Why The Only Patriotic Approach Is To Ignore St George's Day Altogether

Ah it's here again. April the 23rd. The annual festival of angry commentators fulminating over a lack of English people running around getting drunk and venerating their Saint like what the Irish do. By 11 am Farage will have appeared on pretty much all the radio and TV outlets decreeing that under his watch, supersize flags will be flown from every town hall, a Bank Holiday will be declared and that everyone will be obliged to slay at least one dragon before tea.

Throughout the day news channels will try to fill out the tedium of election coverage by sending cub reporters to vicious pubs, full of tattooed angry men (who will mysteriously not be working) to get them to articulate what St George's Day means to them. Nobody will be able to do that, because I've never heard anyone eloquently express the logic of their blind patriotism. And drunk men in midday pubs are notoriously ineloquent. 

There'll be much twitter and Facebook talk by earnest liberals of how George was Turkish - or Greek and how he probably didn't even exist at all. A UKIP candidate will say something embarrassing, which will be reported gleefully in the Huffington Post. Somewhere in the Welsh hills Nick Griffin will think something bigoted. Other, well intentioned, pundits and politicians will try to sum up what it is to be English. And the whole thing will be, as it always is, a great big wet non-event. 

The good news is that all this is an absolute waste of time, because by far the most English thing to do is to ignore the whole tiresome borefest altogether. And here are 5 reasons why:

• The primary reason that St George's Day is not celebrated much, never has been and never should be is that England is a Protestant Country. And Protestants don't "DO" saints because we banned their adoration around the time we dissolved the monasteries and burned all the Catholics for being heretics. Suggesting that we be more continental is always to be welcomed but are the flag-bearers of St George really suggesting that we overthrow the Head of State and Defender of the Faith and bow once more to the might of Rome?

• Nobody believes in God anyway. Less than 20% of English people regularly attend church. If we don't believe in God why are we venerating a Saint that we didn't recognise even when we did?

• In the England of old, it just wasn't done to shout about how great your nation was. The traditional Englishman, regardless of class, was by definition understated, quietly patriotic, proud and most definitely not brash. Bragging about the superiority of your race was the sort of thing 'continentals' did. Usually with disastrous results. Bertolt Brecht (who was of course continental himself) correctly observed that "unhappy (is) the land in need of heroes." And that's quite true. 

• Which leads me neatly on to five:

• Why do we need this probably fictional Turkish bloke who probably never slayed so much as a chicken when we've got a superb line-up of real people who actually lived that are much more deserving of our adulation? What good is lame old St George when we have - well David Bowie. And The Beatles. And David Hockney. Or Churchill. Or Shakespeare. Or Darwin, Newton, Woolf, Chaplin, Stan Laurel, Harold Pinter, Joe Orton, Cary Grant, Michael Caine, Stevie Smith, Queen Elizabeth I, Elton John, JK Rowling, JM Turner, Giles Gilbert Scott, Lutyens, Elgar, Ray Winstone, Michael Powell, Alfred Hitchcock, Tilda Swinton, Judi Dench, Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Bobby Moore, Fred Perry, Stirling Moss and - well The List goes on and on.

We English have much to be proud of. We have no need to wave the red and white flag out of the windows of our houses, or get drunk in Trafalgar Square. The former plays havoc with property prices and the latter we can and indeed do all the time anyway. That's one of the glorious things about being English. And gin. And a unified front on Noel Edmonds. But perhaps the greatest English tradition of all is to completely ignore our English traditions altogether. No stupid 'traditional dress' for us. No. We are just what we are. This happy breed. And that's good enough for me.

The Greatest Speech Churchill Never Made

Of  all  the Great Britons it is perhaps Churchill who is most often attributed stuff he never said. From poisoning people's coffee to quipping about his member to Atlee, words the man never uttered have been tossed about for years, willy-nilly and used by dimwits to back up dimmer causes. Take the quote in the picture on the right. He never said that. It's attributed to everyone from Snoopy to Mark Twain. Hell - it could even have been said by Shania. But Winnie never said it. SO - time to put the record straight. After strenuous research (about half an hour on the train actually) I've managed to knock up a speech consisting entirely of unattributed or just plain made up Churchill quotes. Well - not quite - ONE of them is real. Can you spot which one? No Google allowed. Answer to @otto_english


Speech Given By Sir Winston S. Churchill to Nobody Ever, on no date in history:

Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential. Success concerns going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.  A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity while an optimist the opportunity in every difficulty. You must never, never, never give up. If you are going through hell keep going. If you have enemies then good, that means you've stood up for something in your life. 

People often forget, that in 1940 we had no guarantee that we would win the war but we did and to ensure it never happens again, we must build a United States of Europe. In this way only, will hundreds of millions of toilers be able to regain the simple joys and hopes which make life worth living again.

On a final note, in about sixty years from now, a man called Nigel will come among you and say a lot of things. Supporters of his might even take some of the things I never said and post them on a social media website called Twitter. Others may prefer to do so on Facebook. Or even Instagram. Vote for him. Why not. Oh - and drink Sunny Delight. It's delicious with a handful of crushed ice. Clemmie swears by the stuff.

