Brits....

[Bill Sikes]

YZGI;537415 wrote: I think Nomad and jimbo are the other two, but that is just a guess.D


R

O

F

L

M

A

O

!

[SuzyB]

YZGI;537415 wrote: I think Nomad and jimbo are the other two, but that is just a guess.


:wah: :wah: I didn't realise this was a humorous thread

[koan]

YZGI;537415 wrote: I think Nomad and jimbo are the other two, but that is just a guess.


OMG

They can't be calling out Nomad. I thought DG was her friend. :wah:

[YZGI]

flopstock;537451 wrote: How'd you do on pop quizzes in school?:p :wah:
Oh man, That made me nervous just reading this.:-5

[Imladris]

Hi Koan!!!



*Immy waves from her high horse*

[YZGI]

Imladris;537455 wrote: Hi Koan!!!



*Immy waves from her high horse*
Immy, Did you know your avatar looks like a glowing erm uh Vagina?

[DesignerGal]

YZGI;537459 wrote: Immy, Did you know your avatar looks like a glowing erm uh Vagina?


I thought the same thing. The illuminous vulva...

[koan]

Imladris;537455 wrote: Hi Koan!!!



*Immy waves from her high horse*


giddyup :wah:

[Red]

YZGI;537459 wrote: Immy, Did you know your avatar looks like a glowing erm uh Vagina?


:wah: good grief

[YZGI]

flopstock;537474 wrote: you don't think... perhaps the 'back door'?
:wah: Now that would be a flaming roid.

[Imladris]

YZGI;537459 wrote: Immy, Did you know your avatar looks like a glowing erm uh Vagina?




Oh my goodness!!!!!!!!



I think I may just change it:rolleyes:

[Bill Sikes]

flopstock;537474 wrote: you don't think... perhaps the 'back door'?


I'm missing all this stuff! Do I go and adjust my settings, and switch avatars

on? Do I feel lucky? OK, maybe not!

[Imladris]

There, I've changed it, I just couldn't look at it in the same way any more.



Mind, I'd have to be pretty flexible to look at it in the first place.....

[SuzyB]

Bill Sikes;537485 wrote: I'm missing all this stuff! Do I go and adjust my settings, and switch avatars

on? Do I feel lucky? OK, maybe not!


Go on Bill, I dare you

[Red]

Imladris;537486 wrote: There, I've changed it, I just couldn't look at it in the same way any more.



Mind, I'd have to be pretty flexible to look at it in the first place.....


champion, id rather look at viggo any day!

[Imladris]

Bill Sikes;537485 wrote: I'm missing all this stuff! Do I go and adjust my settings, and switch avatars

on? Do I feel lucky? OK, maybe not!


Oh sorry Bill, it's gone - it was the eye of Sauron from the film version of the Lord of the Rings. (did look like lady bits)

[SuzyB]

Imladris;537486 wrote: There, I've changed it, I just couldn't look at it in the same way any more.



Mind, I'd have to be pretty flexible to look at it in the first place.....


:wah: :wah: That's what mirrors are for :sneaky:

[Imladris]

SuzyB;537491 wrote: :wah: That's what mirrors are for :sneaky:
:yh_rotfl:yh_rotfl I knew there was a reason I like you.

[Bill Sikes]

Imladris;537489 wrote: Oh sorry Bill, it's gone - it was the eye of Sauron from the film version of the Lord of the Rings. (did look like lady bits)


Gone, but....

http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en ... rch+Images

What fertile imaginations some people have!

[Red]

SuzyB;537491 wrote: :wah: :wah: That's what mirrors are for :sneaky:


i very nearly said that suzy but refrained cos...'im a laydee and laydees dont say such things'

[Imladris]

Bill Sikes;537497 wrote: Gone, but....



http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en ... rch+Images



What fertile imaginations some people have!


That was it - I'm such an innocent I didn't spot it until it was pointed out

[SuzyB]

Red;537498 wrote: i very nearly said that suzy but refrained cos...'im a laydee and laydees dont say such things'


Oh Emily :p

[Red]

SuzyB;537502 wrote: Oh Emily :p


:wah:

[K.Snyder]

Imladris;537501 wrote: That was it - I'm such an innocent I didn't spot it until it was pointed out


Ah

What happened to your new avater?

