h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

His father came to the UK as refugee after the (rather unpleasant) Spanish Civil war, Portillo though was Born in England.

What about "Britain - giving shelter to refugees since the reformation."

Britain - Sheltering from the weather since March

Britain - where animals are loved and old folk are left to die of cold.

>Because the English have got it into their heads they would be better off without Scotland ??

Problem is it wouldn't really be England's choice to dissolve the union. The only (unlikely as it is) scenario that is credible is Scotland having the possibility of independence being put to it in a referendum. As I said, I don't see this happenning in the near future.

>Seriously, I dearly hope it doesn't come to pass.

It won't. Despite all the talk there's precious little real support for Scottish independence. There are "peaks" of support linked to other things (usually dissatisfaction with the London government) but no growing, concrete support for independence. Part of that is, I think, uncertainty about an independent Scotland from an economic perspective (few people are going to want independence if it means being £2000 odd a year worse off) as well as the Scottish Parliament having neutralised a lot of the stronger arguments (eg Scottish self-government). The SNP got in on the wave of a protest vote against Labour - the sort of votes that helped the Liberal Democrats a couple of years ago. They're not a real swell of support. Of course, the SNP see this as an opportunity to demonstrate their competence in government and net a few of those votes permanently but I think a few of them know that this is their best shot at being Scotland's leading party and it's not going to last.

Welcome to Britain (please don't touch the cows).

Welcome to Britain (please don't touch the cows. Or eat them).

...Desperate for Cow Pie...

"We will fight for bovine freedom and hold our large heads high." D
ash, I think that's the RSPCA motto...

(Really hoping nobody's already come up with this one...)

Britannia waives the rules!

I think it was an anarchist slogan from the 1960s - Does anyone know for sure?

I was just hoping to be the first to invoke it in this thread!

Woohoo!

I haven't been able to find an actual source for the phrase but according to http://books.google.com/books?id=yM8lkb3z68oC&pg=PA160&lpg=PA160&dq=%22britain+waives+the+rules%22&source=web&ots=6IS9ZdKE3Y&sig=R55_wr-1xAcWDnv7b2F5MnWNz8k
the phrase was coined by wits accusing Britain of hypocrisy by accusing germany of war crimes in WW1 given the British record in the Boer War

I'm not convinced they coined the saying (from that reference at least).

In any case, it's good detective work - it's amazing how far back you have to go with these phrases.

No, nor am I. It doesn't actually say who said it or when or where so it could be a story about the phrases origin that came about later.

Britain: We've got Nectar points.

Britain: Well, we tried.

And as for Scotland becoming independent - if the comment above:



is anything to go by, perhaps England should join with Scotland and jointly claim independence from the government.

Just a suggestion.

After England put Australia and then France out of the Rugby, I thought this was a nice one:


Britain: underestimate us at your peril.






(I know that was England, but the English are British, after all. And even if things go wrong against SA on Saturday, then you can say, "See, they didn't make the mistake of underestimating us.")