"I want my country back" - The good old days of Jimmy Savile, knee-cappings and homes that killed you.

Anyone who has spent time arguing with Kippers on Twitter - and I confess here and now that I have spent FAR too much time doing just that - will realise that for many devotees of Nigel, one of the principle attractions of the "People's Army" is the hope that it will return the nation to a golden age. This sentiment is usually expressed with the punchy declaration that:

I want my country back.

Frankly, it's a bit of a theme.

So I've been looking closely, too closely perhaps, at pictures of the delegates at the UKIP Spring Conference and  wondering what that "country" is.  According to a YouGov poll the typical UKIP voter is male, over 50 and white. Studying the delegates in Margate, one would have to assume that the average "die-hard" supporter is a bit older than that and closer to the 60 mark.

I think we have to assume that "I want my country back" means they wish it returned some Back to The Future style fixed point in their youth. Otherwise it's a fairly redundant statement. So given their ages, one might suppose that they want to go back to when they were in the (Godfrey) bloom of their youth. For most, that would be the early 1970s. In the last fading rays of light before we entered the EUSSR - or whatever they're calling it today.

Ah. 1973. Gary Glitter was riding high in the charts with his Glam Rock hit "Touch Me". Popular Radio 1 DJ Jimmy Savile was encouraging us to "Clunk Click, even on the shortest trip". On TV, star family entertainer Stuart Hall was charming a nation with the hilarious "It's a Knockout". The IRA too were enjoying a "golden era" of bombings, knee cappings and sectarian shootings. Britain was in the grip of a splendid recession, replete with mass unemployment and widescale industrial unrest that was to last a decade. Oh, and Princess Anne married Captain Mark Phillips at Westminster Abbey - to much rejoicing.

Happy days.

If you had wanted to BUY BRITISH in 1973 you could have got yourself a lovely new Austin Allegro and been the envy of all your neighbours. Or had a newly built asbestos lined home that has probably killed you by now. The industry of course knew the dangers of asbestos in the seventies, but in those joyous pre EU regulation days it was still being merrily fitted to most new homes. 

The fact is actually - and please whisper it quietly lest our UKIP friends hear this - Britain was shit in the early 1970s. I mean really shit. Sure there was David Bowie and Nicolas Roeg but that really was it. Life expectancy was around 70. Racism and sexual abuse and sexism and (as we now know) paedophilia were rampant in a society that had yet to embrace political correctness - or as some call it - decency. It was still perfectly OK to eject people from your shop  or lodgings on the grounds of their colour or race. In the workplace in those pre Health and Safety GONE MAD days you were far, far more likely to die or suffer a serious injury. In schools, teachers could still beat your little ones with a cane. 

And they did.

If you had a baby out of wedlock you were still ashamed and made to feel really ashamed. If you had a boyfriend or girlfriend of a different colour you were pretty much ostracised. And heaven help you if you were gay. Sure - homosexuality had been decriminalised in 1967 - but it barely registered. Women's rights were a joke. Maternity leave didn't exist. Nor a minimum wage. If you got cancer you probably died. 

Thing is - UKIP is not really a political movement at all. It's a "mood". A party of people that genuinely think the past was better - despite all the evidence to the contrary - because in reality they are actually harking back to the loss of their own youth. It is a personal lament writ large in political form. 

Now come on everyone -  all together now

The New Meaninglessness

Several things inspired me to pick up my laptop today and write this. Prime among those was the fact that I love you. Yes. You heard me right. I fucking love you. I love you with a passion that defies time, space and - well just about everything in the Universe. And beyond. I know, I know, we've not even been introduced, but there it is.,..... I've said it. I love you. Your move. Whoever you are.

We'll come back to the details of our passion later, but just to warm you up for some serious love-making that'll *seal the deal* let's talk about Ed Miliband. You know you want to.

You see, Ed wants to talk to you. And me. And approximately 3,999,998 others in the run up to the General Election. Bet that makes you feel special. Certainly made me come over all gooey. Obviously, Ed won't be able to have ALL those conversations himself so his elves - sorry - party members - will be doing it for him. 

Thing is, the so called conversation won't be a conversation, because Ed's idea of a conversation seems to involve "telling people" what is at stake. And anyway that isn't the point, because unless you are a brain dead tulip, you will know that the whole conversation thing has no point at all. Like the verb 'wibble' or a North Korean election it is, I am afraid, utterly meaningless.

It joins Max Factor's appointment of new brand Ambassador Marilyn Monroe (dead since 1962), Nigel Farage's declaration of momentary teetotalarism (dead behind the eyes since 1964) and David Cameron's Road To Nowhere poster (I preferred the song) in a week that seems to be celebrating The New Meaningless as if it were the new black. Or brown. Or whatever meaningless fashion cycle we are currently in.

So before I rip off my thong and sing you an Aria here's a note to Ed: 

We don't need a conversation. It's a waste of time. Labour needs leadership. Britain needs leadership. It needs someone who will stand up and have a fight and take some blows and throw some better punches in return. It needs a leader who will conjure up surprises and a road to somewhere and even some slightly left field eye catching but tangible ideas that will speak to progressive voters and people who might stop and think again and look beyond you and your ridiculous bacon sandwich.

