okay it's approaching that time of year again, st. george's day, england's saints day that they do not get off as a holiday which i personally think is bullshit!! we have ours, the scots, the welsh & england don't have theirs. i copied & pasted a poem & sent to my bf & am posting it in here 'cause i know some peeps in here are from england.

i grew up feeling proud of where i come from, they grow up saying you can't be proud to be english, this year the english government have told schools & government buildings NOT to put up the st. george's cross flag on st. george's day.

this is in case it "offends" someone, which again is bullshit!!! if someone other than english is offended by a national flag being flown on thier national day then they can fuck off!!!! (imho)

every year the government get a petition with millions & millions of signatures wanting st. george's day to be a holiday & guess what? it's ignored! *sigh*

i don't think it's fair, what do you think? they've never had it as a holiday but i think they should always have had it. & most people in england don't even know when it is!! my boyfriend's mates didn't know when it was so *I* told them!!! lol which is bizarre!!

& if you're wondering st. george's day is april 23rd.

anyway here's the poem:

From The Queen's Royal Lancers Website:

Goodbye to my England , So long my old friend
Your days are numbered, being brought to an end
To be Scottish, Irish or Welsh that's fine
But don't say you're English, that's way out of line.

The French and the Germans may call themselves such
So may Norwegians, the Swedes and the Dutch
You can say you are Russian or maybe a Dane
But don't say you're English - ever again.

At Broadcasting House the word is taboo
In Brussels it's scrapped, in Parliament too
Even schools are affected, staff do as they're told
They must not teach children about England of old.

Writers like Shakespeare, Milton and Shaw
The pupils don't learn about them anymore
How about Agincourt, Hastings , Arnhem or Mons ?
When England lost hosts of her very brave sons.

We are not Europeans, how can we be?
Europe is miles away over the sea
We're the English from England , let's all be proud
Stand up and be counted - Shout it out loud !

Let's tell our Government and Brussels too
We're proud of our heritage and the Red, White and Blue
Fly the flag of Saint George or the Union Jack
Let the world know - WE WANT OUR ENGLAND BACK !!!!

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Fuck St. George, that muthafucka killed my gecko. Came into my house, giving me shit about dragons. I showed him the pet shop receipt, but he was having none of it. He knifed the poor wee fucker, wanked onto its face, then licked my balls and run out of the house.

Fuckin' English are mental, I tells ya!

Happy St. George's Day bunny, and to my English neighbours!

bunny, I can understand that whole heartedly. You keep saying you're English and I'll keep saying I'm American. Screw offensiveness! We have some of the same bitches over here about holidays and traditional remembrance days. I foresee it getting worse and worse. They've jammed up some of our most important Presidents' days into a collective one. I fail to see how their importance can be consolidated. I shudder to even say Lincoln and Clinton in the same sentence.

Fly you flag and be proud of your heritage and speak your mind. I'm sure you're not alone in your feelings. Great poem, btw. And happy St. George's Day.

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lol

i'm irish (northern irish to be picky lol) on both sides i have no english blood in me, but it just bugs me! lol

my bf is english & i think it's totally unfair the way their own government is towards their own day

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I'd like to take this moment to point out that the holiday in question is not actually officially called 'Presidents Day;' that's a push from advertisers over 20 years ago that has absolutely nothing to do with offensiveness (actually the opposite, since Lincoln's birthday has never been a federal holiday and is only included as one by this title). When it was actually attempted to pass congress in a bill in '68, it failed. Many states celebrate Lincoln's birthday; if yours doesn't, too bad. It's not like you can't take the day off February 12th if you want to.

However, there are no traditions associated with Washington's Birthday that include anybody other than Lincoln. You were alive through this whole period, so I'm not sure why you should be getting schooled on it by somebody who wasn't. But here we are.

In general, America has absolutely no movement to remove the American flag from public display and is unlikely to have one in the future. Europe's current problem with political correctness, and especially their governments' tendencies to cave to pressure in cases such as St. George being offensive to Muslims, is actually much worse, and much more absurd, than anything we've got. It's only in other countries that Americans tend to get shit for, or cover up, the fact that they're Americans; the English are beginning to do it in their own house. And that's some stupid shit.

Though I can see where their national guilt is coming from. Nobody does guilty self-examination like the British.

