Straw Poll
Jim Spriggs
the debate, people struggled to define what British culture was. Nobody
suggested that the reason why it was so difficult to define was because
it had been destroyed by the great influx of wogs that this country has
been subjected to in recent years.
--
I don't know who you are Sir, or where you come from,
but you've done me a power of good.
Sam Nelson
jim.s...@ANTISPAMbtinternet.com.invalid says...
> The proposal was "Multiculturalism has never been so important." During
> the debate, people struggled to define what British culture was. Nobody
> suggested that the reason why it was so difficult to define was because
> it had been destroyed by the great influx of wogs that this country has
> been subjected to in recent years.
That would probably be as a result of a complete lack of racists in the
room.
Go back to any point you choose before `recent years' and tell us what
`British culture' was then.
As far as I can tell, `being British' consists of `not being anything
else' and probably always has.
--
SAm.
Jim Spriggs
>
> In article <4319A7F1...@ANTISPAMbtinternet.com.invalid>,
> jim.s...@ANTISPAMbtinternet.com.invalid says...
> > The proposal was "Multiculturalism has never been so important." During
> > the debate, people struggled to define what British culture was. Nobody
> > suggested that the reason why it was so difficult to define was because
> > it had been destroyed by the great influx of wogs that this country has
> > been subjected to in recent years.
>
> That would probably be as a result of a complete lack of racists in the
> room.
So, an unrepresentative group of people, then? Deliberately chosen to
be so?
Sam Nelson
jim.s...@ANTISPAMbtinternet.com.invalid says...
> Sam Nelson wrote:
> >
> > In article <4319A7F1...@ANTISPAMbtinternet.com.invalid>,
> > jim.s...@ANTISPAMbtinternet.com.invalid says...
> > > The proposal was "Multiculturalism has never been so important." During
> > > the debate, people struggled to define what British culture was. Nobody
> > > suggested that the reason why it was so difficult to define was because
> > > it had been destroyed by the great influx of wogs that this country has
> > > been subjected to in recent years.
> >
> > That would probably be as a result of a complete lack of racists in the
> > room.
>
> So, an unrepresentative group of people, then? Deliberately chosen to
> be so?
Spooky, huh? Fuckwit.
--
SAm.
Oxymel of Squill
> Go back to any point you choose before `recent years' and tell us what
> `British culture' was then.
>
the Judeo Christian tradition. Rather ignored the Anglo Saxon culture which
has recently been restored from the victorian view of barbarians and
savages.
And very telling that so few folk could actually define British culture, no
one is educated in this area any more, no one has given it much thought.
Which is why our Common Law tradition (the Anglo Saxon view of seeing what
normal people do and formalising that as law) has been so easily knocked
out of kilter by the EU's Napoleonic law (our betters telling us what we
ought to do).
Jim Spriggs
> Go back to any point you choose before `recent years' and tell us what
> `British culture' was then.
Fifty years ago (say) the question would not have been asked. It was
simply the way "we" lived. Now one cannot refer to "we" because there
is no such coherent body. The 8% ethnic minority in this country has
imposed its values on all of us.
Steve Brooks
IMO there never was a clearly defined English culture - in the sense of the
culture most people in England grew up with. Though obviously there was the
culture of the elite which everyone else sort of made do with.
This is neither a bad thing nor something which is unique to England. But it
does make a bit of a nonsense of all the romantic wibbling about Englishness
that some indulge in.
--
SB
Jim Spriggs
>
> Oxymel of Squill wrote:
> >> Go back to any point you choose before `recent years' and tell us
> >> what `British culture' was then.
> >>
> > very coherent bod during the phone in I thought referred to Roman law
> > and the Judeo Christian tradition. Rather ignored the Anglo Saxon
> > culture which has recently been restored from the victorian view of
> > barbarians and savages.
> >
> > And very telling that so few folk could actually define British
> > culture, no one is educated in this area any more, no one has given
> > it much thought. Which is why our Common Law tradition (the Anglo
> > Saxon view of seeing what normal people do and formalising that as
> > law) has been so easily knocked out of kilter by the EU's Napoleonic
> > law (our betters telling us what we ought to do).
>
> IMO there never was a clearly defined English culture - in the sense of the
> culture most people in England grew up with. Though obviously there was the
> culture of the elite which everyone else sort of made do with.
>
> This is neither a bad thing nor something which is unique to England.
What, then, does "multiculturalism" mean?
Sam Nelson
jim.s...@ANTISPAMbtinternet.com.invalid says...
> What, then, does "multiculturalism" mean?
I wish I knew. I haven't a clue.
--
SAm.
Phil Wilson
> What, then, does "multiculturalism" mean?
'It is not in general unreasonable to affirm any one of a number of
reasonable comprehensive doctrines . . . Others who affirm doctrines
different from ours are, we grant, reasonable also, and certainly not
unreasonable. Since there are many reasonable doctrines, the idea of
the reasonable does not require us, or others, to believe any specific
reasonable doctrine, though we may do so. When we take the step beyond
recognising the reasonableness of a doctrine and affirm our belief in
it, we are not being unreasonable.' (John Rawls)
That's what it means.
No, I can't read it without laughing either.
Cheers,
Phil
Steve Brooks
That's a damned good question. No one on Straw Poll seemed to be sure. And
neither does anyone here. I think it's become one of those buzz-phrases that
doesn't have a well defined meaning ( maybe like dyslexia.) All sorts of
different people have their own idea about what it means but mostly they
don't quite agree.
--
SB
THE SERGEANT OF POLICE: 'WHEN A FELON'S NOT ENGAGED IN HIS EMPLOYMENT, HE LOVES TO LIE A BASKING IN THE SUN...'
"Jim Spriggs" <jim.s...@ANTISPAMbtinternet.com.invalid> wrote in message
news:4319A7F1...@ANTISPAMbtinternet.com.invalid...
There's no need to be offensive: priggish little shits will use that as an
excuse not to hear you.
ROBBIE
THE SERGEANT OF POLICE: 'WHEN A FELON'S NOT ENGAGED IN HIS EMPLOYMENT, HE LOVES TO LIE A BASKING IN THE SUN...'
"Sam Nelson" <s...@ssrl.org.uk> wrote in message
news:MPG.1d83ba2cf...@news.zen.co.uk...
Right you fucking pygmies:
<rolls sleeves up>
Chaucer
William Shakespeare
Samuel Johnson
Walter Ralegh
Joseph Malord William Turner
George Stubbs
Lord Byron
Abolishing the slave trade
Red telephone boxes
Fish and Chips
Oak Trees
Parliamentary Democracy
George Orwell
Evelyn Waugh
Ronald Firbank
Yorkshire Dales
Charles Dickens
The British Empire
Saving Europe from itself
The Rolling Stones
The English Parish Church
Winston Churchill
The English Pub (farewell)
Routemaster Buses (farewell)
The NHS
Christopher Wren
The Armed Services
Kipling
Steptoe and Son
Westminster Abbey
WH Auden
The Blitz
Carry On Films
Cricket
The Sex Pistols
Gilbert and Sullivan
George Formby
Horatio Nelson
The English Language
Anthony Trollope
Sid James (he was South African, but...)
Powell and Pressburger
Biggles
Constable
Jane Austen
Kenneth Williams
Jonathan Swift
PG Wodehouse
the Navy
Shelley
Keats
Trees
Hogarth
William Powell Frith
both Francis Bacons
Stanley Spencer
Elgar
Thomas Tallis
The Battle of Trafalgar
William Blake
Gainsborough
The Wilton Diptych
The National Gallery
The British Museum
Soho
Big Ben
Trial by jury
The Oxford English Dictionary
The London Underground Map
Music Hall
Max Miller
Arthur Askey
The Western Brothers
Noel Coward
Light Orchestral Music (a la Eric Coates)
A nice cup of tea
Anthony Powell
Saki
Samuel Pepys
Giles
The English Landscape
William Byrd
Christopher Marlowe
John Donne
Milton
Ben Jonson
Mary Wollestencraft
Joseph Wright of Derby
Laurence Sterne
Hazlitt
James Boswell
Dover Sole
Edwin Lutyens
Agatha Christie
Graham Greene
Brighton
Piers
Victorian Railway Stations
MR James
Thomas More
Pound Sterling
William Walton
Radios Three and Four
Ealing Comedies
George Gissing
Thomas Babington Macauley
Monty Python
The Goons
On the Buses
Rising Damp
Horse Racing
Thomas De Quincey
HG Wells
Canterbury Cathedral
Blackpool
Stanley Holloway
Stanley Holloway's monologues
The Who
Dickens' illustrators
Wimbledon
Treasure Island
RL Stevenson
Will Hay
The Times
The Defeat of the Spanish Armada
Kew Gardens
Chip Shops
Bubble and Squeak
Roast Lamb; mint sauce.
Roast Beef
Jugged Hare
Horse Chestnut Trees
Fair Play
the Monarchy
Charles Hawtrey
Oscar Wilde
Delius
Walter Sickert
Spencer Gore
CRW Nevinson
Eric Ravilious
Paul Nash
Piccadilly Circus
Dame Laura Knight
Laurence Olivier
Robert Newton
Canals
John Mills
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
Emily Bronte
Andrew Marvell
John Gay
Alexander Pope
The coastline
The English Channel
John Bunyan
Samuel Richardson
Seigfried Sassoon
Philip Larkin
Kingsley Amis
Clapham Common
The Thames
Battersea Power Station
Desert Island Discs
Rod Stewart and the Faces
The Boat Race
Trooping the Colour
The Proms
The Cenotaph
ROBBIE
THE SERGEANT OF POLICE: 'WHEN A FELON'S NOT ENGAGED IN HIS EMPLOYMENT, HE LOVES TO LIE A BASKING IN THE SUN...'
"Jim Spriggs" <jim.s...@ANTISPAMbtinternet.com.invalid> wrote in message
> Sam Nelson wrote:
> >
> > In article <4319A7F1...@ANTISPAMbtinternet.com.invalid>,
> > jim.s...@ANTISPAMbtinternet.com.invalid says...
> > > The proposal was "Multiculturalism has never been so important."
During
> > > the debate, people struggled to define what British culture was.
Nobody
> > > suggested that the reason why it was so difficult to define was
because
> > > it had been destroyed by the great influx of wogs that this country
has
> > > been subjected to in recent years.
> >
> > That would probably be as a result of a complete lack of racists in the
> > room.
>
> So, an unrepresentative group of people, then? Deliberately chosen to
> be so?
I particularly hated the gobby muslim woman banging on about postmodernism.
And the old pakistani saying England had no culture: I'd have GLADLY kicked
his arse for him.
ROBBIE
THE SERGEANT OF POLICE: 'WHEN A FELON'S NOT ENGAGED IN HIS EMPLOYMENT, HE LOVES TO LIE A BASKING IN THE SUN...'
"Steve Brooks" <ste...@postmaster.invalid> wrote in message
news:38nSe.2535$7p1....@newsfe7-win.ntli.net...
> Oxymel of Squill wrote:
> >> Go back to any point you choose before `recent years' and tell us
> >> what `British culture' was then.
> >>
> > very coherent bod during the phone in I thought referred to Roman law
> > and the Judeo Christian tradition. Rather ignored the Anglo Saxon
> > culture which has recently been restored from the victorian view of
> > barbarians and savages.
> >
> > And very telling that so few folk could actually define British
> > culture, no one is educated in this area any more, no one has given
> > it much thought. Which is why our Common Law tradition (the Anglo
> > Saxon view of seeing what normal people do and formalising that as
> > law) has been so easily knocked out of kilter by the EU's Napoleonic
> > law (our betters telling us what we ought to do).
>
> IMO there never was a clearly defined English culture - in the sense of
the
> culture most people in England grew up with. Though obviously there was
the
> culture of the elite which everyone else sort of made do with.
