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

Boots - your post is a poem, or very very nearly a poem. And if you don't write it into one, I will, and we can put it jointly into AWW.

But you should do it; really!

Ben

Awww shucks Ben... I can't do poetry. (shhh actually I can't even do writing but don't tell anyone!)
It's all yours!
Take care
Boots (off to massacre some flowers!)

Joint entry coooool!

Without doubt the thing that makes me proudest to be British is our long and extremely intimate relationship with the true nature of the term 'Non-conformity' and the truely magnificent way in which we have aspired to live up to that concept.

All the rest is just add ons...

I used to live 3 miles from Silverstone. I loved race day. You had to get out of the village by 6:00 or you were stuck there for the day. Closer to walk than most car parks. March Tyrill (sp?) had two shops in the village (Syersham) and one time they modified my rear suspension on my 1969 Camaro. Wow did it ever corner better after that.

hey ben! i especially like reason #3 and must especially comment on #6 & #5.

as for #6, i must say the tories waited a bit too long and they put her in the peerage and the man(ikkin) they put in her place was beyond pathetic thereby allowing the face of 'new labour' to appear attractive. what no one seemed to find out or care to remember was that murdock was the 'oomph' behind the newly minted 'message.'

and as for #5 is a bit suspect i feel as this is something britain really learned from india (as in the case, for example, of major grey's chutney and the still extant - though, supposedly former - imperial bureaucracy (the caste system being a perfect model)).

I wonder if you know my reasons, Ben. If you don't, how can you respect those reasons?

Responsibility for past crimes is a two-way street I'm told.

What does that mean? Is the victim responsible along with the perpetrator? Or are we just talking about a cycle of injury and retaliation in which there are no victims or perpetrators? Is that a typically British perspective?

Regarding Ireland, is the IRA really still evil? Was it ever good? If so, when did it start being evil? And when did the British presence in Ireland start being good and good for who?

There's so much about the British sensibility I clearly don't understand so what can I say? What can I share that might be understood across a cultural gap that seems unbridgable at times?

Most of these posts suggest to me reasons I'm proud to be British despite (or as well as) being a very proud scotsman

The one dearest to my heart & soul: Open discussion - we can and do say anything, even (or especially) if it's anti-establishment... (which does land me in hot water here in the non-confrontational USofA)

Britain (& I say this as a Scot living in the US) has some of the most open, and most openly non-conformist, media in the world (If you don't believe me, try finding any decent dissent in any of the US media that isn't completely one-sided.

Most of the US media make the Daily Mail look positively even handed!

sad but true, ask the Dixie Chicks

...yet another bloke living in Texas

the gap, as you say ana, only appear unbridgeble. actually you are already on the bridge. i say this because of many reasons but most obvious to me is your fluent use of their language, english.

as for the irish, i am sure that you are aware, for example, that the great irish writer, graham greene, left his contributions and gifts to the world in the form of english liteature.

this is, in no way, intended to absolve the british of what is horrible in their legacy and their precedents.

yet, recall, for instance, that the contributions of the britisher, dickens, are beyond compare. then too, the world has tried to do away with institutions such as debtors prisons on the idea, among others, that "the sins of the fathers must not be visited on the children."

is it reasonable to apply this thought to the present generation, then?

hey scots! try some of the following links:

http://www.thenation.com

http://www.inthesetimes.com

http://www.motherjones.com

http://www.markfiore.com

http://www.notinourname.com

http://www.tedrall.com

http://www.notinourname.net/

"Let them call me a rebel, and I welcome it.
I feel no concern from it.
But I should suffer the misery of demons,
were I to make a whore of my soul."
Tom Paine

Well, Kyaa, are you British now?

Hmmm, on bridge already? Yes, only it's more like a tightrope I think.

So please don't hold up Dickens for my admiration. I suspect it's anathema but I don't fancy his work. I rather fancy Sir Richard Burton instead. Can you guess why?

Do Irish writers really leave a legacy of English literature? I rather think it's Irish literature written in English. The distinction is often subtle but significant.

In haste - but replying to Analiese who has raised the most direct questions:

> I wonder if you know my reasons, Ben. If you don't, how can you respect those reasons?

I respect people's right to privacy very strongly indeed. You decided not to post. I respected your right to take that decision. Sure - I don't know *why* you decided not to post. But if I am to demand the right to make my own choices, I must respect the rights of others to make theirs. Quid pro quo.

> Or are we just talking about a cycle of injury and retaliation in which there are no victims or perpetrators? Is that a typically British perspective?

With regard to the two criminals mentioned: Archer was guilty of conspiring to pervert the course of justice; I cannot remember the precise charge Aitken was imprisioned for, but it was corruption and the abuse of parliamentary and political privelege. Both crimes were 'victimless'. Both attacked the systems which are in place to protect us all. So what pleases me is that two very senior politicians were not above the rule of law. I am proud to live in a country where former members of the government are jailed if they are found guilty of crimes.

