Tag Archives: england

Bla bla Somalia bla bla

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I do tend to drone on about Somalia a lot, pardon the pun, and here’s evidence, by semi popular demand: this is a letter to the Private Eye where I point out that corrupt warlords didn’t create the disintegration in Somalia, rather they are the products of it.

private-eye-delete2

(it’s unfair on the guy who wrote the original piece obviously because I don’t include his article which wasn’t all bad)

I know you are supposed to be a retired colonel before you start writing to esteemed organs in order to correct them, but in this case I thought it worth pointing out; if someone said, for example, Britain invaded Poland to start world war two it might be seen as somewhat misleading.

Whilst the world is becoming increasingly peaceful, there’s still a lot of conflict to keep up with and it’s hard to remember who started what when. Who are the bad guys? And it does seem logical that warlords would have started the war. With a name like that. If they had, the solution would be easy. Get rid of the warlords, innit.

The only problem is that warlords didn’t start the war, they inherited it: or at least the conditions in which it was possible. They came into existence in the power vacuum created by the absence of an evil dictator. Someone who the international community knew was bad, but propped up for years, to whom it supplied tons and tons of weaponry along the way, much of which was used against said dictators’ own people, creating decades of mess in the fall out. Does this in any way sound familiar?

The wider problem for people who aren’t slightly obsessed with Somalia is that we are used to getting news about the world in incremental updates even if we don’t understand the main story – a bit like getting software updates for software you don’t own. I didn’t learn about Somalia at school, did you? So why would you know this stuff? How could you possibly know that the conditions for the situation in Somalia, and by extension Kenya, preceded the rise of al Shabab?

It’s complicated of course; there are many reasons why things went wrong in Somalia, including its colonial past – which takes in Italian, British and Omani rulers – as well as a clan-based societal structure that doesn’t mix well with modern military hardware, and many more. Needless to say the average Somali is a victim in the piece, which makes it all the more frustrating when *some people* more or less assume that if you are Somali you are either a warlord, terrorist or pirate rather than someone whose country has been messed up by these factors.

It’s pretty important stuff – particularly if you are British. Britain is in the top few arms exporters in the world – exact figures are murky because so many weapons are given away in dodgy deals.

Britain has spent decades supplying weapons to countries with dodgy leaders which then get used. They also get used in the terrible, chaotic aftermath of those dodgy leaders and it’s my opinion that the only way that we can prevent future, similar situations is by unilaterally reducing arms exports.

PS The thing you can do about it is support the campaign against the arms trade: http://www.caat.org.uk
Or if you disagree, you can always plump for a career in the defence industry, where ‘a change in market conditions is presenting new opportunities,’ apparently:
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/channels/skills-and-careers/in-depth/engineering-job-opportunities-in-the-defence-sector/1015722.article

Let them have Kent

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Been thinking about the English Defence League people who burnt down a mosque recently.

All they want is a homeland, this EDL lot. England. They want to defend England.

A pure England. A land of the Angles. A truly English place. Who would deny anybody’s human right to a homeland? Let them have it, I say.

According to their website ‘The EDL believes that English Culture has the right to exist and prosper in England.’ [their caps. I won’t go into the EDL grammar right now]

They are also concerned about people who want to ‘impose non-English cultures on the English people in their own land.’

In order to make sure that this ‘New England’ is both racially and ideologically pure, the EDL supporters who live there will restrict themselves to that which is strictly ‘Anglo’.

The Angles were a Germanic people who settled in Britain in the post-Roman period. Therefore their homeland, where the Angles actually come from, is therefore Angeln, in Schleswig-Holstein, on the Jutland Peninsula. However, because there are so many Germans already there this may be problematic.

‘East Anglia’ seems logical at first, but so much of this area was reclaimed by Dutch engineers that they can’t really have that. So I’m suggesting a section of Kent, although because they will not be using modern English it won’t sound exactly like that, especially the vowel sound.

The language they will speak in this ‘New England’ is the primitive Germanic English of the Angles: of course they won’t be allowed proper numbers (which are Arabic), nor words of a Greek, Latin, Norman French origin, nor loan words from other ‘non English’ languages. This will reduce their potential vocabulary by around 80-90%.

They won’t be allowed the Saint George’s Cross, sadly, as Saint George is also patron Saint of Catalonia, Portugal and Bulgaria plus George was Palestinian and therefore possibly wouldn’t get on too well with EDL as a result.

For their homeland to be fully authentically ‘English’, a lot of things will have to go: no cups of tea, which comes from India and Sri Lanka; no fish and chips either because fish and chips was invented by French Huguenot and Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Nor chicken tikka masala either. Lager wasn’t invented but they could have beer and mead and they are allowed roast beef, but no roast potatoes because potatoes are foreign.

The current Royal Family comes from all over Europe, so they can’t have the Queen any more, and Parliament comes from a French word so that’s out. The Angles worshipped a range of gods so God Save The Queen is a no no. Sadly the Angles have left little in terms of art, literature, and architecture because they assimilated with other tribes, and then the more technologically-advanced Normans basically took over their remaining lands. We know from archeological evidence that they lived in wattle and daub structures, none of which survive.

The good news is that they will be allowed to keep their misspelt tattoos – Anglo Saxon tribes were heavily tattooed – and they will be allowed simple wooden ships. But in general when it comes it comes to defence of New England the picture is bleak: they will be allowed hand-held weapons but not much more because all the really capable military hardware came much later on.

So…a doomed land of terrible food, where people with bad tattoos can use limited vocabulary and live in huts whilst being laughed at by other more civilised people. A genetic cul-de-sac.

Not Looking for New England? Then stop burning down mosques. Tell your friends and colleagues not to burn down mosques. And if you know anyone who may be tempted to think EDL could usefully stand for anything other than English Disco Lovers, remind them that pretty much everything you like about this damp lump of rock in the middle of the Atlantic comes from our relationship with things outside it, and that its successful future will be based on people getting on with each other – not an invented ideological war, between what you’ve been told ‘England’ means and what you’ve been told ‘Islam’ means and the erroneous belief that they are somehow mutually incompatible.

The bigger words may need explaining.