook the poisoning of one for the sake of a couple of billion a year in trade....wouldn't the next step to be to acquiesce in shutting up a few of those pesky democrats arguing about Saudi Arabia from London? Or Libya? Or the banning of the Democrats in Exile from Bush's AmeriKKKa?

Yes, it's a slippery slope argument but then it really is a slippery slope. The only possible line in the sand is that the law is the law and those suspected of breaking it must be tried. Fairly.

Conrad Black Conviction

The best line I've read on the whole sorry saga:

One could read a million words on the subject of the class system and never even come close to the insight contained in that one sentence.

Watching the Tour De France

Over at Norm's:

More than two million spectators lined the tortuous, 216-kilometre (134-mile) route between Greenwich and Canterbury.

Could be, although I'm not entirely and wholly convinced. That's four people every yard, or more than one person every foot of the way on both sides of the road.

Great Headlines

Americans won't get this.

An English National Park

Oh, excellent, don't you think?

All of England should be made into a national park, the author Bill Bryson believes.

Mr Bryson, President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), highlighted the 'miracle' of the British countryside in his inaugural speech yesterday and warned that efforts to safeguard it needed to be redoubled.

He told CPRE volunteers at the organisation's annual general meeting in London that he had often wondered why "the whole of England" was not made into a national park.

Let's preserve the whole place in aspic, eh? A theme park for Americans to come over and administrate why don't we?

Quite apart from anything else, how are we going to bring house prices down if we can't ever build anything anywhere?

Insane Sir Salman Rushdie Post of the Day

UK Daily Pundit:

Maybe someone should set up a petition insisting that supporters of Rushdie pay for his 24 hour police protection. Although I suspect that's one bandwagon Pinko Finko and the chatterati won't be so quick to jump on.

Well of course not. Da Fink* and the chatterati are not absurdly stupid, that's why. The first duty of the State is to protect its citizens from violence from abroad. You know, keep Johnny Foreigner at bay. The second to protect them from violence at home.

That's why we have the damned institution, dipstick.

* Yes, Daniel Finkelstein does indeed employ me at times.

A National Language

Well, quite:

An NPIA spokesman said: "Because Airwave is a national system, there's a need to rationalise the way officers speak on the radio.

"There's so much regional diversity that the use of a common language will increase understanding. This will be the first time UK police have a nationwide standard phraseology and procedure." Because airtime on the new system is expensive, brevity will be encouraged. According to the NPIA, "Regional phrases might take much longer to say than a clipped national term".

The entire point of a national language (something like the Queen's English) is that it is understood by everyone. That doesn't mean that regional accents and variations should not exist, just that they should be used regionally, the national language being used when attempting to communicate nationally.

Now all we need to do is convince the BBC of this.

Young People Today

Teenagers are in the grip of a sexual health crisis fuelled by a "celebrity culture" that condones alcohol abuse, drug addiction and promiscuity, Government-funded advisers warn today.

Looks like the nation is still reassuringly Anglo-Saxon in its outlook on life then.

An Argument Against Scottish Independence.

As Mr. Eugenides points out, there are problems in Scotland.

It's occured to me though that there's one very good argument against Scottish independence.

For the thing is, you see, they've been independent before.

And went bankrupt.

National Community Service

Oh Aye, so this idea of national community service is raising it's head again. Here's the first suggestion anyway:

In addition, a new citizenship ceremony - perhaps on students' completion of their GCSEs - would be one way of more publicly marking their understanding of what it means to be a responsible citizen in modern Britain.

So what would that ceremony consist of? Salute the flag and a couple of verses of Rule Britannia? Or an abasement for having conquered a quarter of the globe? What would be the refreshements? Cider and Buckfast for that truly modern touch?

What really seems to be missed is that (whether it's at 16 or any other age) the attainment of full citizenship is not some privilege that is handed down to us from on high. Rather, it's that one is now of an age when one gets to choose who those on high are going to be. It is not the mighty who offer us the privileges of citizenship, it is us who choose who is going to handle those minor matters that cannot be handled privately, whether individually or collectively.

The correct ceremony would therefore be for politicians to abase themselves before such gatherings, begging for votes so that they might continue their lives upon the gravy train. The correct response to this from those celebrating would for 40% not to bother to turn up, the remainder to view the vote stealers with the contempt they deserve: precisely the (correct) reaction of all the other adults in the Kingdom.

I mean, if we're going to have such a ceremony, let us at least do it in the British manner, shall we?

I think we need to consider a national community service and we should not be afraid of asking whether this should be compulsory.

I'm certainly not afraid of that question being asked. So, should all youngsters be forced to work, unpaid, at the direction of the State? Hmmm. Toughie that.

We actually dealt with that in 1569:

...and it was resolved, that England was too pure an air for a slave to breathe in.