Right you ignorant fucking pygmies:
Chaucer
William Shakespeare
Samuel Johnson
Walter Ralegh
Joseph Malord William Turner
George Stubbs
Lord Byron
Abolishing the slave trade
Red telephone boxes
Fish and Chips
Parliamentary Democracy
George Orwell
Evelyn Waugh
Ronald Firbank
Charles Dickens
The British Empire
Saving Europe from itself
The Rolling Stones
The English Parish Church
Winston Churchill
The English Pub (farewell)
Routemaster Buses (farewell)
The NHS
Christopher Wren
Kipling
Steptoe and Son
Westminster Abbey
WH Auden
Oak Trees
the Monarchy
Charles Hawtrey
Oscar Wilde
Delius
Walter Sickert
Spencer Gore
CRW Nevinson
Eric Ravilious
Paul Nash
Piccadilly Circus
Dame Laura Knight
Laurence Olivier
Robert Newton
John Mills
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
Emily Bronte
Andrew Marvell
John Gay
Alexander Pope
The coastline
The English Channel
John Bunyan
Samuel Richardson
Seigfried Sassoon
Philip Larkin
Kingsley Amis
Clapham Common
The Thames
Battersea Power Station
Desert Island Discs
Michael Calwell
Michael Faraday
The WWW
for starters
THE SERGEANT OF POLICE: 'WHEN A FELON'S NOT ENGAGED IN HIS EMPLOYMENT, HE LOVES TO LIE A BASKING IN THE SUN...'
"Jim Spriggs" <jim.s...@ANTISPAMbtinternet.com.invalid> wrote in message
> Steve Brooks wrote:
>
> What, then, does "multiculturalism" mean?
What multiculturalism is in practise is the policy in local govt, education
and business (where it can be coerced) where each culture represented by
immigrants to England is regarded as having equal importance with the host
culture. In practise, the host culture is not regarded as being equal to the
immigrant culture, it is wittingly and unwittingly (as we can see by the
comments of some very ignorant, chippy people in this thread) regarded as
being inferior to the host culture (see for example the banning of christmas
by local councils and anyone else they can coerce into it whilst
simultenously pumping local people's cash into festivals celebrating Indian
religions; cultural commissars sedulously working against Christianity while
fawning over reactionary Islam; positive discrimination; obsession with
Afro-caribbeans).
As anyone with intelligence may imagine, the whole thing has evolved from
Marxism as a way of destroying English culture. Immigration has always been
very attractive to the Left because it produces a ready made swathe of
voters many of whom will naturally have difficulties the Left will purport
to fix. See Ken Livingstone whose obsession with ethnic minorities has
everything to do with his holding onto power.
When I started to suggest that multiculturalism was an insane idea (as well
as being a political lever of the Left) some years ago, people became
instantly annoyed and began flinging racist imputations around. Many of them
merely mistook 'multiculturalism' for 'multiracialism' which are two
different thing.
Multiculturalism has been a failure. But to the Left, such as that mulsim
woman on Straw Poll, it has been a success: she believes in the divisiness
and the ultimate destruction of English. In that respect, it's working well.
ROBBIE
Sam Nelson
HAPP...@HAPPYONE.COM says...
> > else' and probably always has.
>
>
> <rolls sleeves up>
>
They're not culture, they're just people and things---a fair number of
which can't possibly count as aspects of culture any more. Oh, and you
had `Fish and chips' and `chip shops' in as separate items.
--
SAm.
Sam Nelson
> The English Language
> Michael Faraday
> The WWW
The Internet search engine was, more or less, invented in my office.
Though not, unfortunately, by me.
--
SAm.
THE SERGEANT OF POLICE: 'WHEN A FELON'S NOT ENGAGED IN HIS EMPLOYMENT, HE LOVES TO LIE A BASKING IN THE SUN...'
Culture: the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement
regarded collectively.
I told you you're a pygmy. Actually I'm amazed you've found employment.
ROBBIE
''negligence and irregularity long continued will make knowledge useless,
wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible.'
Samuel Johnson
THE SERGEANT OF POLICE: 'WHEN A FELON'S NOT ENGAGED IN HIS EMPLOYMENT, HE LOVES TO LIE A BASKING IN THE SUN...'
"THE SERGEANT OF POLICE: 'WHEN A FELON'S NOT ENGAGED IN HIS EMPLOYMENT, HE
LOVES TO LIE A BASKING IN THE SUN...'" <HAPP...@HAPPYONE.COM> wrote in
message news:dfekn9$cgc$1...@nwrdmz02.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com...
>
> "Jim Spriggs" <jim.s...@ANTISPAMbtinternet.com.invalid> wrote in message
> news:4319FEBE...@ANTISPAMbtinternet.com.invalid...
> > Steve Brooks wrote:
> >
> > What, then, does "multiculturalism" mean?
>
> What multiculturalism is in practise is the policy in local govt,
education
> and business (where it can be coerced) where each culture represented by
> immigrants to England is regarded as having equal importance with the host
> culture. In practise, the host culture is not regarded as being equal to
the
> immigrant culture, it is wittingly and unwittingly (as we can see by the
> comments of some very ignorant, chippy people in this thread) regarded as
Steve Brooks
Okay - where does that comes from?
> "Steve Brooks" wrote
>> Oxymel of Squill wrote:
>>>> Go back to any point you choose before `recent years' and tell us
>>>> what `British culture' was then.
>>>>
>>> very coherent bod during the phone in I thought referred to Roman
>>> law and the Judeo Christian tradition. Rather ignored the Anglo
>>> Saxon culture which has recently been restored from the victorian
>>> view of barbarians and savages.
>>>
>>> And very telling that so few folk could actually define British
>>> culture, no one is educated in this area any more, no one has given
>>> it much thought. Which is why our Common Law tradition (the Anglo
>>> Saxon view of seeing what normal people do and formalising that as
>>> law) has been so easily knocked out of kilter by the EU's
>>> Napoleonic law (our betters telling us what we ought to do).
>>
>> IMO there never was a clearly defined English culture - in the sense
>> of the culture most people in England grew up with. Though obviously
>> there was the culture of the elite which everyone else sort of made
>> do with.
>
> Right you ignorant fucking pygmies:
Well that's not very British for a start. ;-)
<snip list>
It's a good list. There's very little in there I wouldn't include though
there are a few notable omissions. But a list of examples - no matter how
good - can not constitute a definition. I'm sure every Brit can come up with
a similar list. And that each list will be different depending on the
education, experience and personality of the list-maker. This is fine for
us as individuals but next to useless when it comes to formulating public
policy which has to have a legalish form of definition.
Let's look at a couple of examples from the list -
> Carry On Films
Quintessentially English. No doubt about that in my mind. Hundreds of years
from now they will tell scholars as much about English society in the 1960s
and early 70s as any news programme from the same period. But how would they
look to the Victorians? I suspect most of them would be horrified by the
idea that anything so coarse and smutty would ever be considered British
culture. Clearly however British culture is defined that definition changes
with time in a way that is more than just adding new examples as they occur.
> Delius.
He may have been born in Bradford but his parents were German and he spent
the majority of his life outside the UK. And yet I agree there is something
very English about both his music and his life-story. Clearly having foreign
parents is not a barrier to being part of English culture. So why do we
exclude - for example - Bhangra? To the best my knowledge it is - or was
when it started - unique to this country. ( Maybe you don't exclude it - I
don't know. But I'm damned sure many of the people who reject
'multiculturism' would. ) It's certainly a minority interest. But then the
vast majority of Brits only hear any knd of orchestral music when it's used
in TV ads.
> The English Language
Another hornets nest. Which English language? Cockney English? Yorkshire
English? Bristol English? and so on. And whichever one we pick- what about
all those loan words? A wonderful language; expressive, subtle, adaptable.
But not terribly useful as part of a definition of what is exclusively
British culture Apart from anything else too many other places use it.
> Trees
> Oaks
I know what you mean about the ancient oak on the village green. But oaks
grow in many countries. They are part of our culture because of the context
in which we see or remember seeing them rather than because of what they
are.
> The English Channel
Very important in forming our culture and even more our history. But really
it's a piece of Geology/Geography. I don't think it can form part of a
definition of what our culture is (and isn't) anymore than our weather can.
I would go on but my daughter is badgering me to get her some lunch.
--
SB
Sam Nelson
HAPP...@HAPPYONE.COM says...
> ROBBIE
> ''negligence and irregularity long continued will make knowledge useless,
> wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible.'
> Samuel Johnson
So for you the pinnacle of British culture and the best put-down you
can come up with is from the world's most xenophobic snob ever? Why am
I not surprised?
--
SAm.
Alan Hope
>Culture: the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement
>regarded collectively.
Yeah, like the fucking coastline.
--
AH
Alan Hope
HE LOVES TO LIE A BASKING IN THE SUN...' goes:
>The coastline
Well, that's one aspect of the culture I think we can all get behind.
You fucking put down everything you could think of, you fraud.
Although you left out Elvis Costello, Mark Steele, Jeremy Hardy. Why's
that? Is the Culture only those things you fancy? Does nobody else
have any say?
--
AH
Sam Nelson
not.al...@mail.com says...
Hey, it's been shaped by indigenous white people for millennia.
--
SAm.
Jim Spriggs
>
> .... Oh, and you
> had `Fish and chips' and `chip shops' in as separate items.
That'll be because they're separate items. Fish and chips could still
be a traditional British dish even if chip shops didn't exist, and vice
versa.
Mike Headon
<snip>
> Walter Sickert
> Spencer Gore
> CRW Nevinson
> Eric Ravilious
> Paul Nash
Fantastic! When I started reading this I said to myself "Nash and
Nevinson should be in this list!"
I think that "Totes Meer" should have been in the list of top British
paintings that some rag was waffling about recently.
--
Mike Headon
e-mail: mike dot headon at enn tee ell world dot com
Jim Spriggs
>
> ... you left out Elvis Costello, Mark Steele, Jeremy Hardy. Why's
> that?
Because they are not aspects of culture, ok?
> Is the Culture only those things you fancy? Does nobody else
> have any say?
Yes, you just have.
Alan Hope
>Alan Hope wrote:
>> ... you left out Elvis Costello, Mark Steele, Jeremy Hardy. Why's
>> that?
>Because they are not aspects of culture, ok?
Well, not like the English Channel, for sure.
>> Is the Culture only those things you fancy? Does nobody else
>> have any say?
>Yes, you just have.
Let Robbie fight his own battles, cunt, you want my advice.
--
AH
Ivan
"THE SERGEANT OF POLICE: 'WHEN A FELON'S NOT ENGAGED IN HIS EMPLOYMENT, HE
Robbie, I would have thought that 'Sir Isaac Newton' would have come
somewhere at the top of your list, but all I could find was 'Robert Newton',
could they by any chance be related, I wonder?... I think we should be told.
> ROBBIE
>
>
>
Steve Brooks
<snip>
> Robbie, I would have thought that 'Sir Isaac Newton' would have come
> somewhere at the top of your list, but all I could find was 'Robert
> Newton', could they by any chance be related, I wonder?... I think we
> should be told.
That's one of the omissions I was talking about. Brunel would be on my list
too. And Darwin. And Fleming. And Watson & Crick. And so on.. OTOH there are
a number of people on the list who I've never heard of. That doesn't mean
they don't belong there. Everyone's list will be different which is why we
can't usefully define our culture that way.
Hats off to you Robbie for not listing Princess Diana. Though if you wanted
to describe what British culture really is you probably should have.
--
SB
Ivan
"Steve Brooks" <ste...@postmaster.invalid> wrote in message
> Ivan wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > Robbie, I would have thought that 'Sir Isaac Newton' would have come
> > somewhere at the top of your list, but all I could find was 'Robert
> > Newton', could they by any chance be related, I wonder?... I think we
> > should be told.
