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Top Dog · Site Moderator Joined: 06 Jun 2007 Posts: 1736 Status:

On associated press tonight.

LONDON (AFP) - England, famous across the world as the country of Shakespeare, royalty, fair play and manners, is a nation of "overweight, sex-and-celebrity-obsessed TV addicts", according to a new tourist guide.

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The "Rough Guide to England", which was written by four British travel writers, says that there is nowhere "so fascinating, beautiful and culturally diverse, yet as insular, self-important and irritating, as England".

The country has been scarred by the 2005 London bombings and the Iraq war, making it a "querulous, quarrelsome country" that could be in the grip of an identity crisis, it says.

English people may hold forth on politics, law and order and immigration, but also lap up "celebrity chit-chat".

"As a glance at the tabloid newspapers will confirm, England is a nation of overweight, binge-drinking reality TV addicts," it says.

Reserve is still a key national trait -- attempting a conversation with a stranger "can be seen as tantamount to physical assault", the guide says -- and a person's accent is the equivalent of a consumer brand.

Social inequality is rife, too, as "a tiny aristocracy, who in some cases trace their roots to the Norman Conquest of the eleventh century, still own most of the land" and there is an attack on creeping materialism.

The guide also rails against "identikit" provincial towns and "overpriced, under-funded public transport".

Foreign tourists are also warned that the English are "the most contradictory people imaginable".

"However long you spend in the country you'll never figure them out," it adds.

But the guide is not entirely negative, reserving a soft spot for the country's love of animals, generosity to charities, irony, its openness to refugees, thriving arts and culture and the soothing quality of BBC Radio 4.
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WOULD YOU SAY IT WAS FAIR?

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Regards
Top Dog.

Clunk · Ejected Joined: 29 Jul 2007 Posts: 935 Status:

Yeah. England sucks.
We are overrun by immigrants and foreigners who come here and demand the government help them out.

It took me 14 weeks to get a penny from the government when I left ex and took kids with me.
My mother who works for the jobcentre does claims for people who have been in the country a couple of days, and they get money within a week.

England and the English concept is near extinction.

Geddi · Posted: Sat May 10, 2008 9:31 pm Post subject:

Clunk: I was in London today. I spoke with a few Muslims I met and one of them told me that 10% of people in London are Muslim. He was starting an organisation to try to "..get them off their arses and out into their communities.." I laughed and asked that he extend his call for that to all sections and communities within London and beyond.

I wonder, what it is YOU hate about England? I love it, with some very small exceptions.
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Democracy is dead.

Geddi · Posted: Sat May 10, 2008 9:44 pm Post subject:

The rough guides are notoriously bias, narrow and inaccurate. A German friend who travelled through India and Pakistan on a Triumph Bonneville camped on a plain which the rough guide said: "DO NOT STOP HERE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!"

He stayed there for five days or so waiting for a spare part to be delivered for his broken bike. He sat next to his bike waiting and reading with a small fire and a kettle and brewed tea all day. He was visited by almost all who passed him, most of whom he did not share a single word of a common language. More than half carried either rifles or Kalashikovs. He smiled and brewed up and was given small gifts of dried fruits and nuts for his hospitality.

So much for Rough Guides.

The description of England could be accurate, from a narrow perspective, as described above. Then again, so could many other we could each write of our own experience of England.
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Democracy is dead.

GTB · Posted: Mon May 12, 2008 7:44 pm Post subject:

I think morale in this country of ours is certainly on a low point at the moment. We are being stung by over inflated fuel prices (the dearest tax on fuel in Europe!), we are being taxed left, right and centre on everyday life items and we are being shafted by the European bureaucrats.

I think Gordon Brown is certainly not going to dig us out of this hole by retracting some of these unjust taxes and I'm note sure "Dave" Cameron can do any better - he has only been giving out sound-bites and nothing of any substance. We might not have another General Election until 2010 which is rather scary. :shock:
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Geddi · Posted: Mon May 12, 2008 9:39 pm Post subject:

To be fair, tax in UK is no higher than most EU countries. Some are marginally higher on some things and others on other things. The lower bracket removal is just plain dumb!

Simplification is the key. Earn under £10k pa, no tax. Add £5k to that for first kid, £3k for 2nd and £2k per child thereafter.

Children aside: £10k to £14,999 @ 10%; £15k to £30 @ 20%; £31k to £50 @ 30%; £50k to £100k @ 40% and over £100k @ 50%.

Bonuses to be windfall taxed at the same rate.

(teach those fat cats to cream off the top and let their industries fail)
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Democracy is dead.

GTB · Posted: Mon May 12, 2008 9:55 pm Post subject:

[quote="Geddi"]To be fair, tax in UK is no higher than most EU countries. Some are marginally higher on some things and others on other things.

To the average bloke in the street, (wife, two kids and a mortgage) he is really feeling the pinch right now with food and fuel prices going up.

Geddi · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 7:40 am Post subject:

GTB

If I told you what I earned over the last, say ... 2 years, you would not believe me! smiling

Average men in the street with kids and all tend to have a view that what they earn and what they are prepared to fight for should be different. Trade unions in the country are toothless, corrupt and pacified. The only ones with any strength to stand up and make a stand are the dock workers, who have international solidarity and have resisted casualisation of labour consistently for the last 20 years or more. It made little difference in the end as they were alone in this country with very little support from other sectors, so now that final stronghold is broken and no jobs are safe.

Maggie Twatcher started it in the 1970s and Tiny B-liar continued it and Brown seems to be unable to change it. Cameron will undoubtedly continue the trend in the same manner.
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Democracy is dead.