Wibble?

It won't happen of course, because politics now sits where Derek Zoolander and friends have been reclining these past 50 years. In a nest of meaninglessness - atop a Froop tree.

A conversation with 4 million people my big fat arse. You might just as well go about the place telling complete strangers you love them.

Which I do by the way. I really, really do.

The first time as Priestley, the second as Farage - Common Wealth - UKIP's warning from history

UKIP are not the first 'new' party to achieve a breakthrough on the ragged shirt tails of an unpopular coalition. It happened last time.

In 1942, with the war raging and a "LibLabCon"government running the country a leftist group, under the sponsorship of the Picture Post's owner Edward G. Hulton, challenged the then existing agreement that by-elections would not be fought in war time and managed to win six seats in a row. The Common Wealth party, although of the left, had many characteristics similar to those of UKIP. It was broadly populist and appealed to the egalitarian sentiments of wartime British voters, while seeking to derive political capital out of a coalition government which by its very nature was making compromises to weather the crisis on the continent. Sound familiar?

Initially chaired and effectively led by the writer J.B. Priestley,  rivalry between him and the party's first sitting MP Richard Acland led to tensions and then a split.  The party's success was in a very large part down to the electoral pact but it could not keep up momentum in the post war years as the Coalition was replaced by Atlee's majority government. The Common Wealth party split into factions and eventually many of its members were subsumed into the Labour and Liberal parties.

Perhaps, what we are seeing with UKIP is a rerun of inevitable disenchantment inherent in coalition governments in a country that operates on first past the post. History, after all, does have an unnerving habit of repeating itself. The first time as Priestley, the second time as Farage? 

Royal Baby Breaking News - your cut out and keep guide

Newsreader  

We now go live to our Royal Correspondent who is outside the Palace. Nicholas/Sue/Dave what can you tell us?

Nicholas/Sue/ Dave  

Yes the Palace have confirmed that the Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant and that the Royal couple are delighted. This means that at some point in the next six or seven months, assuming all goes well, she will have a baby. The baby will almost certainly be a boy or a girl. If it is a boy there is an extremely high chance that he will be given the traditional title "Prince" whereas if it is a girl she will be known as "Princess". We don't know what the name of the baby will be at this point, but if it is a girl then we can reasonably assume that the baby will have a girl's name, while if the child is a boy he will be called something male. He or she will be the fourth in line to the throne and remain so until something changes at which point he or she will become the third in line or even second or conversely the fifth or sixth. Or perhaps even the seventh. Or eighth - it really depends on how many other children members of the Royal Family have.

Newsreader

And do we have any suggestion as to how the news was greeted by the Royal couple?

Nicholas/Sue/David

Yes at this point the Palace have confirmed that the Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant and that the Royal couple are delighted. In the past Prince William has said that he would love to have a little girl, but that he would be equally happy if he had another little boy. The Duchess herself has never commented openly on the topic, but one might reasonably assume that she will be happy with a boy or a girl. The couple have already had one child, Prince George, so we can say at this point that the new baby will almost certainly not be called George or even Georgina, although the latter still remains a possibility. If unlikely. The news was greeted around the world by other media outlets. Everybody is described as being "really delighted" by the news. Stephen Fry tweeted: "A baby that's nice" while Nigel Farage added - on twitter that it was "really good news". David Cameron, unusually perhaps has backed Farage on this, while Ed Miliband added  that he was "very happy for the Royal Family" and that maybe an airport could be named after the baby when it is born. Back to you in the studio Alistair.

Newsreader 

In other news thousands continue to die in ....

Roll Music and Credits.....

Helmer: "astonished by synthetic tide of indignation at his amusing sex change tweet"

Just before the Newark by-election we wrote to Roger Helmer the UKIP candidate about his infamous sex change tweet.

Dear Roger

On the 16th January 2011 you wrote the following on twitter: 

"Why is it OK for a surgeon to perform a sex-change operation, but not OK for a psychiatrist to try to "turn" a consenting homosexual?"

Do you still stand by that? Do you think it is in any way offensive? If so do you think it important that people still stress their point of view? Do you think that a psychiatrist could 'turn' a consenting heterosexual.

Best regards

This was his reply

Dear Zoe,

I can hardly “stand by it”, as I never made a statement.  I merely asked a question.  It was intended to be light-hearted and amusing, and I was astonished by the tide of synthetic indignation it engendered from strident pressure groups.

I simply don’t know if it is possible to change a person’s sexuality through any kind of medical or psychiatric intervention (and I’m not sure I much care).

What I do care about is the right of individuals to make choices regarding their own behaviour and health and welfare.  Take a less contentious example.  I don’t know whether homeopathy works or not (though I suspect not).  But as a libertarian, I defend the right of anyone who believes it works, or believes it might work, to try it.  Similarly, if a homosexual person wants to change their sexuality, and believes that some intervention might achieve this, I would defend their right to try.  The impression I have is that the gay lobby regards any such intervention as intolerable and unacceptable, and vilifies anyone who seeks it.  I find that attitude deeply illiberal.

Best regards.

ROGER HELMER MEP