Group Info Name: Petition to revoke the independence of the United States of AmericaType: Just for Fun - Outlandish Statements
Description: To the citizens of the United States of America, in the light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.
Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories.
Except Utah, which she does not fancy.
Your new Prime Minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair MP, for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a Minister for America without the need for further elections.
The House of Representatives and the Senate will be disbanded.
A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:
1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium." Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.
The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour'; skipping the letter 'U' is nothing more than laziness on your part. Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters.
You will end your love affair with the letter 'Z' (pronounced 'zed' not 'zee') and the suffix "ize" will be replaced by the suffix "ise."
You will learn that the suffix 'burgh' is pronounced 'burra' e.g. Edinburgh. You are welcome to re-spell Pittsburgh as 'Pittsberg' if you can't cope with correct pronunciation.
Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up “vocabulary." Using the same thirty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "uhh", "like", and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.
Look up "interspersed."
There will be no more 'bleeps' in the Jerry Springer show. If you're not old enough to cope with bad language then you shouldn't have chat shows. When you learn to develop your vocabulary, then you won't have to use bad language as often.
2. There is no such thing as "US English." We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of "-ize."
3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard. English accents are not limited to cockney, upper-class twit or Mancunian (Daphne in Frasier).
You will also have to learn how to understand regional accents --- Scottish dramas such as "Taggart" will no longer be broadcast with subtitles.
While we're talking about regions, you must learn that there is no such place as Devonshire in England. The name of the county is "Devon." If you persist in calling it Devonshire, all American States will become "shires" e.g. Texasshire, Floridashire, Louisianashire.
4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys. Hollywood will be required to cast English actors to play English characters.
British sit-coms such as "Men Behaving Badly" or "Red Dwarf" will not be re-cast and watered down for a wishy-washy American audience who can't cope with the humour of occasional political incorrectness. Popular British films such as the Italian Job and the Wicker Man should never be remade.
5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.
6. You should stop playing American "football." There are other types of football such as Rugby, Aussie Rules & Gaelic football. However proper football - which will no longer be known as soccer, is the best known, most loved and most popular. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good game.
The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football.
Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies).
We are hoping to get together at least a US Rugby sevens side by 2008.
You should stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the 'World Series' for a game which is not played outside of North America. Since only 2.15% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. Instead of baseball, you will be allowed to play a girls' game called "rounders," which is baseball without fancy team strip, oversized gloves, collector cards or hotdogs.
7. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry guns. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous in public than a vegetable peeler. Because we don't believe you are sensible enough to handle potentially dangerous items, you will require a permit if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
8. The 4th of July is no longer a public holiday. The 2nd of November will be a new national holiday, but only in Britain. It will be called "Indecisive Day."
9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap, and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.
All road intersections will be replaced with roundabouts. You will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.
10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call 'French fries' are not real chips. Fries aren't even French, they are Belgian though 97.85% of you (including the guy who discovered fries while in Europe) are not aware of a country called Belgium. Those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called "crisps." Real chips are thick cut and fried in animal fat. The traditional accompaniment to chips is beer which should be served warm and flat.
Waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.
11. As a sign of penance 5 grams of sea salt per cup will be added to all tea made within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this quantity to be doubled for tea made within the city of Boston itself.
12. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling "beer" is not actually beer at all, it is lager . From November 1st only proper British Bitter will be referred to as "beer," and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as "Lager." The substances formerly known as "American Beer" will henceforth be referred to as "Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine," with the exception of the product of the American Budweiser company whose product will be referred to as "Weak Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine." This will allow true Budweiser (as manufactured for the last 1000 years in the Czech Republic) to be sold without risk of confusion.
13. From the 10th of November the UK will harmonise petrol (or "gasoline," as you will be permitted to keep calling it until the 1st of April) prices with the former USA. The UK will harmonise its prices to those of the former USA and the Former USA will, in return, adopt UK petrol prices (roughly $6/US gallon -- get used to it).
14. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.
15. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.
16. Tax collectors from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all revenues due (backdated to 1776).
Thank you for your co-operation.