[abbey]

Sweet Tooth;536929 wrote: Hey all you Brits! Why are you so worried about US Politics!!!! Why dont you worry about your own scum-for-a-Prince Charles for a while!!! And lets not forget the infamous Tony Blair! CNN is making bank off of him!I get so fed up of Brit bashers. :rolleyes:

[YZGI]

abbey;537571 wrote: I get so fed up of Brit bashers. :rolleyes:
Brit bashers--say that ten times real fast.

[Carl44]

YZGI;537582 wrote: Brit bashers--say that ten times real fast.




i did that now what:wah:



oh you tricked me you never said simon says did ya :rolleyes:

[Sweet Tooth]

abbey;537571 wrote: I get so fed up of Brit bashers. :rolleyes:


What do you people not understand about the start of this thing!!!! I am not bashing the Brits in any way, shape, or form! I want their opinion on why they have such an opinion on US politics!

:-5

[abbey]

YZGI;537582 wrote: Brit bashers--say that ten times real fast.
Brit bashers brit bashers bit brashers bit bashers bat bishers but bashers bot bushers bat boshers bis bossers bar botters.......

easy peasy lemon squeezy

[koan]

An opinion on why they have an opinion might include an opinion on why they don't have an opinion.

Why don't you just make it clear what you are looking for? That's the only way to have the thread stay close to what you intended.

[koan]

abbey;537603 wrote: Brit bashers brit bashers bit brashers bit bashers bat bishers but bashers bot bushers bat boshers bis bossers bar botters.......

easy peasy lemon squeezy


I ended up with "bangers and mash" :wah:

[WonderWendy3]

YZGI;537459 wrote: Immy, Did you know your avatar looks like a glowing erm uh Vagina?


OH NO he didn't!!:yh_rotfl :yh_rotfl

[abbey]

What do you people not understand about the start of this thing!!!! I am not bashing the Brits in any way, shape, or form! I want their opinion on why they have such an opinion on US politics! :-2



Sweet Tooth;536929 wrote: Hey all you Brits! Why are you so worried about US Politics!!!! Why dont you worry about your own scum-for-a-Prince Charles for a while!!! And lets not forget the infamous Tony Blair! CNN is making bank off of him!:-3



Sweet Tooth;536947 wrote: Fair questions! You saw my answer on Di- too gorgeous! And Blair, ya, crook, I just honestly don't know why everyone is always bashing the US! And the Brits seem to be the worst! Yes, its important to know what is going on, considering we are the largest democracy! But we have a bumper sticker here in the states that says, " IF YOU DIDN'T VOTE, DON'T COMPLAIN!" And your Brits complain ALL THE TIME!!!!:-3

[WonderWendy3]

koan;537605 wrote: An opinion on why they have an opinion might include an opinion on why they don't have an opinion.

Why don't you just make it clear what you are looking for? That's the only way to have the thread stay close to what you intended.


okay I have an opinion about not having an opinion.....:p

[YZGI]

WonderWendy3;537607 wrote: OH NO he didn't!!:yh_rotfl :yh_rotfl
Dont worry. I am a specialist.

[WonderWendy3]

YZGI;537612 wrote: Dont worry. I am a specialist.


I won't try this at home!!

[minks]

ABBEY have you been drinking? ahahahahahahahahahaha :-4

[Carl44]

minks;537614 wrote: ABBEY have you been drinking? ahahahahahahahahahaha :-4




must of been ABBEY HOUR:wah:

[koan]

Somewhere it was narrowed down to 3 specific people who apparently bash Americans all the time. One has been named as spot the others are yet to be known.

(they are calling out spot! :yh_giggle)

I'm looking forward to seeing this.

eta: "they" refers to Sweet Tooth and Designer Gal

[YZGI]

koan;537621 wrote: Somewhere it was narrowed down to 3 specific people who apparently bash Americans all the time. One has been named as spot the others are yet to be known.



(they are calling out spot! :yh_giggle)

I'm looking forward to seeing this.


I have my cheese popcorn right in front of me.

[Carl44]

koan;537621 wrote: Somewhere it was narrowed down to 3 specific people who apparently bash Americans all the time. One has been named as spot the others are yet to be known.



(they are calling out spot! :yh_giggle)

I'm looking forward to seeing this.


one is bin laden i'm pretty sure of it ,:wah:

[spot]

Sweet Tooth;536929 wrote: Hey all you Brits! Why are you so worried about US Politics!!!! Why dont you worry about your own scum-for-a-Prince Charles for a while!!! And lets not forget the infamous Tony Blair! CNN is making bank off of him!