So there we have it. A reasonable thing to celebrate perhaps, something historically British, that we don't have slave labour here. So those who wish to enslave the young can quite happily be told to bugger off on the basis that they are being terribly un-British.

We have heard a lot, too, about the possibility of a national day. I believe we need to go further, with a community week that puts the local centre-stage - marking what makes an area unique.

I maintain that the only possible date for a celebration of Britishness is October 3. It's the day the last native Prince of Wales was executed by the English and is thus the event that gave rise to the very concept of Britishness.

The Rising Fertility Rate

Gosh, what a surprise:

Women are choosing to have more babies than at any time since 1980, according to official figures which hint at the first baby boom of the 21st century. The fertility rate - the number of births per woman - rose from 1.8 babies per woman in 2005 to 1.87 in 2006, the fifth annual rise in a row and the most babies born in a single year since 1993, the Office for National Statistics said.

First generation immigrants bring with them the higher fertility rates of their home countries. In subsequent generations this declines to that amongst the indigenous population. Well, yes, we've known this for a long time. It's olds, not news.

Portugal Notes

Foreigners can be, umm, really, rather foreign:

A man accused of sexual abuse toward a 13 year old boy was given a reduced sentence by the presiding judge of the Supreme Court of Justice. The 42 year old had allegedly forced the child to have sexual relations with him but the judge maintained that the guilt of the man was diminished as the victim had experienced erections and ejaculations, and according to the magistrate, one would not react in that manner if they had been obliged by force to participate. The defendant was sentenced to five years instead of seven and a half. By law in Portugal consensual sex is only possible over the age of 14.

Get Real: June 05, 2007.

What The World Eats

A lovely series of photographs of what families around the world eat from Time. What the world eats is an obvious title for such a thing of course, what they've done is laid out, around the family, a week's groceries along with the cost and the favourite meal.

A couple of slight problems with the English family though. I can see the requisite chocolate biscuits, the crips, the frozen pizzas, pot noodles, but where are the baked beans?

But more importantly, who in hell is eating the Go Cat?

Johnathan Freedland on Britishness

Apologies, but I think that Jonathan Freedland has finally lost it altogether. One of our national songs (whether something so jingoistic ought to be one is a different question from whether it is one) has this refrain:

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves:
Britons never will be slaves.

Freedland today states:

Happily, there's a simple solution: make everyone pass the same test. I mean it. At the age of 18, every person on these islands should only become a citizen once they have met a set of requirements, including a spell of community work.

Enforced community work. Your labour, uncompensated, directed as your Lords and Masters insist.

That is, that in order to become a Briton, one who will never be a slave, you must first proffer yourself as a slave to the State.

Where I come from we still have a stock of gibbets for people who suggest things like this.

Sir David Beckham

Might he actually become Sir David?

Well, whatever, but one of these two is wrong about what Posh would end up being called:

A knighthood for the Real Madrid star would make his former Spice Girl wife Lady Beckham - a title she has made clear she would relish.

She told the BBC last year: "I'd love that, that would be quite fabulous. It's just so camp, it's wonderful isn't it? Lady Victoria... that would be quite amazing."

Lady Victoria just ain't gonna happen: for that Posh would beed to be the daughter of an Earl (or higher) and it's a little late to start engineering that. Lady Beckham is possible of course.

Reverend Stephen Duck

We are an odd race us English:

In a pub called the Charlton Cat, in the village of Charlton St Peter near Pewsey, Wiltshire, toasts will be drunk next week to the memories of Viscount Palmerston and the Reverend Stephen Duck. The Palmerston who will be celebrated is not the one who became prime minister but his great-grandfather, the first viscount, member of parliament, staunch supporter of Walpole and a mighty landowner, parts of Wiltshire included. And the Reverend Stephen Duck? Well, he may be largely forgotten now, but he was in his day perhaps the most eminent figure ever to come out of Charlton - even at one time talked of as a possible poet laureate.
...
One of his poems, dedicated to Palmerston, describes the annual feast at Charlton instituted by the peer in the poet's honour. The gift in Palmerston's will of a piece of land produced the revenue which enabled these feasts to continue. The festivities are limited to married men who have lived for a substantial number of years in the village and worked on the land. Next week the toast will be proposed, as it always is, by the chairman-cum-master of ceremonies, who is given the title Chief Duck. This year, as for several years past, this role will be carried out, I'm delighted to say, by a man by the name of Fowle.

There's an entire web of such oddities which cross the land: one from my home town of Bath is the St John's Trust. It owns a substantial portion of the City (some say as much as 10% of the flats in the Georgian heart of it) and the revenues are devoted to the care of the aged in the City. Anyone on the electoral roll over the age of 40 can put themselves down for, when the time comes, a place in the assisted living building in the centre of the city.

The Zimmers

Yes, I have a feeling that this really might get to Number 1. Ladies and Gentlemen, The Zimmers, with their version of The Who's "My Generation".