That second line in the second verse
"So may Norweigans, the Swedes and the Dutch"
is not entirely true. You mean to say that your government didn't start officially bitching about using the flag on schools at national holidays until 2009? Hell, we've had that from the authorities for years, lots of, if not most, schools doesn't take five minutes to sing the national anthem on 6th of June here. A pretty sure-fire way of getting yourself declared a neo-nazi or racist is to simply wear a shirt with the old blue- and yellow printed on it. Pupils in elementary school caught wearing such offensive clothing are often asked by teachers to remove them.
So you're not alone over there.

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i dunno amadeus (not being english) will ask bf & post more about it laters

where are you amadeus?

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It's a shame that there's a tendency for extremists to be at the forefront of patriotic worship of their country, but at the same time I can't help but feel disappointed when I hear people say "I'm proud to be [whatever]". Haven't we evolved beyond this group-think retardation by now? The country that you happened to have been born in is coincidentally the best country in the world? It's one notch above religious loyalty in terms of how crazy it is to swear allegiance to something that you had no control over being a part of in the first place.

I'm not so arrogant as to say that I'm above that kind of mindset - I'm not - but I feel that we are capable, at this stage in our sociological evolution, to better manage these in-group urges and bypass them accordingly. I can't understand why I should feel pride that Oscar Wilde came from Ireland while at the same time feel no connection at all with William Shakespeare. It's bizarre, and as understandable as it is as a survival mechanism, it's not understandable how we actively encourage and revel in such thinking in this day and age. Flying flags and marching and singing nationalistic songs is something I could never feel comfortable doing. It actually gives me the creeps, it's like for a brief period you suspend your rational thought and individuality and are absorbed into a collective, pulsating membrane of worker-ant conformism - ready to do battle with a neighbouring country's equivalent if need be.

I don't care about Ireland any more than or less than I care about Zimbabwe, at least not in the terms we're discussing in this thread. I care about it in as much as a person can care about the environment they've lived in all their lives and would be upset if they had to abandon. It doesn't then follow that I'm "proud to be Irish". Likewise, I don't think it's right to feel pride for another Irish person's accomplishments, as if it somehow reflects on me positively. Or to feel shame if an Irish person commits some atrocity. When I hear about British guilt or American guilt or whatever, I die a little inside...it's just so depressing hearing that people my age are feeling these things for shit that happened 100 years ago.

In times of war there's little doubt that patriotism is useful, but that doesn't make it right. If anything it shows its danger - you can be coerced into pretty much anything if it's got a miniature flag shoved on top of it.

Or have I missed the point completely?

i think you've missed the point completly paddy,

the point i am trying to make is that we have our national day, the scots, the welsh etc.,

i just think it's wrong that england don't have theirs as a national holiday (& any other country).

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i'm proud to be irish! & why the fuck shouldn't i be?? saying your proud of who are you & where you come from doesn't say that "i'm better than you" (imho) it just says you are proud of who you are (imho). my bf is proud to be english but he v rarely says it out in public.

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if me & bf ever have ickle ones i'll be teaching them to be proud of both their irish & english hertiage, it's not something you should be ashamed of (imho), though yes in some cases it can get you killed!! *sigh* but that's not what this topic is about paddy.

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No no, I wasn't talking about national days or the like (I have no opinion about that, to be honest), I was talking specifically about the notion that these days are somehow relevant to the individuals who live in these countries.

Why not be proud to be "bunny"? Why does your Irishness have any bearing on who you are? Yes, your environment goes a long way towards shaping your personality etc., but if you had been born 100 miles away instead you'd be a different person, but only superficially. Clearly it's not the Irishness that made you who you are, it's the people you happened to have been surrounded by and the circumstances you endured/enjoyed. I'm not having a dig at your patriotism here (I just realised how confrontational I was sounding hahaha) I'm just saying that the bunny I know and fear is who she is despite the nationality she was born under. If there was a united Ireland (or if we were invaded by Belgians) 10 minutes after you were born, you'd still be you, even though your country would be governed by a different economic/belief/cultural system.