>
> That's one of the omissions I was talking about. Brunel would be on my
list
> too. And Darwin. And Fleming. And Watson & Crick. And so on.. OTOH there
are
> a number of people on the list who I've never heard of. That doesn't mean
> they don't belong there. Everyone's list will be different which is why we
> can't usefully define our culture that way.
>
>>
like me at the moment I'm afraid! :0)
> SB
>
>
Steve Brooks
> "Steve Brooks" wrote
>> Ivan wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>> Robbie, I would have thought that 'Sir Isaac Newton' would have come
>>> somewhere at the top of your list, but all I could find was 'Robert
>>> Newton', could they by any chance be related, I wonder?... I think
>>> we should be told.
>>
>> That's one of the omissions I was talking about. Brunel would be on
>> my list too. And Darwin. And Fleming. And Watson & Crick. And so
>> on.. OTOH there are a number of people on the list who I've never
>> heard of. That doesn't mean they don't belong there. Everyone's list
>> will be different which is why we can't usefully define our culture
>> that way.
> Wasn't he known to his friends as 'Robert (pissed as a) Newton'?.. a
> bit like me at the moment I'm afraid! :0)
Let'sh hope so..hic.
--
SB
Michael Calwell
The astonishing Ralph Vaughan Williams is missing.
Phil Wilson
> Steve Brooks wrote
>
> The astonishing Ralph Vaughan Williams is missing.
He refused a knighthood, which would argue for at least some
ambivalence towards 'British culture', and of course he was for most
of his life a Socialist. Nothing to do with his music of course, which
is bad for other, purely musical, reasons (IMNVHO).
Cheers,
Phil
"...WHEN THE COSTER'S FINISHED JUMPING ON HIS MOTHER, HE LOVES TO LIE A-BASKING IN THE SUN...'
"Steve Brooks" <ste...@postmaster.invalid> wrote in message
> THE SERGEANT OF POLICE: 'WHEN A FELON'S NOT ENGAGED IN HIS EMPLOYMENT,
> HE LOVES TO LIE A BASKING IN THE SUN...' wrote:
>
> Okay - where does that comes from?
The Pirates of Penzance:
http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/pirates/web_op/operhome.html
Pygmies will immediately think: 'ohh, Victorian, southern (Barnsley accent):
don't like it. Fact is, the operettas are a classic example of the English
being able to take the piss out of themselves.
ROBBIE
"...WHEN THE COSTER'S FINISHED JUMPING ON HIS MOTHER, HE LOVES TO LIE A-BASKING IN THE SUN...'
> In article <dfeoot$cbn$1...@nwrdmz01.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com>,
> HAPP...@HAPPYONE.COM says...
> > ROBBIE
> > ''negligence and irregularity long continued will make knowledge
useless,
> > wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible.'
> > Samuel Johnson
>
> So for you the pinnacle of British culture
I gave you my list O pygmy: the Johnson quote was to illustrate what has
happened to England. You are a classic example of what happens when pygmies
are encouraged to think they are educated. So I wasn't giving you it as a
pinnacle; so you were, as always, wrong. Dr Johnson, and Boswell's biography
of him, which you haven't read, is a pinnacle of English culture. If I tell
you it was written by a Scotchman you may wish to read it.
and the best put-down you
> can come up with is from the world's most xenophobic snob ever? Why am
> I not surprised?
Xenophobia is an intense and irrational dislike of foreigners. Johnson's
objections to the scotch were not really intense and were certainly not
irrational: He knew that scotchmen were moody, devious and chippy. Monsignor
Calwell- who I like -is a classic example of a scotchmen with a bee in his
bonnet. Of course the best example of scotch chippiness, moodiness and
contrariness is Alan Hope, who is a sort of compound of all that is worst
about the scotch.
'Oats - A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in
Scotland supports the people. ' Johnson's Dictionary.
ROBBIE
Phil Wilson
Agreed, but it requires at least some knowledge of Victorian history
and personalities to get the full flavour of the satire. Not many
people have the time or the inclination to obtain this. And most
people, whether from Barnsley or not, are quite able to 'take the piss
out of themselves' in other ways, as a visit to any village pub will
demonstrate. They do it in ways which are simultaneously contermporary
and timeless, just as G & S was in its time.
To be honest, the satire is as dated as Pope's, and will only ever
appeal to a specialist group, much as Pope's poetry strikes one now as
rather florid and stiff, in a way that it wasn't when it was first
produced. The expression has passed away - like 1950s 'beat' talk, and
the political targets' roles are not precisely understood.
Really, Sullivan was another musical mediocrity, not without a certain
charm and integrity, but enough of a pot-boiler to fulfill the limited
requirements of their comedies and the then current vogue for charming
drawing-room music and songs. Merely making him 'Sir Arthur' doesn't
change the essential shortcomings of the music, qua music, nor does
(slightly later) 'Sir Edward' and nor would have 'Sir Ralph'.
G & S is for the same kind of people who collect model cars and
trains, and make hobbies out of passions. The main point is that it is
comforting, nostalgic, and un-threatening and slighlty philistine and
reactionary. Nothing wrong with that humble kind of practice in its
place. But compared to genuine world-cultural events. like
Shakespeare, it's not even remotely in the same field.
Cheers,
Phil
Michael Calwell
Why don't you like it (seriously)? People were allowed to be socialists
when they didn't understand the ramifications.
"...WHEN THE COSTER'S FINISHED JUMPING ON HIS MOTHER, HE LOVES TO LIE A-BASKING IN THE SUN...'
"Steve Brooks" <ste...@postmaster.invalid> wrote in message
news:scCSe.1080$Y06...@newsfe2-win.ntli.net...
> HE LOVES TO LIE A BASKING IN THE SUN...' wrote:
>
> Okay - where does that comes from?
>
>
> > "Steve Brooks" wrote
> >> Oxymel of Squill wrote:
>
> >>>> Go back to any point you choose before `recent years' and tell us
> >>>> what `British culture' was then.
> >>>>
> >>> very coherent bod during the phone in I thought referred to Roman
> >>> law and the Judeo Christian tradition. Rather ignored the Anglo
> >>> Saxon culture which has recently been restored from the victorian
> >>> view of barbarians and savages.
> >>>
> >>> And very telling that so few folk could actually define British
> >>> culture, no one is educated in this area any more, no one has given
> >>> it much thought. Which is why our Common Law tradition (the Anglo
> >>> Saxon view of seeing what normal people do and formalising that as
> >>> law) has been so easily knocked out of kilter by the EU's
> >>> Napoleonic law (our betters telling us what we ought to do).
> >>
> >> IMO there never was a clearly defined English culture - in the sense
> >> of the culture most people in England grew up with. Though obviously
> >> there was the culture of the elite which everyone else sort of made
> >> do with.
> >
> > Right you ignorant fucking pygmies:
>
> Well that's not very British for a start. ;-)
So for all your disingenuousness you have a clear idea what is and what
isn't British.
>
> <snip list>
>
> It's a good list. There's very little in there I wouldn't include though
> there are a few notable omissions.
Feel free to supply a list. I would have asked SAm, but he needs to get to a
dictionary and find out what culture means before he can do that.
But a list of examples - no matter how
> good - can not constitute a definition.
But many things on the list are definitively British. Why split hairs?
I'm sure every Brit can come up with
> a similar list. And that each list will be different depending on the
> education, experience and personality of the list-maker.
God you do work for a fucking local council don't you. Fucking hell.
The fact is is that many of the names on the list will have to be on
anybody's list if it is to be taken seriously. Such lists reinforce what
people like you (a graduate of the University of Resentment as Harold Bloom
calls it) don't like: canonical thinking. Only pygmies think that the
opinion of an ignorant person is as good as anybody's.
This is fine for
> us as individuals but next to useless when it comes to formulating public
> policy which has to have a legalish form of definition.
The only problem for formulating public policy is that we live in an epoch
where Britain and British values have been forbidden by the wanky left. It
is a case of 'how can we go on being Britain without stating our intention
to do so'. Plus the Labour Party is full of wackos from feminist fascist
(female supremacists) to race relations bores to mad old trots: they all
want to live in some scabby, collectivist marxist shithole apology for a
country. Most British people do not.
>
> Let's look at a couple of examples from the list -
>
> > Carry On Films
>
> Quintessentially English. No doubt about that in my mind. Hundreds of
years
> from now they will tell scholars as much about English society in the
1960s
> and early 70s as any news programme from the same period. But how would
they
> look to the Victorians?
They cannot look like anything to the Victorians and never will. Because
history is a one-way street. You may as well say: how does Shakespeare look
to a Tyrannasaurus Rex? We have to make the decisions in the light of
history and in the light of the best that has been written and said in the
culture. This by the way is the purpose of an educated elite - as opposed to
licensed ignorance, which is what the propose.
I suspect most of them would be horrified by the
> idea that anything so coarse and smutty would ever be considered British
> culture.
I don't agree at all. If the Victorians could see Carry On (which they
cannot and never will so the whole argument is redundant, but I'll indulge
it) they would have recognised the innuendo that flourished in their own
day. The Victorians were incredibly smutty. I don't believe any epoch of
British life hasn't been.
Clearly however British culture is defined that definition changes
> with time in a way that is more than just adding new examples as they
occur.
>
> > Delius.
>
> He may have been born in Bradford but his parents were German and he spent
> the majority of his life outside the UK. And yet I agree there is
something
> very English about both his music and his life-story. Clearly having
foreign
> parents is not a barrier to being part of English culture. So why do we
> exclude - for example - Bhangra?
It isn't part of western musical thought. However British culture is totally
open to outside influences. Take the proms, one of the best proms this year
was Ravi Shankar's Symphony #1. I wouldn't worry unduly about Bhangra: there
are commissars working right now to ensure that it officially becomes part
fo British culture.
To the best my knowledge it is - or was
> when it started - unique to this country. ( Maybe you don't exclude it - I
> don't know. But I'm damned sure many of the people who reject
> 'multiculturism' would.
What a terrible prig you can be, Steve. The ordinary Englishman in my
experience will embrace anything he spontaneously likes and reject on the
same principle - political considerations are only for the graduate class,
prigs and council commissars. If bhangra is embraced, then it will
eventually become part of British culture, like curry. The thing that
surprises me is how you wish to embrace the ephemeral and put it straight up
there with Milton and Shakespeare. It's resentment politics writ large.
) It's certainly a minority interest. But then the
> vast majority of Brits only hear any knd of orchestral music when it's
used
> in TV ads.
I don't agree: Classic FM is very popular.
>
> > The English Language
>
> Another hornets nest. Which English language?
There is only one. We're using it now. What accent am I writing in?
Cockney English? Yorkshire
> English? Bristol English?
God you do work for a local council don't you.
and so on. And whichever one we pick- what about
> all those loan words?
WHat about them?
A wonderful language; expressive, subtle, adaptable.
> But not terribly useful as part of a definition of what is exclusively
> British culture
On the contrary, it is a defining aspect of out culture for our culture has
been molded by it and expressed through it.
>Apart from anything else too many other places use it.
Yes but it is still the English language.
ROBBIE, who is saddened by such dreary nihilism.
"...WHEN THE COSTER'S FINISHED JUMPING ON HIS MOTHER, HE LOVES TO LIE A-BASKING IN THE SUN...'
"Phil Wilson" <philip...@talk21.com> wrote in message
news:431c0dc1$0$18650$1472...@news.sunsite.dk...
> "...WHEN THE COSTER'S FINISHED JUMPING ON HIS MOTHER, HE LOVES TO LIE
> A-BASKING IN THE SUN...' wrote:
> > "Steve Brooks" <ste...@postmaster.invalid> wrote in message
> > news:scCSe.1080$Y06...@newsfe2-win.ntli.net...