> Regarding Ireland...

There is no possible single view on Ireland, all that is possible is a multiplicity of views. But the Stevens report was published *despite* the fact it makes it clear that there was institionalised collaboration in the murder of Catholics by members of the security forces. Again I am proud to live in a country where the government funds that sort of inquiry, where the results are published, and where people who are guilty of that sort of crime can be brought to brook.

> Do Irish writers really leave a legacy of English literature?

I agree with you here Analiese. There are destincly Irish, and indeed Scottish, Welsh, American, Canadian, Australian and New Zealander voices writing in the English Language. Unfortunately the word for the language is the same as the word for the people of England, and so the destinction gets lost. Joyce and Sheamus Heaney are clearly Irish voices. But people like Wilde and Shaw and Sheridan emigrated to England. Is their writing Irish or English? I don't know enough about them to comment.



There is so much that I dislike about Britain, so much that disgusts me, and distresses me, and disenfranchises me, that I was surprised to discover even that list of six. And regarding tea - the whole world owes a debt to China, but we each make it in our own special way. I like it hot, strong, milky and a little sweet, and I can only get it that way here.

Ben

1) Inventing football
2) Proper beer
3) realising that mixing fried and battered fish with chunks of fried potato makes a really great meal
4) knowing that we drive on the right side of the road
5) John Snow on election night, any election night

That should do for starters

perish the thought, me british, never!

i confess to not knowing why you ana personally consider burton admirable. as for dickens, what i appreciate is the exposure he gave to what was wrong.

does any writer of an ethnicity other than anglo-saxon who chose to write in english make a contribution to the literary thought of his/her own culture or does the contribution better fit into the landscape created by the language that writer has chose to express thoughts in, which in this case happens to be english. language is more than grammer and words and its use places the writer in place removed from what may have been the language of his/her parents.

Ben, you can come to Lincoln any time and get your tea made proper like.

I lived in Windsor for a while, and it seemed as if everything in a ten-square mile area would come to a halt during Ascot. It was the one time I could drive across the middle of a roundabout without fear of prosecution.

Are Amurricans really less confrontational? No, they just don't know how to discuss things, you Big Hairy Scotsman. And our regional news sucks, it's true. These generalisations apply only to areas outside of the very few cultural centers in the country. And I cannot speak for the disinherited.

I've been thinking, and I'm not sure I can find six things to boast about in respect of the US, although I could say a dozen good things about Lincoln.

?, how about Joseph Conrad?

And Vladimir Nabokov, for that matter. Conrad was Polish, Nabokov Russian. Both made significant and lasting contributions to English litticher.

Thanks for your explanations, Ben. I suspect it might have been a good thing to post after all. You can't learn the answers if you don't pose the questions right?

Two things still intrigue me. One is the multiplicity of views regarding Ireland. I wonder why that is?

Could it be that you go into a country to conquer it and fabricate all manner of pretexts, etc., for that act. Then later you decide maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all because the indigenous do resist don't they? And is that just because they're inherently evil, stupid, ignorant or stubborn? So then you find it a bit more complex don't you? The context is a little less clear.

Now, Irish writers is the other thing that's intriguing.

Do they write English literature if they don't use Irish dialect for example? I don't know for sure.

I do know in my own writing sometimes I find vestiges of my native language, little grammatical conventions that sort of carry over into the English. Like using "that" a lot more than many English writers would.

"That" is a way of partially expressing a convention about the subject of discourse. In Shoshone you introduce that subject but don't mention it explicitly again until you change it. "That" stands for a word or word element that specifies the subject without repeating it, kind of a placeholder you might say.

Here's an example of the convention that's a little more literal than I usually employ for reasons that will probably be obvious:

The rabbit the wind sniffed. That was checking for coyote scent and that none found when that safe felt and that lazily in sun basked.

It should be obvious that this way doesn't work very well in English composition but it still gets used in my writing with repetitions of the subject for clarity because English doesn't have the Shoshone grammatical convention just explained.

So then to compromise a little I write something like:

The rabbit sniffed the wind. That rabbit was checking for coyote scent and when he found none that rabbit basked lazily in the sun.

Now, I suspect Irish has similar grammatical conventions that probably carry over into English in some writers' compositions and that a practiced ear can detect. But you'd have to be aware of those conventions I think to perceive their use, either singly or in combination with native English expressions. And if you could detect them it might be something to suggest that there was a certain Irishness about the thoughts being expressed in the English language don't you think?

Analiese, have you read Hanta Yo by Ruth Beebe Hill, and if so, what do you think of the way English is used in that book?