To want to tell old school friend she’s being thick?

[StillCoughingandLaughing]

I won’t, because I haven’t seen her in 20 years and she’d think I’d gone barmy, but I really, really want to.

She’s just shared this poem on Facebook. For a start, most of it is total nonsense. Take pride in being ENGLISH, yet wave the Union Jack?! Kids don’t learn Shakespeare any more? Since when? And kids never did learn Milton or Shaw at school - I didn’t cover Shaw until ‘A’ Level or Milton until degree level. I’d put money on her not knowing who they even were.

But this isn’t what annoys me most of all. What really gets my goat is this: Where does this true patriot, misty-eyed for the days when we all sat around discussing Saint George and Agincourt whilst eating Yorkshire pudding, live?

Texas.

Beautiful poem. I'm sat here wrapped in my St George flag weeping.

I just laughed at this. Then thought hang on, Vaggie might be serious
That's what comes of spending too much time on Twitter where some people genuinely mean it when they post stuff like that.

I am losing the ability to distinguish between what is and isn't parody.

Complete rubbish! Kids do study Shakespeare at school, and Shakespeare plays are constantly being produced and seen. (And come to think of it, he certainly didn't confine himself to English topics - Julius Caesar; Othello; Romeo and Juliet, etc - except for the ones about the kings, there seem to be as many plays set in Italy as England! Midsummer Night's Dream is set in Athens. Hamlet in Denmark. Even Macbeth is in Scotland, not England.) As for Milton and Shaw, pupils in my day didn't study them routinely; you did if you took Eng Lit A level, but most pupils didn't.

How ironic that Shaw is mentioned in the poem. Taken from Wiki on Shaw:
"Shaw despaired of the British government's coercive policies towards Ireland"

I rest my case m'lud.

Am I the only person hoping that someone posted this on their Facebook, so I can pick though it, but by bit and correct it? Especially the bit about Shaw! That’s a cracker! 🤣

It sounds like the sort of nonsense shared by someone who claims to have voted Brexit for "British rules by British parliament", but now bitches and whines when the British parliament does parliamentary stuff like making laws democratically and holding the executive to account.

There's no arguing with idiots.

I'm sure next month she'll be sharing an image of a Muslim who refused to serve a soldier in uniform because he's an enemy of Islam, that poppies are being banned and in December there'll be some ridiculous claim that a local city has banned Christmas to appease ethnical minorities 🙄

I recently had a distant relative rant to me about how unfair it is that she, a recently single mum with a huge mortgage to pay, didn't get help from the government the way that I, long time single mum on minimum wage, did.

She seems to have erased from her mind the 10 years she spent living as a tax exile with her former husband.

And as for 'miles away across the sea: it's a similar distance from London to Newcastle as from London to Paris; and a shorter distance from Dover to Calais. And certainly all of these distances are MUCH shorter than the distance from Texas to Washington DC - are Texans not Americans by this criterion? Britain is part of Europe; it's a geographical fact. We can leave the EU, but we cannot leave Europe. And the Union Jack is for Great Britain, not England as such. As for all the historical events and wars mentioned: pupils certainly learn English history at school, including the Battle of Hastings (incidentally, the English LOST that one!) and its aftermath, and a great deal about the First World War. I don't know about Agincourt, but I don't think we 'did' that in History either; we only learned about it through reading 'Henry V' in English lessons. The whole thing is just 'playing the victim' and daydreaming of a time that never existed.

I expect your friend's next post will be suggesting a wall built between Europe and eerh... England?

We will still be welcoming the Scots, Welch and Irish though .

I think that Shaw would have been a bit surprised at being called an 'English' writer, in any case.

Well, Agincourt is a good example of how Europe was not always miles away, over the sea - in the days when Calais was held by the English, because the English rulers were fighting to their right to rule over France.

Arnhem and Mons, meanwhile, are two British-fought battles from WW1 and WW2, in the days when Britain (not England) entered the war because of its alliances with its Continental cousins.

I'd post something agreeing that this history should be taught in school, to make young people aware of the nation's historical close ties to the rest of Europe.

Send her this
www.texasmonthly.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/france.png

And ask her about how far England is from France compared to the north of Texas to the south.

I would do a laughing face response. AS it, ha ha what crap.

children are still subjected to the interminable prose of dear William

Really, Hullygully? Prose?

Fuck me. I despair.

'Fuck off, you demented loon' and then blocking them seems to work rather well in my experience.

oldpeoplefacebook.gov

Totally with you on this op! Would make my blood boil.

I did study milton though back in times yonder for my O level English. Paradise lost. We had a shit hot English teacher though who made us read widely.

If any of my friends posted this, I would absolutely take the bollocks apart line by line.

But resorting to questioning her intelligence for having views that differ from your own, well that isn't a mature or appropriate response

But OP isn't. What she rightly questions this person's intelligence about is her apparent acceptance of a load of outright falsehoods. Of course people can have different views, but you can't have different proven facts.

I used to defend the English when criticised for being moronically patriotic and arrogant as I thought we were just proud in the whole of our country but aware of our shortcomings. I also believed we had a healthy dose of irony and understatement.

Since Brexit I have realised that my perspective is coloured by the people around me, who aren't mindlessly Anglocentric. There are many people who believe all this Vote Leave bollocks. I remember GB pre-73 and a lot of it was shit. Restaurants were crap, everywhere was dirty and we couldn't get anyone to do the jobs we didn't want to do. If all the EU citizens left tomorrow we wouldn't suddenly find loads of people wanting to be cleaners, carers, doctors, nurses, baristas etc. So we'd have to get people from outside the EU, who would also be immigrants. But we'd have screwed all our relationships with EU countries and destroyed our strength in negotiating trade deals as part of a trading block. Plus we won't have the ability to prevent companies using tax loopholes to put all their charges through another EU country, which the EU is putting into law next year.

I've unfollowed someone who went to my school who writes pages ranting about this stuff.

the rest of us can be as patriotic as we like, but the English dare not claim that their country is wonderful

Really? Yet all over the country you will see St George's flags in the run up to 23rd April, to say nothing of when we're in the World Cup - with precisely zero by way of recriminations. No "daring" needed.

OP, upset your friend by asking why she's so keen on the Greek-born patron saint of Ethiopia.

Lol @ Texas.

My Iranian born friend has a MIL that posts this shit all the time.

Probably v nice to her face but devastated her sons’ married a “forrinor” and one of “the Muslims” at that.

Needless to say she lives in Thanet.

It's not even logical. If the French, Germans and Dutch can call themselves such, presumably it's nothing to do with the EU as to why we can't call ourselves English (assuming we can't, even though we can). There's no EU laws AFAIK about what kids learn in schools. So how will leaving the EU change anything?

I've stopped ignoring bullshit like this on FB and started challenging it. Anyone who spouts it isn't an actual friend, cos I'm not friends with idiots, so I don't especially care if they get pissed off with me