Monday 19 May 2014

I'm european, and british and english and human

One of the worst ever party political broadcasts (and there has been a lot of competition) is surely the mind numbingly awful English Democrats.

I've never had much truck with mindless nationalism and xenophobia - I love being English, I feel very privileged, but I don't imagine for one moment that I was offered a choice of nationalities before  was born.  I feel English, I feel British, I feel European and I feel like a citizen of the world.

The English Democrats do not  - in fact so strongly do they feel that they are no European, not British but English, they keep repeating it in their 5 minute long party political broadcast.

Oddly, or rather typically for a party promoting mindless nationalism they seem to have very little idea about their country.  There broadcast was full of unEnglish things they were proud of:
Boadicea - well, she rule a tribe in ancient Britain, in 61AD she led a revolt against Roman rulers.   England was  takes its name from the Angles one of the Germanic tribes who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries AD.  England didn't become a state until 927 AD at the earliest and really only from the time of Edward the Confessor 100 years later.  So Boadicea missed out on being English by, oooh, almost 1000 years !

The English Democrat song played in the background told us to be proud of England - from Lands End to Hadrian's Wall - ah yes, we ought to be proud of Hadrian Wall, built by the Romans and lets not mention the Cornish Nationalists while discussing Lands End.

The English Democrats love Nelson  (British definitely, Britain was formed by the act of Union in 1707, Horatio Nelson was born in 1758 )  Winston Churchill (Half American) and Enoch Powell (who sat as an MP for North Ireland - which isn't in England)

And England is of course the land of Saint George (probably born to a Greek Christian noble family in Lydda in Palestine,  between about 275 AD and 285 AD) who didn't become patron Saint of England till about 1350 and was largely forgotten by about 1800.

And they couldn't end the broadcast without mentioning that well known English City - Jerusalem !

All in all as bout as English as a kangaroo.

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