> >> THE SERGEANT OF POLICE: 'WHEN A FELON'S NOT ENGAGED IN HIS
> >> EMPLOYMENT, HE LOVES TO LIE A BASKING IN THE SUN...' wrote:
> >>
> >> Okay - where does that comes from?
> >
> > The Pirates of Penzance:
> >
> >
> > http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/pirates/web_op/operhome.html
> >
> > Pygmies will immediately think: 'ohh, Victorian, southern (Barnsley
> > accent): don't like it. Fact is, the operettas are a classic example
> > of the English being able to take the piss out of themselves.
>
> Agreed, but it requires at least some knowledge of Victorian history
> and personalities to get the full flavour of the satire. Not many
> people have the time or the inclination to obtain this. And most
> people, whether from Barnsley or not, are quite able to 'take the piss
> out of themselves' in other ways, as a visit to any village pub will
> demonstrate. They do it in ways which are simultaneously contermporary
> and timeless, just as G & S was in its time.
Of course. And?
> To be honest, the satire is as dated as Pope's, and will only ever
> appeal to a specialist group, much as Pope's poetry strikes one now as
> rather florid and stiff, in a way that it wasn't when it was first
> produced.
You might as well object to Shakespeare on the same grounds, or someone
saying 'any road' in Coronation Street. Why this pissy, minute point?
The expression has passed away - like 1950s 'beat' talk, and
> the political targets' roles are not precisely understood.
The raison detre of Gilbert and Sullivan is entertainment. I mentioned the
satire because Rajah Brooks - and many others - think in cliches about
certain aspects of culture whilst forbidding the use of cliches about other
sections of culture.
>
> Really, Sullivan was another musical mediocrity
I think you are terribly wrong.
>
> G & S is for the same kind of people who collect model cars and
> trains,
How patronising and cliched. I like all sorts of music from Beethoven and
Charles Ives through to the Wailers and garage rock of the 60s. I love G and
S. Coal miners have done as well as Winston Churchill.
and make hobbies out of passions. The main point is that it is
> comforting, nostalgic
It doesn't make me feel nostalgic when I listen to it. It merely delights me
as music, which is a matter of first importance in music, for me anyway. Of
course, music composed in 1885 isn't likely to painfully modern...
, and un-threatening
Threatening is a critical virtue then?
>and slighlty philistine
Prigs gave this definition, so I suppose it makes sense for prigs to carry
on flinging it around.
and
> reactionary. Nothing wrong with that humble kind of practice in its
> place. But compared to genuine world-cultural events. like
> Shakespeare, it's not even remotely in the same field.
It is in the same field: that of culture. It's not in the same league of
art, which is what you meant I suppose.
ROBBIE
Phil Wilson
Michael, it would take a book, and I'm not sure that anyone would
publish it.. Basically, I find most British composers boring. The only
valid music of the 20th Century is Jazz and Blues - both forms more
human (and humane) and vital than anything 'European' which latter is
nearly always, to some extent, elegaic and reactionary, when it isn't
fatuous and self-regardingly 'avant-garde'.
'Now's the Time' as Charlie Parker had it. Even Jazz is TBH at the end
of the line, having been invaded by pseuds. What we need is new,
accessible popular music, that the people themselves make for
themselves (and which isn't concocted for them in 'studios').
Cheers,
Phil
"...WHEN THE COSTER'S FINISHED JUMPING ON HIS MOTHER, HE LOVES TO LIE A-BASKING IN THE SUN...'
> Michael Calwell wrote:
> > Phil Wilson wrote:
> >> Michael Calwell wrote:
> >>
> >>> Steve Brooks wrote
> >>>
> >>> The astonishing Ralph Vaughan Williams is missing.
> >>
> >>
> >> He refused a knighthood, which would argue for at least some
> >> ambivalence towards 'British culture', and of course he was for
> >> most
> >> of his life a Socialist. Nothing to do with his music of course,
> >> which is bad for other, purely musical, reasons (IMNVHO).
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >>
> >> Phil
> >
> > Why don't you like it (seriously)? People were allowed to be
> > socialists when they didn't understand the ramifications.
>
> Michael, it would take a book, and I'm not sure that anyone would
> publish it.. Basically, I find most British composers boring. The only
> valid music of the 20th Century is Jazz and Blues - both forms more
> human (and humane) and vital than anything 'European' which latter is
> nearly always, to some extent, elegaic and reactionary, when it isn't
> fatuous and self-regardingly 'avant-garde'.
Elgar's symphonies don't do it for me. Other music by him is good. I think
your use of the word reactionary is misplaced or way to casual.
ROBBIE
Steve Brooks
> Steve Brooks wrote
>
> The astonishing Ralph Vaughan Williams is missing.
Good point.
--
SB
Steve Brooks
A-BASKING IN THE SUN...' wrote:
[Vaughan Williams]
>> Michael, it would take a book, and I'm not sure that anyone would
>> publish it.. Basically, I find most British composers boring. The
>> only valid music of the 20th Century is Jazz and Blues - both forms
>> more human (and humane) and vital than anything 'European' which
>> latter is nearly always, to some extent, elegaic and reactionary,
>> when it isn't fatuous and self-regardingly 'avant-garde'.
>
> Elgar's symphonies don't do it for me. Other music by him is good. I
> think your use of the word reactionary is misplaced or way to casual.
I must admit I can't see how any instrumental music can be described as
reactionary. At least not once the generation of musicians who created it
have died. Same applies to abstract art. But then I don't know much about
art.
--
SB
Alan Hope
>Really, Sullivan was another musical mediocrity, not without a certain
>charm and integrity, but enough of a pot-boiler to fulfill the limited
>requirements of their comedies and the then current vogue for charming
>drawing-room music and songs. Merely making him 'Sir Arthur' doesn't
>change the essential shortcomings of the music, qua music, nor does
>(slightly later) 'Sir Edward' and nor would have 'Sir Ralph'.
Good for you for standing up and pointing it out. English composers
have been uniformly mediocre, with the sole exception of Handel, who
of course wasn't English at all, though the musical fraternity does a
good job trying to coopt him.
Elgar's Enigma Variations is a clever work, so long as you read the
sleeve notes and know what the sekrit code is. His cello concerto is a
dreary work lifted out of obscurity by the unfortunate illness and
death of Jacqueline du Pré.
The rest of them never composed a single thing worthy of a single
movement of a Beethoven quartet. Vaughan-Williams you can forget.
Britten is out of my area of expertise, not that I have any expertise,
but he's beyond my ken. I won't hold my breath awaiting a reasoned
defence from the likes of Robbie, naturally.
Oak trees, on the other hand, I'm very fond of. So thanks to the
English, or the British if you like, for inventing them and for
supporting them all those years when they were being put down by
people wot come out of uvver nations. And thanks to Robbie for
reminding us of our debt.
--
AH
"...WHEN THE COSTER'S FINISHED JUMPING ON HIS MOTHER, HE LOVES TO LIE A-BASKING IN THE SUN...'
"Alan Hope" <not.al...@mail.com> wrote in message
news:95soh1pvc1d53gui1...@4ax.com...
> Phil Wilson goes:
>
> >Really, Sullivan was another musical mediocrity, not without a certain
> >charm and integrity, but enough of a pot-boiler to fulfill the limited
> >requirements of their comedies and the then current vogue for charming
> >drawing-room music and songs. Merely making him 'Sir Arthur' doesn't
> >change the essential shortcomings of the music, qua music, nor does
> >(slightly later) 'Sir Edward' and nor would have 'Sir Ralph'.
>
> Good for you for standing up and pointing it out. English composers
> have been uniformly mediocre, with the sole exception of Handel, who
> of course wasn't English at all, though the musical fraternity does a
> good job trying to coopt him.
>
> Elgar's Enigma Variations is a clever work, so long as you read the
> sleeve notes and know what the sekrit code is. His cello concerto is a
> dreary work lifted out of obscurity by the unfortunate illness and
> death of Jacqueline du Pré.
>
> The rest of them never composed a single thing worthy of a single
> movement of a Beethoven quartet. Vaughan-Williams you can forget.
> Britten is out of my area of expertise, not that I have any expertise,
> but he's beyond my ken. I won't hold my breath awaiting a reasoned
> defence from the likes of Robbie, naturally.
>
I never made any high-faluting claims for Sullivan. I happen to think the
best of his music rather wonderful. Only pygmies would start trying to get
into a pissing competition about him and Beethoven. Beethoven is my
favourite composer incidentally. The problem is is that people get terrible
pretentious and pissy about 'classical' music and always want to be first to
denounce Sullivan or later composers of light orchestral works. I don't
anything about Vaughn Williams, but if it's him that wrote the fantasia on
sea songs that they do at the last night of the proms then he should be on
the list.
ROBBIE
Phil Wilson
I like some Britten, but not because he was English or homo, but
because he knew what it took to make music effective, visceral and
physically affecting. I like Ivor Gurney (little known). I like Roger
Quilter, as he really has a lot of skill and charm. Both produced very
English songs superior to those of Sullivan. I'm not for or against
musicians on the ground of their nationality, but on how they move me,
and I value physical movement more than mental, if you kknow what I
mean. I'm not against mediocrity per se - most composers are mediocre.
But I'll take Bach (really a dance composer) over Elgar any day. And
I'll take Bizet over Delius. And Britten over Dittersdorf. And Louis
Armstrong over Sullivan (or practically anyone else). But I've never
liked Beethoven much. Rachmaninov should have been arrested (for
inflicting an hour-long symphony on the public).
Mainly though I feel that music isn't really very important, as a
private taste. To wave it around as a cultural achievement is to miss
its point. What music does best is to provide an excuse for dancing,
and possibly, as a result, marriage - or should I say nowadays, a
relationship.
Cheers,
Phil
Gareth Owen
> Britten is out of my area of expertise, not that I have any expertise,
> but he's beyond my ken. I won't hold my breath awaiting a reasoned
> defence from the likes of Robbie, naturally.
Personally, I'm looking forward to Calwell's screed about how
Britten's prediliction for sodomy is responsible for the career of
Britney Spears.
Michael Calwell
Not heard that one I'm afraid. What have you got on that lead?
Alan Hope
>Robbie, I would have thought that 'Sir Isaac Newton' would have come
>somewhere at the top of your list, but all I could find was 'Robert Newton',
>could they by any chance be related, I wonder?... I think we should be told.
Robbie knows nothing about most of the entries on his list. He's
achieved the masterstroke of embarrassing himself by his choices, when
they weren't actually his real choices at all!
What does this pathetic little oik know of Trollope, or Bunyan, or
Marvell, or Sickert? I stop there: there are many other examples.
He's drawn up a list he thinks will convince people, but the holes in
his education are gaping. Sickert was a total fucking
pseudo-Frenchman, for example. As an example of a beacon of English
culture, he's worse than Handel, who was born in fucking Germany.
--
AH
Alan Hope
>The Pirates of Penzance:
Rhymes with: Wotanance.
Really, quoting G&S, how much more effete do you want to get? It
wasn't called the Doily Cart Society for nuffink, you know.
Big southern poof. I dare say you have the hots for the so-called
George Orwell, Eton boy wunnee? They do like it up em Mr. Mainwaring.
You didn't list Dad's Army, quintessentially English, except for those
so up themselves they cite Nash, and Turner, and oak fucking trees.
--
AH
Alan Hope
A-BASKING IN THE SUN...' goes:
>Feel free to supply a list. I would have asked SAm, but he needs to get to a
>dictionary and find out what culture means before he can do that.
Stupid fucking cunt would prolly never have thought of the fucking oak
trees innit. Or the fucking English coastline. Thass cultcha.
Did you list the White Cliffs? You dint didja? You fucking slaaag.