There's nothing to be ashamed of about our history, exactly because it had fuck all to do with us (try telling that to the wankers who kept the troubles going for 800 years in one form or another). You and I took no part in slavery, in genocide, in jingoism or imperialism. So why should we feel ashamed by what our ancestors did? And by that same token, why should be swell with pride when we learn about historical figures from our country who acted heroically or charitably? We should definitely learn about it and teach our kids about it, I'm with you there, but it should be taught in the same dispassionate way we teach kids about German history or American history. We're just as detached from "our" history as we are from everyone else's. If an ancestor of ours died so that we could remain Irish or British or whatever, that doesn't legitimise their motives, unless of course he/she died fighting off some Nazi-like oppression - but that's nothing to do with patriotism, that's freedom/survival!

lol yeah paddy i know about history & that is how i am gonna tell it if me & bf do have ickle ones i don't want them growing up not knowing where they've come from (so to speak).

i grew up knowing where i come from & told me to proud of where i come from & the nationality i am whereas bf's (as already said) upbrining was the opposite which i *don't* believe in, i think that is wrong (imho).

if you are english, born & bred you have a right to celebrate st. george's day & tell everyone else to fuck off if they think different (imho).

i celebrate st. paddy's day & i don't think there's anything wrong with that *shrug*

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I agree But the other side of the coin (i.e. patriotism) is another thing haha.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAH *aaaaaaaa* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAA
Now I'm just curious, whatever put that notion into your head? Humanity as a whole hasn't evolved for shit mindwise since we became smart enough to figure out that mashing your head against a rock will hurt, in three tries anyway.

I like my country and I see it as something of an obligation to know of it's history and traditions and try to understand what has shaped it into what I see today. Call it a repayment for rights, like voting. I don't walk around feeling a churning guilt for what was done to samerna in the 19th century, but that doesn't change that I'm sickened by the fact that Swedish schools still don't even touch the subject.
But I'll concede much of your point, Paddy. Whenever I think about it, much of my willingness to sing the anthem seems to stem from the facts of life of the place where I've had the unbelievable luck of being born. Rational patriotism? Haha, what an idea.

I agree with you Bunny. Though I don't agree with the thoughtless idiocy that seems to accompany a lot of people when they gather for a bit of patriotic wallabaho, it is wrong to try to stamp it out. History has shown that there are sound practical reasons for that.

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Haha point taken!

I can understand the sense of duty you feel to those who preserved your rights and lifestyle/livelihood, but you can feel the same sense of duty to those from other countries who helped defeat the Nazis or who inspired human/civil rights movements which spilled over into your country. That's the point I'm making (which I think you agree with anyway haha), that nationality is a fairly meaningless thing, yet it can be an incredibly powerful force, which usually comes at the cost of our collective progress/sanity. Our primitive brains would argue to the contrary haha, but I do think that with a little effort and some mass consciousness raising that we can move forward, if only by tiny increments.

You are still break dancing right? Mashing a head on a rock or a floor doesn't seem too different to me.

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People keep misunderstanding me. I have never claimed to be intelligent, or nice or anything of the sort. However, though you are right in one sense - my right hand thumb is pretty screwed up, but that doesn't stop me from doing 9090's with that hand (to be or not to be an idiot...) - there is one fundamental difference:
Girls are much more impressed by a windmill-swipe-cricket-freeze.

Sure, we can move forward, that's what makes thinking about the whole mess such a frustrating past time, since there are so many monkeys that refuse to come down from the tree. Regardless of wether that tree is about to have a serious close up with an earthquake, a volcano, a chainsaw and the minor issue of a tilting Earth axis and the associated fact of shifting climates meaning that there soon won't be a tree.
I think my main issue in this discussion is that people are shunning flags and national anthems for all the wrong reasons; some sort of generalized fear and guilt.

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I don't care for celebrating "Englishness" or "being English" per se, I just want an extra day off work. The UK has one of the lowest number of bank and public holidays in Europe and we also work longer hours. So yeah, bring on another public holiday and if this is best facilitated in the name of some fictional saint then so be it.

The issue of patriotism is an interesting one. We have a phrase in Liverpool that sums it up quite nicely: "I'm Scouse, not English". North of Watford Gap, most people tend to feel patriotic towards their city of birth rather than the nation whereas this is reversed for Southerners, who often feel an irreconcilable devotion to the indolent, freeloading royal family.

In any case, allegiance to one's football team often triumphs über alles.

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Here in texas, we celebrate black history month. What is President's day?

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It's like Sam Houston Day only more widespread.

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