DesignerGal;536931 wrote: Ive often wondered why some of our British members are so wrapped up in American politics and America bashing myself? Any comments???


Good evening ST and DG.

It's slightly defensive to start a thread assuming some Brits are prone to bashing the USA. I wonder whether I can try to revise your opinion without trivializing your intentions.

Before I do, though, let me deal with our "scum-for-a-Prince Charles". We have a different constitution to that of the USA in that we retain a hereditary monarchy. A few essential tie-break and emergency circumstances rely on the personal initiative of the Monarch - currently Queen Elizabeth the Second, long may she reign over us - but other than that our constitution wraps a lot of offices into one person who only uses them in a non-partisan fashion. She's been very good at that, our Queen, not intervening often in politics.

The major offices she holds are Head of the Armed Services, Head of the Established Church, Head of the Judiciary, Convenor and Dismisser of Parliaments (both Houses of which sit at her authority and subject to her permission). They're roles which, if handed to temporary custodians, would far more often be misused by the office holder for party or class advantage. Charles has spent a lifetime, literally, being readied for continuing that constitutional position. I can see no reason at all to think he could be improved on. He has no political axe to grind, he has heirs himself being schooled to the same task, it's a terrible task to impose on any family but the Windsors, through the vagaries of history, drew the short straw and manfully shouldered the burden.

In practice, this means that the day-to-day responsibility of the guys in charge of the army, navy, air force, the Church of England, the Chancellor (who runs the judicial system), the Prime Minister (who ruins the Cabinet), are in the hands of the appropriate appointed person. None of those office holders are elected, they're all appointed by the Monarch on advice from appropriate committees. Should any of them act unconstitutionally the Monarch is on hand to intervene and handle the extraordinary exception. It works wonderfully so long as the right family is in charge. The last time we had to change the ruling family was 1688, though we did force out King Edward the Eighth in 1936 when he proved unsuitable.

Right, that's enough background on the Monarchy to deal with Tony Blair. He's one of these "temporary custodians" I mentioned. He's not Head of State, he's the leader of the largest of our ten or so political parties represented in our primary parliamentary chamber, the House of Commons. He became leader by election within his party, New Labour. He can be dismissed as leader at any time by the same party mechanism which appointed him leader. He's Prime Minister because the Queen (following a strict protocol) asked him to form a government. She's only deviated from that strict protocol once or twice in fifty years, where circumstances allowed her several alternative courses and she chose (with advice) the one she wanted.

Tony's reaching the end of his shelf life this year, that's why his party is jostling for factional representation in the next Cabinet (the equivalent of your White House Administration, except every member speaks as a member in parliament as well). For the past ten years he's had overall charge of all areas of British political strategy except one, Foreign Affairs.

Because he's a "temporary custodian" and British Foreign policy changes so infrequently, that policy is dictated not by Cabinet but by the permanent civil servants of the Foreign Office itself. There have been two significant changes in British Foreign policy since this unspoken convention began: in 1905 when (under relentless pressure from King Edward the Seventh) Britain abandoned its long-standing support for Germany and signed defence treaty obligations with France (known as the Entente Cordiale), and in around 1927-1930 when it was decided that Britain would invariably support the interests of the United States abroad when invited to do so by the American President (known eventually as the Special Relationship). The former led directly to two World Wars, the Russian Revolution and the Cold War annexation of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union, it was one of the greatest political disasters of the millenium. The latter led Tony Blair to commit troops to the "liberation" of Iraq whether he would have personally wished to or not. My own opinion of the Foreign Office is not a high one, as you might gather.

We do have a domestic political scandal - our Watergate, if you'd like a comparison - in that New Labour is US$60 million in debt (which is slightly less than their main opposition, the Conservative party). No political party can accept any foreign donations, and all donations over US$2000 have to be declared in a public register. People and companies often don't like to be seen on the register. Some high elements of New Labour were investigated when it became apparent that donations of the order of US$ 2 million each had been disguised as indefinite "loans". When it became clear that the practice was legal if smelly, the only thing these financial organizers could be criminally charged with would have been the gift of knighthoods or seats in the Upper Chamber of Parliament in exchange for the loans. No evidence of such corrupt offers was discovered but the smell remained. It erupted again when a far more trivial political official was shown to have offered the same incentive to anyone donating US$2 to 4 million each to a politically sensitive school creation project. Again, no links were established into any Cabinet office but the smell deepened. Tony Blair has been questioned by police twice as a potential witness to some of the events, but there's no suggestion that he might have been wittingly involved. It's still a sour note to leave office on.

