UK! What pops into your head?

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
This septic isle more like...

The Sceptical.

Perfide Albion course. The true home of evil for the past 1,000 years

Damned right

We have excellent food but we don't respect the concept of food enough.

Or everyone else respects it too much. It's just the imaginative rearrangment of sugar and proteins.

I always thought that Samuel Johnson was spouting bollocks when he came out with that. There's loads of stuff that London doesn't have. But in general terms, maybe he had a point - as everything tends towards Londonness, we all tend towards tiredness of life. Little pleasures are too little, big pleasures are too expensive or not worth the hassle. So we dance and drink and screw, because there's nothing else to do. A civilisation in malaise.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


"When a man tires of London....."


But then Samuel Johnson wasn't familiar with Seasonal Affective Disorder, was he? He'd never been to California, had he?

He was intimately familiar with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder though, and a range of other nervous disorders.


He had also been subject to episodes of what used to be described as accidie and melancholia, so seasonal affective disorder would not have been an alien concept to him.

Some more London quotations:

"....I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained."

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 'A Study in Scarlet'


" LONDON, thou art of townes A per se.
Soveraign of cities, seemliest in sight,
Of high renoun, riches and royaltie;
Of lordis, barons, and many a goodly knyght;
Of most delectable lusty ladies bright;
Of famous prelatis, in habitis clericall;
Of merchauntis full of substaunce and of myght:
London, thou art the flour of Cities all. "

William Dunbar (c1460- c1520)

'In Honour of the City of London'

(and he was a Scot!)



" Earth has not any thing to shew more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty;
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mightly heart is lying still! "

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

'Composed Upon Westminster Bridge Sept 3, 1802'

[MikeH]

http://www.coments.com/2004/11/pivo-pivo.html

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Cruddy
Do check out where things like Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto come from.

Haven't you heard? Eidos Interactive is bankrupt. Besides even on their best day they didn't make 1% of what Microsoft, IBM, or Lotus's software departments made and most of the big game makers reside in the US or Japan. The UK does have a nice cotage game industry though.

[MikeH]

Quality over quantity.

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Haven't you heard? Eidos Interactive is bankrupt. Besides even on their best day they didn't make 1% of what Microsoft, IBM, or Lotus's software departments made and most of the big game makers reside in the US or Japan. The UK does have a nice cotage game industry though.

well we did have? Argonaught is one of the latest british games producers that has gone to the dogs recently(I think that just leaves Codemasters as our main british producer of mainstream games).

I've been in London for a few years now - i feel sorry for visitors who come to the uk and never see anything else. Its not that its an especially awful place, more than i still feel like i'm living abroad when i'm here. It's not representative of what the uk really is. So its a shame that many visitors to our country think that by being to London, they know the uk and its people well.

[MikeH]

London's full of foriegners.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
As for Hong Kong, not much should be contributed to the actions of the colonial government. Did they plan it? Certainly not. Did they actively guided and assisted the local economy? Nope. So what was it?

Hong Kong was a fishing village that sat on a nice harbor and the British China traders recognized it as a good spot to run their trading activities in China out of that location. Hong Kong grew intially off of that trade.

Of course much of Hong Kong's success had to do that, unlike the rest of China, Hong Kong had a stable government and the rule of law. Throughout the Chinese civil war and eight years of the Japanese invasion Hong Kong was a calm, peaceful, and orderly place were lots of refugees went to get away from the lawlessness and fighting in the rest of China.

Post war the communist government in the main land carried out numerous purges of capitalist business owners, intellectuals, journalists, and anyone remotely associated with the previous Imperial or Nationalist governments. Many of those people, especially industrialists and intellectials, fleed to Hong Kong because it was a safe place to rebuild their lives. The colonial government was responsible the orderly rule of law and the pro-property rights laws which made the growth of Hong Kong's economy possible.

[alva]

Originally posted by Dauphin


I've never understood these stereotypes.

The traditionally Full English breakfast and Sunday Roast* lunch is darn good grub.

* be it beef, lamb, chicken or other

So you eat decently one a week. Sure you want to boast about that.

[Hot Mustard]

Don't think this has been said yet:

Soccer hooligans

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by alva

So you eat decently one a week. Sure you want to boast about that.

From a man who hails from the land really only famous for french fries, waffles and chocolate you sure you wanna go down that road?


Lancashire hotpot, Beef Wellington, Cornish pasties, Norfolk turkey. All yumtastic btw

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Originally posted by Dauphin

Lancashire hotpot, Beef Wellington, Cornish pasties, Norfolk turkey. All yumtastic btw

Where's the puke smiley?

Honestly though, if you're not from Italy or Mexico, you've got nothing to brag about food-wise.

[Dauphin]

Ah, its not about boasting, its about standing up to libel.

[Provost Harrison]

Yeah, I've never understood how the Americans have the audacity to criticise our cuisine when their only contribution to that field is f**king fast food such as McDonalds et al

[Ben Kenobi]

Ah, Ulysses.

I love Tennyson. He's my favourite.

Darn y.