Contact Info Website: www.fco.gov.uk
Office: Foreign & Commonwealth Office
Street: King James Street
City: London, England
A fruity little club.
Labels: scientology
The F Word is back. Spurred on by the success of the previous series Channel 4 has decided to serve us more of Gordon Ramsay’s ego-driven vehicle. A suggestion for Channel 4: rename the show ‘Fuck’. Seriously. Firstly, because Ramsay can’t get enough of the word. Secondly, for reasons that I will explain below and have elaborated on before, this show can no longer hide behind the joke that the F is for “food” since it really is all about Gordon and his crazy death cult of cookery. The squeamish among us might demand that it is sanitised with a fig leaf to F*ck for the purposes of pre watershed adverts, but this is not exactly a show that caters for the squeamish or even those moderately easy to offend, bringing me neatly to the third reason for the change: this is a show that is delighting more and more in bearing all to a barbaric and vulgar degree. It’s the Top Gear of the cookery world, full of testosterone, all about the penis, a load of bollocks.
Perhaps if the line between a dead animal and food was a bit thinner we would have more vegetarians. People like their meat but don’t want to know how it got there. That’s not escapist or squeamish, it’s normal, as normal as appreciating your own life without calling on Mum and Dad to demonstrate what they did together to give it to you nine months earlier. Therefore I pre-emptively strike down those who may argue that Ramsay is doing anything other than tailoring some pathetic controversial hard-man of the kitchen routine. The title music had not even finished on yesterday’s show before he waltzed past his audience into his studio/kitchen and slammed the body of a dead deer that he had carried with him onto a work surface with a dull thud, proclaiming in his most yobbish voice: “Right, that’s deer, main course”. What is with this guy?
As with the two previous series there are some subplots that will develop with each show. Number one is his amateur chef competition, where teams of mates cook in his kitchen and have to get as many people to pay for their output as possible. The team with the highest score in this series will have the privilege of running the kitchen at Claridges. Last night would have been entertaining [a few of the Etonians in the kitchen talked back to Ramsay and did not show the jittery tingling fear of the great dictator that previous teams have] if they were not such a noisome cocky bunch themselves.
The second plot continues the theme of parading a group of animals that will be slaughtered in the penultimate show and eaten in the last one. We have had turkeys, we have had pigs, Gordon has had complaints, but undeterred he is now rearing lambs. In time he will name them, focus the camera on them and joke to us, the knowing audience, about how they will soon be dead and in his stomach. Once again, you can claim you love food while staying at least neutral and dispassionate about the animal that’s about to die. Ramsay is goes the extra mile thuggish and ritualistic.
But at least once the animal has been humanely slaughtered we can learn to cook with the master, no? No. Maintaining the tradition established at least since series one in 2005, Ramsay does not fanny about with ladies’ business of quantities, cooking times or describing what he is doing using in more than one or two syllables. It is infuriating. Take this snatch of dialogue from last night, where we watched him cook venison with sweet and sour peppers: “Marinade [with what?], olive oil [how much?], salt [how much?], juniper berries [how many?], - [break to enthuse a little] - garlic [how FUCKING MUCH?], season [WITH WHAT GORDON, WITH WHAT??].” Once the formality of cooking is over with, it’s back to standing hands on hips, chest pushed out, with his boot over nature’s neck. “Time to kill some giant crabs” was the unbelievably crass segue way for a trip to
There are some rays of light in this show. Janet Street Porter is more likeable than I ever remember, and Gordon’s trip to rid some nurses of microwavable food didn’t annoy me as much as I expected [even though his attempt to show that cooking spicy lemon chicken when you have all the ingredients conveniently located in the kitchen is quicker than getting in a car, buying a microwavable meal and coming back to heat it up was just daft]. But it’s all about him. His silly and infantile posturing, this fixation he has with carrying out what could be pent-up revenge fantasies on animals whose meat tastes just as nice when the camera is not recording their last undignified moments, and this no-nonsense attitude he cultivates which involves him slagging off “rival” chefs for incompetence and/or showing off while he indulges in every type of carnivorous nonsense under the sun.
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