--
AH
Sam Nelson
COS...@JOSTER.COM says...
> Pygmies will immediately think: 'ohh, Victorian, southern (Barnsley accent):
> don't like it. Fact is, the operettas are a classic example of the English
> being able to take the piss out of themselves.
And there you go. Having pigeonholed me for yonks as a fan of Elvis
Costello, which is barely even vaguely true, you haven't pegged me as a
G&S fan, which is. Some would call it prejudice... ...and they'd be
right.
--
SAm.
Sam Nelson
COS...@JOSTER.COM says...
> 'Oats - A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in
> Scotland supports the people. ' Johnson's Dictionary.
And then there's the one about being tired of life if one is tired of
London. Xenophobic snob, as I said.
--
SAm.
ORFAMAY QUEST
> Ivan goes:
>
> >Robbie, I would have thought that 'Sir Isaac Newton' would have come
> >somewhere at the top of your list, but all I could find was 'Robert
Newton',
> >could they by any chance be related, I wonder?... I think we should be
told.
>
> Robbie knows nothing about most of the entries on his list. He's
> achieved the masterstroke of embarrassing himself by his choices, when
> they weren't actually his real choices at all!
>
> What does this pathetic little oik know of Trollope, or Bunyan, or
> Marvell, or Sickert? I stop there: there are many other examples.
Total Trollope fan and Marvell.
>
> He's drawn up a list he thinks will convince people,
All this brouhaha about the coast line, trees and the countryside, without
realising that the regard for these things is a defining part of English
culture. You stupid scotch facking cant.
ROBBIE
ORFAMAY QUEST
Have you read Boswell's Life of Johnson? You ought to.
ROBBIE
Alan Hope
A-BASKING IN THE SUN...' goes:
>Xenophobia is an intense and irrational dislike of foreigners. Johnson's
>objections to the scotch were not really intense and were certainly not
>irrational: He knew that scotchmen were moody, devious and chippy. Monsignor
>Calwell- who I like -is a classic example of a scotchmen with a bee in his
>bonnet. Of course the best example of scotch chippiness, moodiness and
>contrariness is Alan Hope, who is a sort of compound of all that is worst
>about the scotch.
Your ideas of Johnson are quite made-up. You clearly haven't read
Boswell any more than you've seen paintings by Sickert. Your list owed
more to Google than to Robbie.
What a shame you had to be such a fraud about it. Your own personal
ideas would without doubt have been more interesting than all the
right-on packaging you posted.
I'd still like to see an honest list, even if you have already shot
your load.
--
AH
Alan Hope
>Have you read Boswell's Life of Johnson?
You haven't. Was the oats quote the best you could find?
In a dictionary of quotations it was.
--
AH
ORFAMAY QUEST
> ORFAMAY QUEST goes:
>
> >Have you read Boswell's Life of Johnson?
>
> You haven't.
Oh yes I have.
ROBBIE
ORFAMAY QUEST
>
> >Have you read Boswell's Life of Johnson?
>
> You haven't.
The unabridged edition as well.
ROBBIE
ORFAMAY QUEST
> "...WHEN THE COSTER'S FINISHED JUMPING ON HIS MOTHER, HE LOVES TO LIE
> A-BASKING IN THE SUN...' goes:
>
> >Xenophobia is an intense and irrational dislike of foreigners. Johnson's
> >objections to the scotch were not really intense and were certainly not
> >irrational: He knew that scotchmen were moody, devious and chippy.
Monsignor
> >Calwell- who I like -is a classic example of a scotchmen with a bee in
his
> >bonnet. Of course the best example of scotch chippiness, moodiness and
> >contrariness is Alan Hope, who is a sort of compound of all that is worst
> >about the scotch.
>
> Your ideas of Johnson are quite made-up. You clearly haven't read
> Boswell any more than you've seen paintings by Sickert. Your list owed
> more to Google than to Robbie.
Hee: you wish.
ROBBIE, who is rather amused at the desperate new low of Hope's tactics.
ROBBIE
Alan Hope
>"Alan Hope" <not.al...@mail.com> wrote in message
>news:95soh1pvc1d53gui1...@4ax.com...
>> Phil Wilson goes:
>> >Really, Sullivan was another musical mediocrity, not without a certain
>> >charm and integrity, but enough of a pot-boiler to fulfill the limited
>> >requirements of their comedies and the then current vogue for charming
>> >drawing-room music and songs. Merely making him 'Sir Arthur' doesn't
>> >change the essential shortcomings of the music, qua music, nor does
>> >(slightly later) 'Sir Edward' and nor would have 'Sir Ralph'.
>> Good for you for standing up and pointing it out. English composers
>> have been uniformly mediocre, with the sole exception of Handel, who
>> of course wasn't English at all, though the musical fraternity does a
>> good job trying to coopt him.
>> Elgar's Enigma Variations is a clever work, so long as you read the
>> sleeve notes and know what the sekrit code is. His cello concerto is a
>> dreary work lifted out of obscurity by the unfortunate illness and
>> death of Jacqueline du Pré.
>> The rest of them never composed a single thing worthy of a single
>> movement of a Beethoven quartet. Vaughan-Williams you can forget.
>> Britten is out of my area of expertise, not that I have any expertise,
>> but he's beyond my ken. I won't hold my breath awaiting a reasoned
>> defence from the likes of Robbie, naturally.
>I never made any high-faluting claims for Sullivan.
Other than as a respresentative of English culture, that is.
Had you mentioned G&S societies doing AmDram productions of Pirates
etc, you'd have been on the money. AmDram is very essential to British
culture.
>I happen to think the
>best of his music rather wonderful.
That's neither here nor there. We're not interested in your
preferences. If you put someone up as representative of the culture,
you need to be ready to defend your choice. If you can't fair enough,
and indeed you can't.
>Only pygmies would start trying to get
>into a pissing competition about him and Beethoven.
Why? All composers are on stage with all other composers.
>Beethoven is my
>favourite composer incidentally.
Well, you say that now. What's your favourite piece?
>The problem is is that people get terrible
>pretentious and pissy about 'classical' music and always want to be first to
>denounce Sullivan or later composers of light orchestral works.
Perhaps they do. You can always ask a few well-judged questions and
discover if they're chancing it. Feel free.
>I don't
>anything about Vaughn Williams, but if it's him that wrote the fantasia on
>sea songs that they do at the last night of the proms then he should be on
>the list.
What bollocks. How can one piece of music so ham-fistedly identified
be at all representative of the culture?
I'm afraid you're showing what a total Western saloon of a little
poseur you are: all front and nothing round the back. You post a list
so compendious as to be intimidating of the "pygmies" -- you hoped.
But you overplayed your hand. Some of those names you know about. Some
other people will not know about. You should have stopped there. But
you couldn't, could you?
You had to play to the gallery of numbskulls and show off. Too bad.
Now you're fucked. You know nothing about Vaughan Williams, we now
see, despite pontificating about the English culture. How many of
those on your list do you also know nothing about? Shall we start
checking through them?
--
AH
Alan Hope
I'll bow to your superior knowledge.
>I'm not for or against
>musicians on the ground of their nationality, but on how they move me,
>and I value physical movement more than mental, if you kknow what I
>mean.
I think I do, though I disagree with what I think I think you mean.
>I'm not against mediocrity per se - most composers are mediocre.
True. Most of the time.
>But I'll take Bach (really a dance composer) over Elgar any day.
I will too, but I take exception to that characterisation. I agree
that much of his music was written according to dance rules, for
example the sublime cello suites. But I'd argue he lifted the music
about the form. I'd also argue that his supreme works, like the St.
Matthew Passion, is not a dance work. Nor are the hundreds of
cantatas, or the B minor Mass.
I tend to think of Bach as a sacred composer, as you see. That might
only be a difference in emphasis.
>And
>I'll take Bizet over Delius. And Britten over Dittersdorf. And Louis
>Armstrong over Sullivan (or practically anyone else). But I've never
>liked Beethoven much. Rachmaninov should have been arrested (for
>inflicting an hour-long symphony on the public).
His vespers are very warm. And his second piano concerto will never be
topped for romance, though that's down to Noel Coward and David Lean.
>Mainly though I feel that music isn't really very important, as a
>private taste. To wave it around as a cultural achievement is to miss
>its point. What music does best is to provide an excuse for dancing,
>and possibly, as a result, marriage - or should I say nowadays, a
>relationship.
Good point. The more English, French, German a piece of piece of music
is, the less important in the scheme of things. Good music, almost
axiomatically, cannot be representative of any one culture, or it
wouldn't be good.
I speak of high art music, obviously. Some forms are rooted in their
place.
--
AH
Alan Hope
>"Alan Hope" <not.al...@mail.com> wrote in message
>news:omsoh1lvsndahfv4c...@4ax.com...
>> Ivan goes:
>> >Robbie, I would have thought that 'Sir Isaac Newton' would have come
>> >somewhere at the top of your list, but all I could find was 'Robert
>Newton',
>> >could they by any chance be related, I wonder?... I think we should be
>told.
>> Robbie knows nothing about most of the entries on his list. He's
>> achieved the masterstroke of embarrassing himself by his choices, when
>> they weren't actually his real choices at all!
>> What does this pathetic little oik know of Trollope, or Bunyan, or
>> Marvell, or Sickert? I stop there: there are many other examples.
>Total Trollope fan and Marvell.
Don't believe you, sorry. Your fakery is too transparent.
>> He's drawn up a list he thinks will convince people,
>All this brouhaha about the coast line, trees and the countryside, without
>realising that the regard for these things is a defining part of English
>culture. You stupid scotch facking cant.
Bollocks. Regard for oak trees, what a poncy fucking poseur you are.
--
AH
ORFAMAY QUEST
> "...WHEN THE COSTER'S FINISHED JUMPING ON HIS
>
>
> Other than as a respresentative of English culture, that is.
The work is part of English culture.
>
> Had you mentioned G&S societies doing AmDram productions of Pirates
> etc, you'd have been on the money. AmDram is very essential to British
> culture.
It's part of it, yes. Essential seems to be the wrong word. Essential to a
scotch prick who wants denigrate English culture, yes.
>
> >I happen to think the
> >best of his music rather wonderful.
>
> That's neither here nor there. We're not interested in your
> preferences. If you put someone up as representative of the culture,
> you need to be ready to defend your choice. If you can't fair enough,
> and indeed you can't.
Of course I can. Sullivan ain't Beethoven but his music is not mediocre.
Wilson is wrong when he says that. The operettas are triumphs of middlebrow
art and are part of English culture.
>
> >Only pygmies would start trying to get
> >into a pissing competition about him and Beethoven.
>
> Why?
Because it's saying 'this is mediocre because it isn't Beethoven. The
composer of a comic opera is not in the same business as Beethoven. You may
judge Sullivan's symphonies against Beethoven.
>
> >Beethoven is my
> >favourite composer incidentally.
>
> Well, you say that now. What's your favourite piece?
The 9th or the piano concerto in C minor.
>
> >The problem is is that people get terrible
> >pretentious and pissy about 'classical' music and always want to be first
to
> >denounce Sullivan or later composers of light orchestral works.
>
> Perhaps they do. You can always ask a few well-judged questions and
> discover if they're chancing it. Feel free.
>
> >I don't
> >anything about Vaughn Williams, but if it's him that wrote the fantasia
on
> >sea songs that they do at the last night of the proms then he should be
on
> >the list.
>
> What bollocks. How can one piece of music so ham-fistedly identified
> be at all representative of the culture?
It's a part of the culture.
>
> I'm afraid you're showing what a total Western saloon of a little
> poseur you are: all front and nothing round the back. You post a list
> so compendious as to be intimidating of the "pygmies" -- you hoped.