So we're told, a combined age of over 3,000 years: if put end to end, back to before Cleopatra and Tutenkhamun, before even Alexander the Great, almost the entirety of recorded human history.

British Day

So it looks as if Gordon Brown is going to bring in this idea of a holiday (even if not a full Bank Holiday) at the end of October and for it to be British Day, a celebration of who we are.

He believes that a greater sense of national identity and belonging is necessary in an era of globalisation and the computer culture which allow instant communication across the world.

It would also help bolster sentimental attachment to the Union with Scotland and help see off the threat of independence posed by the Scottish Nationalists.

This brings us to the point raised by Notsaussure. My arguing for October 21st might seem to be trumped by his arguing for the 25th. I'm certainly open to that argument, but think that the 21 st still wins.

Yes, I agree absolutely, giving the French a sound thrashing is something that the British would enjoy celebrating, indeed do enjoy celebrating. But the earlier victory, Agincourt, was won by the English and Welsh. This is insufficienty inclusive, it leaves the sporran munchers (that's right isn't it? Sporrans you eat and haggis you wear?) north of the border left out and that would never do in a celebration of Britishness.

So Trafalgar Day I'm afraid it has to be. Yes, we biffed the French again on this day, but it was us British who did it. Added bonus points of course, for the fact that we biffed the Spanish on the same day and clearly, the celebration of our defeat of a centralized Europe would only be a coda, something with little relevance to current day events.

I think I'm correct in stating that the current (or perhaps most recent but one) Earl Nelson worked for some time as a bus conductor so he would be the perfect person to have as our Master of Ceremonies, showing that in our vibrant society we do indeed have economic mobility downwards, as well as upwards.

Something for everyone to celebrate, don't you think?

We can even go one stage further.

Stuart Etherington, the chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, said: "We badly need a national day on which we can celebrate the inspirational work that voluntary and community organisations do throughout the year.

"It would also encourage more and more people to engage in community activity. I hope Gordon Brown will make this a priority."

As a society one of our defining attributes is that we don't really pay much attention to what we're told we should be doing. Most holidays, whether they have been Saint's Days or whatever, have traditionally been celebrated with massed football matches and synchronized drinking. The TUC and other such concerned prodnoses can talk about community inclusion and we can all raise a glass of (hopefully smuggled) brandy to HMS Pickle. What could be more British than that, that we enjoy ourselves while ignoring our Lords and Masters (except the Good Earl, of course)?

Tee Hee

Why bother to learn another language?

The Readers' Guide to Wales

The Guardian is asking its readers to help it compile a guide to Wales. I'll admit to not having searched thoroughly, but my quick skip through did not turn up the most important advice.

Don't shag the sheep, the natives will get jealous.

"UK Pakistanis" Will Need US Visas

At least, that seems to be the proposal.

Travel restrictions could be imposed by America on 800,000 British citizens of Pakistani origin because of concerns about terrorism, it emerged yesterday.
...
The Americans have been concerned that their principal security risk could actually come from Britain, with whom they operate a visa waiver scheme. Since 2004, Britons travelling to the US do not need a visa if they have a machine-readable passport issued since 1991.

Michael Chertoff, the US homeland security secretary, has reportedly told the Government that British Pakistanis should apply for a visa before travelling to America.

...

A Foreign Office spokesman said last night that any attempt to divide British citizens along ethnic lines would cause a massive diplomatic row.

"The Muslim community, including those of Pakistani origin, are an important part of our society and we would oppose strongly any proposal to single them out in response to the actions of terrorists," he said.

Well, nice to know that the Foreign Office is currently opposing it but it could have been couched in slightly stronger language.

You see, once someone has a UK passport that makes them a Briton, entitled in law and in custom to exactly the same treatment as someone whose forbears have been in these islands since woad was fashionable, or those who descend from the various influxes of rapine and pillage that have occured, or someone who came from Ghana, Sweden or even the US to join our merry society and got their citizenship a week ago last Tuesday.

Britons, citizens, you know, one for all and all for one? Us?

Insisting that Britons whose familial background was Pakistani suffer different treatment over visas, ie, distinguishing between them in law, goes against this most basic principle.

Try this in an American context: all Americans of African heritage need visas to come to the UK while others do not?

Either we all qualify for the visa waiver scheme or none of us do (given all the usual caveats about working, student visas etc etc).

If this actually comes about then there'll really be nothing for it but to call for a boycott on travel to the US by all British citizens.

We're us and anyone who doesn't like that fact can go fuck themselves, quite frankly.

Update: As in the comments, it seems the orginal proposal wasn't in fact made. What might happen is a change to hte visa waiver program itself, but not distinctions based upon racial or genetic origin. The above is therefore somewhat moot, although if the original proposal as reported were true I still think it would be the correct response.