So, ST, I'm not sure whether I've covered your request for why anyone might worry about "the infamous Tony Blair" but if I've missed what you were hinting toward do please tell me so and I'll try to cover your more particular questions. I hope I've come close, at least, with this.

We're left only with the matter of DG's suggestion that "British members are so wrapped up in American politics and America bashing". I'll ignore the temporary glitch posed by your Bush Jr White House if I may, DG. Everyone must realize that criticism of the current administration is in no way anti-American, it's simply a difference of opinion on what constitutes war crimes and whether a judicially imposed death penalty is appropriate for Donald Rumsfeld and his bloody associates. I'd be against that, myself, but I'll follow the trial with considerable interest.

DG, I mentioned that we have around ten parties of various sizes represented in our primary chamber. The policies of all those have, at various times, differed markedly from each other. I expect that within five years the aberration of New Labour will swing back toward Old Labour values in various key areas, though if you were to suggest that the last ten years have shown little blue water between the two main parties I'd be forced to agree with you. The degree of difference in policies, even so, is enormous when compared with any difference in policies between Democrats and Republicans in the United States. Both are committed to an immense proportion of US GDP being fed into a high-tech military which can only be justified if there is a perception of fear and threat by the US electorate. Both are committed to economic policies which lower any social provision to such slim margins that there are now millions living rough within the US Homeland (and I note that there is absolutely no effort made federally to count these people, and one can see why). Voting Democrat or Republican for any national office is the only way to cast a vote for the winner, no other contender ever wins (which marks a further difference from the British experience). The lack of blue water between major policy issues of the level I've mentioned means that, to any external observer, the United States is effectively a One Party State and consequently a failed democracy. It will take generations, not mere years, to do anything to change that.

Someone once said that to judge a nation's wellbeing it's necessary not to consider the wealth of the wealthiest, but to consider the wealth of the worst off sections of the community. The USA is becoming more and more divided between those who have and those who don't, and no amount of propaganda describing the opportunity of everyone to rise to the top disguises the statistical reality of those divisions or their worsening as the years go by. The consequence, which affronts foreign observers of the United States more than even their imperial excesses abroad, is the extraordinarily high proportion of its citizens within the penal system and the disproportionate representation of distinct ethnic (or economic, it amounts to the same thing) sub-groups among their number. Loosely-constrained capitalism has the entire United States as its laboratory and as the results enter the endgame society is becoming more and more ugly.

So, as you can see, DG, American policies are of legitimate interest to Brits. While I quite like some of your fellow-citizens, your country is among the last places on earth I'd want to visit. That, and my comments here, aren't "bashing", though. They're a reflection on your constitution and its implementation.

[minks]

jimbo;537619 wrote: must of been ABBEY HOUR:wah:


oh wait I been drinking and it looks like she's been drinking.... it's a Canadian thang ahahahaha

[abbey]

koan;537621 wrote: Somewhere it was narrowed down to 3 specific people who apparently bash Americans all the time. One has been named as spot the others are yet to be known.



(they are calling out spot! :yh_giggle)

I'm looking forward to seeing this.



eta: "they" refers to Sweet Tooth and Designer Gal
Where is spot?

Just peeped at his profile and it showed this

Last Activity: Today 08:40 PM

Replying to Thread Brits.... @ 08:40 PM


It's 10pm now :-3

[minks]

abbey;537629 wrote: Where is spot?

Just peeped at his profile and it showed this

It's 10pm now :-3


hey I just replied to him and now it's gone... WTF!!!!

[Sweet Tooth]

KOAN- THIS IS WHY WE WHERE CALLING SPOT OUT- HES STRAIGHT UP AND GIVES GOOD, LOGICAL, AND HONEST ANSWERS. SETTLE DOWN



and Spot, thank you so much for understanding! i think I was most afraid of your answer, and after I read it, I clearly understand. Thanks! I think this thread is done! All my questions have finally been answered! Thanks spot!

[abbey]

Sorry, just seen spots post.

It was worth the wait.

[Sheryl]

Wow, thanks Spot, I actually learned something today.