> But you overplayed your hand. Some of those names you know about. Some
> other people will not know about. You should have stopped there. But
> you couldn't, could you?
My only mistake was to put certain ephemeral likes and dislikes on it. Much
of the list is set in stone - as long as intelligence prevails. Which, going
the way things are, won't be for long.
>
> You had to play to the gallery of numbskulls and show off. Too bad.
> Now you're fucked.
LOL: who are you trying to convince, cunty?
ROBBIE
You know nothing about Vaughan Williams, we now
> see, despite pontificating about the English culture. How many of
> those on your list do you also know nothing about? Shall we start
> checking through them?
By all means. What I meant about Williams was that I know what he produced,
I just don't feel qualified to hold forth on the minutae of it.
ROBBIE
ORFAMAY QUEST
> ORFAMAY QUEST goes:
>
> >"Alan Hope" <not.al...@mail.com> wrote in message
> >news:omsoh1lvsndahfv4c...@4ax.com...
> >> Ivan goes:
>
> >> >Robbie, I would have thought that 'Sir Isaac Newton' would have come
> >> >somewhere at the top of your list, but all I could find was 'Robert
> >Newton',
> >> >could they by any chance be related, I wonder?... I think we should be
> >told.
>
> >> Robbie knows nothing about most of the entries on his list. He's
> >> achieved the masterstroke of embarrassing himself by his choices, when
> >> they weren't actually his real choices at all!
>
> >> What does this pathetic little oik know of Trollope, or Bunyan, or
> >> Marvell, or Sickert? I stop there: there are many other examples.
>
> >Total Trollope fan and Marvell.
>
> Don't believe you, sorry. Your fakery is too transparent.
Your silliness is. I particularly enjoy Trollope's Barchester novels and
Marvell is wonderful stuff.
ROBBIE
Ivan
"ORFAMAY QUEST" <QUE...@WESTY.COM> wrote in message
news:dfibfj$2iq$1...@nwrdmz02.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com...
get into Trollope's literary works, other than watching the late 1960s BBC2
serial 'The way we live now'.
The truth is that me and Marge were early adopters of colour TV, back in the
days when it was only on BBC2, so the only reason that we watched it was
because it was in colour, but even then, truth to say that we didn't really
enjoy it very much.
However I do agree with you on one score, Captain Marvell 'is' brill!
> ROBBIE
>
>
Alan Hope
>"Alan Hope" <not.al...@mail.com> wrote in message
>news:kf9ph11pkel3qnol7...@4ax.com...
>> "...WHEN THE COSTER'S FINISHED JUMPING ON HIS
>> >I never made any high-faluting claims for Sullivan.
>> Other than as a respresentative of English culture, that is.
>The work is part of English culture.
As is everything else ever written, painted, sculpted or composed.
You chose it. That's your high-falutin claim right there.
Of all the things ever done by an Englishman, you chose that and a few
others.
Fuck sake, Robbie. It was your list. Either stand by it or fuck the
fuck off out of it forever.
>> Had you mentioned G&S societies doing AmDram productions of Pirates
>> etc, you'd have been on the money. AmDram is very essential to British
>> culture.
>It's part of it, yes. Essential seems to be the wrong word. Essential to a
>scotch prick who wants denigrate English culture, yes.
I'll have you know I have a long history of involvement with those
people you claim to think I'm denigrating. I'll bet you don't.
My position is simple: AmDram productions of G&S are more essential to
British culture than G&S themselves. I'll leave it at that. People
will see I'm right. I've no wish to discuss it with someone like you,
who I see has in fact no idea what the people themselves are
culturally aware of. Your list was an attempt (given your preamble
about pygmies) to challenge others. In fact, Robbie, it's done nothing
better than expose you to the critical gaze of everyone. You, the man
who thought it was enough to accuse someone of being an Elvis Costello
fan because that would encapsulate his essence for all to see -- you
have posted a list of a couple of hundred hostages to fucking fortune.
Here's what I think of your list: I think you went looking for names
after you ran out and it wasn't long enough.
I'll tell you what else I think: I think you stepped in a great big
fucking turd because you forgot the Rule Number One of Usenet
Showing-Off: there's always someone smarter than you around, or there
might be, so stick to what you know.
You got that wrong. I'm afraid you're a busted flush here now mate.
I'm going to be ridiculing your smalltime Eltham suburban pretensions
to cultural acumen for the rest of time -- every time I see your
stupid fucking face around here. Coastlines and oak trees, you won't
fucking live that down.
But do keep poking your nose in. I dare say the point will get through
to you one day. Your presence is a bittuvalarf, and I'd hate to lose
it.
So go on then, cunt. Say something smart now, about coastlines maybe.
--
AH
Alan Hope
Well, faced with incisive analysis of that calibre I take it all back.
Nobody who wasn't intimately familiar with Trollope could ever be
expected to use technical terms like "particularly enjoy". And your
evaluation of Marvell as "not a bad bit of stuff as it goes" clearly
shows you have what, a PhD in Marvellology? Nothing less, certainly.
--
AH
Alan Hope
>ROBBIE, who is rather amused at the desperate new low of Hope's tactics.
Sickert is a particularly unEnglish painter. Were it not for the
spelling of his name you'd take him for a Frenchman. So how come he
made your list? Do you know which Sickert I'm on about? Did you
actually draw up the list yourself?
My tactics, as you choose to call them, are to hold you to account for
what YOU posted. Please inform me if I've got that principle wrong,
and in what way. Thank you.
--
AH
"...YOUR LEOPARD-SKIN PILL BOX HAAAAAAAAT"
> ORFAMAY QUEST goes:
>
> >"Alan Hope" <not.al...@mail.com> wrote in message
> >news:kf9ph11pkel3qnol7...@4ax.com...
> >> "...WHEN THE COSTER'S FINISHED JUMPING ON HIS
>
> >> >I never made any high-faluting claims for Sullivan.
>
> >> Other than as a respresentative of English culture, that is.
>
> >The work is part of English culture.
>
> As is everything else ever written, painted, sculpted or composed.
> You chose it. That's your high-falutin claim right there.
>
> Of all the things ever done by an Englishman, you chose that and a few
> others.
>
> Fuck sake, Robbie. It was your list.
Yes. But as I said to Comrade Brooks, many things on it are definitive. Let
me make it very clear: you and Brooks have got this pissy idea that no list
can be definitive. The reason you both propose this is because lists of
Englishness bring out your hunchbacked, peevish, regional, class-war
irrationalities.
I've snipped the rest of your spittle-flecked ravings and will sum up this
way: my list was formulated in a disputatious spirit. SAm and others would
quite happily, like that old Pakistani on Straw Poll, chant along with the
'we have no culture because we've borrowed foreign words and because Handel
was German and because, well, English high culture smacks of toryism'. In
other words it's dreary nihilism that isn't even real nihilism because it's
ignorance really.
Regarding coastlines and oak trees: they are part of British Culture as is
the Landscape because they have been reflected through British Culture.
Would you deny that the English Landscape wasn't part of British Culture? Or
London? If so, you are far more idiotic than I suspected. You are certainly
sounding more hollow, thick and desperate than ever before.
ROBBIE
"...YOUR LEOPARD-SKIN PILL BOX HAAAAAAAAT"
Peevish sarcasm in defeat. Deary fucking me. Like I'm going to write a long
dissertation for a lonely freak like you piss on.
ROBBIE
"...YOUR LEOPARD-SKIN PILL BOX HAAAAAAAAT"
Sickert is an English painter. Certainly he studied under Degas but not for
him Degas' neurasthenic fetishes. Sickert gives us a non-poncy reality: his
music hall pictures could not have been painted by a Frenchman. He has
English art's taste for cold, closely observed reality. His bedroom scenes
confirm this. He also led a group of painters called 'The Camden Down
Group'. He's English as Orwell.
Have a cheap tot of scotch and go to bed, freak.
ROBBIE
Gareth Owen
> Having pigeonholed me for yonks as a fan of Elvis Costello,
and he pigeonholed me as a reggae fan, despite the fact I'm much
keener on Elvis Costello (and, like him, Captain Beefheart, FWIW).
He's an astute lad, is Robbie...
"...YOUR LEOPARD-SKIN PILL BOX HAAAAAAAAT"
"Gareth Owen" <use...@gwowen.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:r5i3boi...@gill.maths.keele.ac.uk...
A generally pro Costello attitude and subscription to his puerile leftist
politics is discernible in Radio 4 fans. Likewise reggae and anything left
over from the Thatcher/Alternative comedy/new wave epoch.
ROBBIE
Gareth Owen
> A generally pro Costello attitude and subscription to his puerile
> leftist politics
You must be thinking of a different Elvis Costello. I can only think
of a handful of political songs (peurile or otherwise) over 30 years.
Would you like to list some of those you have in mind?
I'll give you Tramp The Dirt Down as a starter.
You can have Shipbuilding and Less Than Zero too,
though neither of those is peurile.
Phil Wilson
>> I'm not for or against
>> musicians on the ground of their nationality, but on how they move
>> me, and I value physical movement more than mental, if you kknow
>> what I mean.
>
> I think I do, though I disagree with what I think I think you mean.
Music is not a 'language'. That is what I mean. It cannot 'express
feelings', nor 'draw a picture', nor have a 'character'. All of these
things are cultural, social, and extra-musical. Though a composer
might feel sad, he cannot instantaneously translate this sadness into
music. What has to happen is that he writes music, and if he listens
to it, he may find it makes him sad, and not change it. Or he may find
it unaccountably happy and change it till it sounds 'sad' to him. Or
he may leave it, being content that, although sad when he composed it,
he wishes his audience to be happy. What makes a piece of music the
way it sounds to a listener is its 'effects'. The best composers are
the ones that manipulate their 'effects' most 'effectively'. Modern
criticism is convinced, to the contrary, that every piece of music can
be 'unlocked' by a 'psychological key'. Thus the barrage of
psychologising criticism ('Was Schubert gay?', 'Wagner's music is
anti-semitic' etc at excruciating, and niggling, length). It's
noticeable that as composers become less anonymous, and more
biographical detail accrues, over the centuries, this tendency
increases. No-one knows what the psychology of Guillaume de Machaut
might have been, or cares very much. All that we can say about those
types is that they composed the type of music that composers did, in
their day. Which is really all you need to say.
Need I point out that 'the emotions', as is implied by the word at the
root (movere), are not solely 'mental' but directly 'physical'. When I
say music shouild be 'physical' I mean that it should alter the shape
of the human body, literally (as when our shoulders droop when we are
sad, and we stand up straighter or indulge in capering when happy, and
dance around lustfully when sexually aroused). One of the worst ways
to listen to music is sitting in a theatre seat, where one cannot give
vent to physical effects brought about by the music.
Cheers,
Phil
"...YOUR LEOPARD-SKIN PILL BOX HAAAAAAAAT"
Oliver's Army
Sunday's Best
Good Squad
Any King's Shilling
Coal Train Robberies
St Stephen's Day Murders
Eisenhower Blues
Invasion Hit Parade
The People's Limousine
God's Comic
Hoover Factory
Peace in Our Time
London's Brilliant Parade
Senior Service
ROBBIE
Gareth Owen
> Oliver's Army
You can have that one.
> Sunday's Best
A satire on the Englishman abroad. Not actually political (and if it
were, wouldn't moral outrage at the loutishness of England's youth be
rather more Daily Mail than Guardian?
> Good Squad
"Goon Squad"? This might be political, I've no idea what it's about.
> Any King's Shilling
A love song about a WWI soldier. Not political.
> Coal Train Robberies
Granted.
> St Stephen's Day Murders
Don't know it.
> Eisenhower Blues
A cover version. A blues song about having no money.
Contains the name of a politician. Not actually political.
> Invasion Hit Parade
A satire on manufactured pop records.
Not actually political.
> The People's Limousine
Are you really reduced to discussing rarities and bootleg songs?
http://www.lyricsfind.com/e/elvis-costello/king-of-america/the-people's-limousine.php
If you can decode that, you're doing better than me.
> God's Comic
A dead TV Evangelist meets God. What's political about that?
> Hoover Factory
A song about a factory building. What's political about that?
> Peace in Our Time
Granted
> London's Brilliant Parade
What's political about that?
> Senior Service
A song about having a crap job. What's political about that?
So, that's less than half a dozen spread over 30 years....
Oh, well done.
Alan Hope
>Like I'm going to write a long
>dissertation for a lonely freak like you piss on.
No of course you won't. That would involve having more than one
thought to string together, or finding more than one way of saying the
same thing. Both of which talents visibly elude you.
--
AH
Alan Hope
>Sickert is an English painter.
I know who Sickert is.
>Certainly he studied under Degas but not for
>him Degas' neurasthenic fetishes.
Not very familiar with Degas, I take it.
>Sickert gives us a non-poncy reality: his
>music hall pictures could not have been painted by a Frenchman.
Gissa few titles, then.
>He has
>English art's taste for cold, closely observed reality. His bedroom scenes
>confirm this.
Which ones in particular?
>He also led a group of painters called 'The Camden Down
>Group'. He's English as Orwell.
Orwell wasn't particularly English, you know. He stood out from his
contemporaries, for example.
--
AH
Alan Hope
>"Alan Hope" <not.al...@mail.com> wrote in message
>news:h6jph1h39j61rj7s8...@4ax.com...
>> ORFAMAY QUEST goes:
>> >"Alan Hope" <not.al...@mail.com> wrote in message
>> >news:kf9ph11pkel3qnol7...@4ax.com...
>> >> "...WHEN THE COSTER'S FINISHED JUMPING ON HIS
>> >> >I never made any high-faluting claims for Sullivan.
>> >> Other than as a respresentative of English culture, that is.
>> >The work is part of English culture.
>> As is everything else ever written, painted, sculpted or composed.
>> You chose it. That's your high-falutin claim right there.
>> Of all the things ever done by an Englishman, you chose that and a few
>> others.
>> Fuck sake, Robbie. It was your list.
>Yes. But as I said to Comrade Brooks, many things on it are definitive. Let
>me make it very clear: you and Brooks have got this pissy idea that no list
>can be definitive.
I have no such idea. It stands to reason that a notion such as
"British culture" is finite, and therefore could be encompassed by a
list of things. More practically, a clever person could conceivably
reduce that notional list to a sort of meta-list, or metonymic list,
where one item is taken to stand for a lot of others.
I'm not that clever a person, I'm afraid, but I'm clever enough to
know that. You, on the other hand, are stupid enough to think you
might actually have the answer.
>The reason you both propose this is because lists of
>Englishness bring out your hunchbacked, peevish, regional, class-war
>irrationalities.
Stupid-arsed comment. Why would any list of anything drawn up by
anyone bother me in the slightest? Trust me, had you drawn up a list
that did a good job of encapsulating British culture (a chimera, I'd
say) I'd have been the first to applaud you.
You didn't, of course. You think "Samuel Johnson" is a contribution to
the question. It isn't. What about Samuel Johnson? His dictionary? His
other works? His persona? Did you really mean Boswell?
What about Elgar makes him British? What about Sickert? You see you
can't answer the question: What is British culture? by appending a
list of names.
> I've snipped the rest of your spittle-flecked ravings and will sum up this
>way: my list was formulated in a disputatious spirit.
Which means, presumably, that you knew you were wading into deep
water. Full marks for perspicacity.
>SAm and others would
>quite happily, like that old Pakistani on Straw Poll, chant along with the
>'we have no culture because we've borrowed foreign words and because Handel
>was German and because, well, English high culture smacks of toryism'.
Are you flogging English culture or British culture? The objections
that apply to the latter claim, I should warn you, also apply to the
former, though I won't be making them.
Scottish culture, for example, is a totally different balloon in the
Venn diagram, and while it does indeed intersect with the English one,
that's not its main feature. I'm a Scottish expat of 20 years standing
and still am closer to Scottish culture than I ever would be to
English. So define yer terms innat by the way man.
>In
>other words it's dreary nihilism that isn't even real nihilism because it's
>ignorance really.
You know, I've said it up there but it bears saying again: the only
serious kind of ignorance is the ignorance of not knowing what you
don't know, or its epitome: not realising there are things you don't
know.
Ignorance, in its true sense, merely means not knowing something. No
shame, no blame. We all "not-know" tons of stuff.
The problem comes when your ignorant person either tries to pretend he
does know, or rejects the idea he might not know. Or indeed both, as
we've seen you do in this thread.
That's no longer ignorance, proprement dit. That's moved across the
street and over the boundary into the territory of stupidity.
> Regarding coastlines and oak trees: they are part of British Culture as is
>the Landscape because they have been reflected through British Culture.
Fuck. So stones are part of Venice's culture? And mascara? Maybe it
would be simpler for you to list all those things that weren't
"reflected through British culture".
>Would you deny that the English Landscape wasn't part of British Culture?
I would deny your ability to construct a sentence in the English
fucking language, pal.
>Or
>London? If so, you are far more idiotic than I suspected. You are certainly
>sounding more hollow, thick and desperate than ever before.
London is part of culture? What the fuck do you think culture is, you
fucking rinky-dink?
--
AH
"...YOUR LEOPARD-SKIN PILL BOX HAAAAAAAAT"
> "\"...YOUR LEOPARD-SKIN PILL BOX HAAAAAAAAT\"" <L...@BOX.CO.LUX> writes:
>
> > Oliver's Army
>
> You can have that one.
Heavens! The munificence of the carping pedant!
>
> > Sunday's Best
>
> A satire on the Englishman abroad. Not actually political (and if it
> were, wouldn't moral outrage at the loutishness of England's youth be
> rather more Daily Mail than Guardian?
No. The Guardian and the Daily Mail have stuff in common: one of them is a
puritan hatred of chavs. The Mail hates all chavs. The Guardian only hates
white chavs and positively loves black chavs. It will be noted that there is
no derogatory nickname *allowed* in popular culture for black chavs. This
song is merely sneering proto-chav hate. And given his other political views
we can safely say this chav-hate is leftist chav-hate.
>
> > Good Squad
>
> "Goon Squad"? This might be political, I've no idea what it's about.
Really? Not every perceptive are you. It's clearly a vaguely satirical sneer
at what he would probably call 'male power structures': the Goon Squad is
the armed services and its analogues: the police, school, the workplace.
This is puerile leftism because it's coming from a vague Marxist angle: as
if there could be a way of doing things where nobody had any authority: bad
and good behaviour are meaningless etc. Incidentally you can find the lyrics
on the Ontario Tenants Songs and Lyrics of Protest and Activism page.
>
> > Any King's Shilling
>
> A love song about a WWI soldier. Not political.
I think the sneering about England in Oliver's Army is enough to detect a
sneer in that 'English army cap'.
>
> > Coal Train Robberies
>
> Granted.
>
> > St Stephen's Day Murders
>
> Don't know it.
SOMETHING THAT GARETH DOESN'T KNOW?! Fuck me, what a turn up!
The song is basically a sneer (Costello's dominant forms of expression are
much like his hero Lennon's: sneering, whining and self-pitying) at the
family structure (real puerile leftism) with an irish angle of alcoholism
added.
>
> > Eisenhower Blues
>
> A cover version. A blues song about having no money.
Economic deprivation is a very leftist preoccupation.
> Contains the name of a politician. Not actually political.
Songs about tax and penury *are* political whether Gareth decrees it or not.
>
> > Invasion Hit Parade
>
> A satire on manufactured pop records.
> Not actually political.
Very political because if you cannot see that the song contains a leftist
critique of US foreign policy then you are a very dull boy indeed. It's a
sort of vague swipe at cultural imperialism and imperialism, man.
>
> > The People's Limousine
>
> Are you really reduced to discussing rarities and bootleg songs?
>
http://www.lyricsfind.com/e/elvis-costello/king-of-america/the-people's-limo
usine.php
> If you can decode that, you're doing better than me.
>
> > God's Comic
>
> A dead TV Evangelist meets God. What's political about that?
The sneering tone. The only people are I know who think it's big and clever
to sneer about this sort of thing are juveniles and lefties. See Westender:
classic example.
>
> > Hoover Factory
>
> A song about a factory building. What's political about that?
It takes a sort of Ozymandias view of the factory, I feel.
>
> > Peace in Our Time
>
> Granted
>
> > London's Brilliant Parade
>
> What's political about that?
A coded sneer at the police arresting black people.
>
> > Senior Service
>
> A song about having a crap job. What's political about that?
The worry with your brand of intellectual self-regard is that you become
idiotically reductive and don't even realise it. You might as well say
'Macbeth' is a play about a Scotchman. The song is a critique of
capitilism; a cartoon protest song that doesn't seem to realise its cartoon
quality.
>
> So, that's less than half a dozen spread over 30 years....
> Oh, well done.
You ought to give that Deayton sarcasm up: it's the lowest form of wit and
you have to BE a tad more quick-witted than you are, dear.
ROBBIE
Steve Brooks
> "Alan Hope"
>> ORFAMAY QUEST goes:
>>
>>> Have you read Boswell's Life of Johnson?
>>
>> You haven't.
>
> The unabridged edition as well.
The one with the gannet???
--
SB
Steve Brooks
<snip>
> Yes. But as I said to Comrade Brooks, many things on it are
> definitive. Let me make it very clear: you and Brooks have got this
> pissy idea that no list can be definitive. The reason you both
> propose this is because lists of Englishness bring out your
> hunchbacked, peevish, regional, class-war irrationalities.
No - it's because a list of examples cannot constitute a definition. It
might help formulate a definition - but you don't seem interested in trying
to do that.
--
SB
Gareth Owen
Not read much Paul Johnson have you?
Dude, whatever.
Gareth Owen
> > A love song about a WWI soldier. Not political.
>
> I think the sneering about England in Oliver's Army is enough to detect a
> sneer in that 'English army cap'.
It's a "British Soldier's Cap." And that's *clearly* motivated by his
Irish acenstry, rather than left wing politics.
But don't let facts disrupt your usual claptrap.
"WELL WHEN YOUR SITTIN' BACK, IN YER ROSE PINK CADDILLAC...'
> So your thesis is that a sneering tone implies left wing politics
No, a sneering tone and songs with leftist lyrics either implicit or
explicit. Stop being reductionist and thinking that nobody notices.
.
> Not read much Paul Johnson have you?
He's fun. But your use of him here is classic Gareth false dichotomy.
>
> Dude, whatever.
Back to yer Michael Moore...
ROBBIE
"WELL WHEN YOUR SITTIN' BACK, IN YER ROSE PINK CADDILLAC...'
> "\"...YOUR LEOPARD-SKIN PILL BOX HAAAAAAAAT\"" <L...@BOX.CO.LUX> writes:
>
>
> > > A love song about a WWI soldier. Not political.
> >
> > I think the sneering about England in Oliver's Army is enough to detect
a
> > sneer in that 'English army cap'.
>
> It's a "British Soldier's Cap." And that's *clearly* motivated by his
> Irish acenstry, rather than left wing politics.
And that's all your refutation amounts to. His Irish ancestry informs his
leftism.
>
> But don't let facts disrupt your usual claptrap.
The way you don't let reductionism and false dichotomies disrupt yours?
ROBBIE
Gareth Owen
> No, a sneering tone and songs with leftist lyrics
But the evidence you offered of his "leftism" was that he was
sneering. Hardly any of those lyrics contain politically lefty
sentiment. Thats why you're left making pathetic arguments like this:
>> A dead TV Evangelist meets God. What's political about that?
> The sneering tone. The only people are I know who think it's big and
> clever to sneer about this sort of thing are juveniles and lefties.
Precis : He's a lefty because he sneers, and that's what lefties do.
And you accuse me of over simplification.
Sam Nelson
"\"...YOUR LEOPARD-SKIN PILL BOX HAAAAAAAAT\"" <L...@BOX.CO.LUX> says...
> Oliver's Army
> Sunday's Best
> Good Squad
> Any King's Shilling
> Coal Train Robberies
> St Stephen's Day Murders
> Eisenhower Blues
> Invasion Hit Parade
> The People's Limousine
> God's Comic
> Hoover Factory
> Peace in Our Time
> London's Brilliant Parade
> Senior Service
That puts the tin lid on it, then. I've never even heard of most of
those. First two, certainly, but that's about it.
--
SAm.
"WELL WHEN YOUR SITTIN' BACK, IN YER ROSE PINK CADDILLAC...'
His leftism is implicit and explicit. Don't get me wrong, he's childishly
political, but that's rock and roll for you.
ROBBIE
"WELL WHEN YOUR SITTIN' BACK, IN YER ROSE PINK CADDILLAC...'
"Sam Nelson" <s...@ssrl.org.uk> wrote in message
news:MPG.1d87ed4f5...@news.zen.co.uk...
I'm glad you are continuing your well-established trait of advertising your
ignorance.
ROBBIE
Sam Nelson
CA...@RADDY.CO.KOZ says...
>
> "Sam Nelson" <s...@ssrl.org.uk> wrote in message
> news:MPG.1d87ed4f5...@news.zen.co.uk...
> > In article <dfk57m$kk1$1...@nwrdmz01.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com>,
> > "\"...YOUR LEOPARD-SKIN PILL BOX HAAAAAAAAT\"" <L...@BOX.CO.LUX> says...
> > > Oliver's Army
> > > Sunday's Best
> > > Senior Service
> >
> > That puts the tin lid on it, then. I've never even heard of most of
> > those. First two, certainly, but that's about it.
>
> ignorance.
It doesn't exactly bother me to have to admit that I'm not particularly
familiar with Mr Costello's oeuvre. I suspect it isn't life-critical.
At least I'm prepared to admit I don't know something, rather than just
bluster and bullshit about stuff.
--
SAm.
"WELL WHEN YOUR SITTIN' BACK, IN YER ROSE PINK CADDILLAC...'
"Steve Brooks" <ste...@postmaster.invalid> wrote in message
news:KejTe.3509$oq4....@newsfe5-win.ntli.net...
> "...YOUR LEOPARD-SKIN PILL BOX HAAAAAAAAT" wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > Yes. But as I said to Comrade Brooks, many things on it are
> > definitive. Let me make it very clear: you and Brooks have got this
> > pissy idea that no list can be definitive. The reason you both
> > propose this is because lists of Englishness bring out your
> > hunchbacked, peevish, regional, class-war irrationalities.
>
> No - it's because a list of examples cannot constitute a definition.
So if I said define rock and roll and you said: Chuck Berry, Little Richard,
Elvis, The Stones and The Beatles, you wouldn't consider that useful in
making definition? If I asked you to define French culture and you said:
Voltaire, Moliere, Flaubert, The French Revolution. Frogs Legs, Garlic,
Contrariness, Rudeness, The Eiffel Tower, Berets and Gauloises, would you
consider that list useful in making a definition?
It
> might help formulate a definition - but you don't seem interested in
trying
> to do that.
I thought I went some way to it in my reply to you in another thread.
Quite obviously a definition would be book or essay length (see Orwell's The
Lion and Unicorn for example: though of course it is dated - though how much
has stayed the same after 60 years and various cultural revolutions is
interesting). A short one for today would be: licentious, boozy, with a
boorish underclass, liberal upper class and conservative middle class; the
working class generally have a mixture of left-wing and right-wing attitudes
and oscillated in their voting habits between Con and Lab. The English are
indifferent to power and resistant to abstract thought (in other words they
hate political correctness, multiculturalism, modern art and its ancillary
theories - including the one that says unrestrained mass immigration is
good - but cannot be bothered to do anything about it, which is how our
current parlous situation came about). The English are less xenophobic than
the French but possess an intellectual class that is adamant that the
reverse is true. 'The English don't take foreigners very seriously and this
is a mistake that has to be paid for dearly from time to time'. Orwell said
that and gets yet another prize for prescience. But you cannot blame the
English for not taking foreigners seriously: they won their wars abroad and
in any case they lived on an island. A streak of modesty and gentleness runs
parallel to the English fierceness. While Wales and Scotland still educated
their children in their own culture and national heroes, the English began a
process of demolition and abasement of their own culture that continues to
this day and began in academia. English heroes became villains; much English
history abolished; every school child today knows bad things about England
but how many, for example, know they astonished the world by abolishing the
slave trade?
The English, a compound of Celt, Jute, Anglo-Saxon and Norman, formed
themselves and their customs over roughly a thousand years.
The English were enterprising. Their empire created the modern world and
was by and large peaceful and trade oriented (examples of insolence and
cruelty accepted; but accepted in the context of the world at the time and
placed next to other colonial powers misbehaviour). Some of this enterprise
remains though the people and the culture have become less confident, more
corrupt and sometimes barbarous. American cultural imperialism has been very
damaging.
In cuisine, a certain cosmopolitanism has arrived (international cooking)
though definitive English food is still very much in evidence: fry ups, fish
and chips. roast dinners, liver and bacon, bangers and mash etc. Orwell's In
Defence of English Cooking is still quite handy for this.
Ethnic minorities are a recent development on the English scene. It is hard
to evaluate their impact on English culture for two reasons: one, because it
is a relatively recent event - though ethnic music has had a big impact -
and two because organisations like the Arts Council are manipulating the
manifestations of ethnic culture: by which I mean the public get ethnic
culture whether they like it or not. So you could say that ethnic culture
has had a massive impact on English civic and political culture and you
would be right, but on natural and evolving English culture less so I would
say.
In intellectual life the last forty years have changed things greatly. I've
expounded on this elsewhere, suffice to say that the old dialectic between
the Enlightement and Christianity has been largely abolished and replaced
with with various types of postmodern thinking and even nihilism. Dumbing
down has occurred on a large scale. This is done for democratic reasons but
it antithetical with intellectual evolution.
In art, the hot colour of pre-reformation catholic art was smashed into
puritan whiteness: this set the pace for the next five hundred years. The
accent in visual art was nature observed closely and as an analogue of order
and divine beauty but English art was not without its revolutionaries and it
was chock full of innovators (all my despised list ;O)). Stubbs performed a
slow, artistic post-mortem on the horse; Constable and Turner tore up the
rule book: Turner being the finest painter England has produced and
Constable utterly changing everything with his oil sketches. English art now
has embraced postmodernism, irony and trivia, however its most successful
living artist is an oil painter. It's next most successful artist, forty
years younger, merely pickles animals that someone else has caught and
killed.
In Religion: disputatious and sensible, or were. The English kicked
continental catholic mania into touch and got it down to a sensible Sunday
hobby. Now the Church of England, like all other English institutions, in a
process of abasement and demolition. One public commentator believes that
England will be 'more or less an Islamic country in eighty years and people
will prefer it to the chaos it replaces'.
In science: innovative and strangely unenterprising: many English
inventions prospered abroad.
In Geography: Shakespeare gave us the idea 'green and pleasant land' -
though the concept would have existed without him - now much destroyed by
poor govt and capitalism. Still pockets of great beauty that have been
celebrated by many artists.
In sport: football is very popular as is cricket. They are quintessentially
English and have been exported round the world. Cricket has a kind of
morality to it which many people believe is/was woven into English culture
from English character.
In Music: a long history that is not as distinguished as other certain
other european countries, though in the latter part of the 20th century
British popular music and culture became dominant in the world.
In Literature: English lit, taken as a whole, is generally regarded as one
the best in world. By common consent the English have the greatest poet:
Shakespeare. Its history, like all English history, is under attack from
various agencies. The twentieth century was quite fecund though a falling
off in the later years as America and post-colonial politics got into gear:
identity politics are now much more important than the actual written text.
Nothing much has happened in the English novel for a while. The English
novel of today being rather banal (see Nick Hornby, Tony Parsons etc)Martin
Amis being someone who doesn't wish to be an English novelist and who also
has a legion of imitators. Amis is actually a good example of an Englishman
born midcentury and in violent revolt against the culture he grew up in. He
now lives in South America.
In popular culture: bawdiness has been evident in English taste for a very
long time. See the Cerne Abbas Giant and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales through
Shakespeare, the Earl of Rochester, to Music Hall, Max Miller and the Carry
Ons. A way of talking about it without being blatant. This later recieved
the charge of hypocrisy, generally by humourless people. Alternative comedy
replaced this culture and a dreary, politicised obscenity followed - with
much self censorship about certain matters. Popular songs of a comic and
sentimental variety flourished here, especially between 1870 and 1950. The
sixties brought a seismic change and English pop culture, exemplified by The
Beatles (who were informed by a collision of US and English musical culture.
This was followed by English punk (purloined from American garage rock) but
with a distinctively British flavour exemplified by the Sex Pistols, who
were vulgar, energetic and amusing (and shocking to English culture as it
then was) and seemed to be in the tradition of dissent, with Johnny Rotten
like some obscene Richard III/Cromwell character. Capitalism won a famous
victory over anarchy where punk as concerned. Most of the major players
became like the distant millionaires of the 1960s scene and The Clash found
itself in such a contradictary position they had to dissolve. English pop
culture has never been so vibrant again. Many trends have appeared and with
a drecreasing levels of public interest. English popular culture has become
much more sexually explicit; so much so that one critic recently called pop
music 'tits and ass for all the family.'
English television was once known as the best in the world, in its supposed
avoidance of banality and obscenity. Today matters are very different.
Contrary to widespread continental belief, English cinema has a rich and
various culture. It reached its height in the 1940s and declined
disastrously when the films that were acceptable to the whole family no
longer commanded good box office and youth culture had to be courted. The
sixties cinema were interesting, though possibly more to sociologists than
film lovers, though some masterpieces were made. The British Film Industry
has thereafter been insecure though, interestingly, it has been at its very
worst through a time of great investment and funding.
Radio
In politics: an interesting war between radicalism and conservatism.
Socialism has declined from a moral force to a rag bag of minority political
interests. Conservatism declined from a moral force to a rag bag of
financial interests. This downgrading has coincided with a growth in
affluence and a decline of law and order and a general demoralization in
public and private life.
ROBBIE
"WELL WHEN YOUR SITTIN' BACK, IN YER ROSE PINK CADDILLAC...'
I argued my corner and provided examples. You shouldn't allow that nitwit
Hope to feed you your lines.
ROBBIE
Sam Nelson
CA...@RADDY.CO.KOZ says...
> I argued my corner and provided examples. You shouldn't allow that nitwit
> Hope to feed you your lines.
You were providing examples of stuff that's supposed to have turned me
into a Bad Person. Never heard of them, hence not Bad Person. QED.
--
SAm.
"WELL WHEN YOUR SITTIN' BACK, IN YER ROSE PINK CADDILLAC...'
'BAD PERSON'? <SIGHS> Grow up FFS...
'Though he often gets compared to '70s rockers and personal musical heroes
Thin Lizzy, Leo seems to spring from the tradition of Bruce Springsteen,
Billy Bragg or Elvis Costello - politically charged music that is
compulsively listenable.'
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:N13AHotwFZoJ:www.campusprogress.org/sou
ndvision/338/ted-leo-is-on-a-mission+ELVIS+COSTELLO+%2B+LEFT+WING+POLITICS&h
l=en