Spunt's helpful guide to Britain for fat Americans - Learn about Anglos so you can hate them better

[Thornforg]

If Scotland were to become independent, it would have the highest obesity rates, teen pregnancy rates, drug addiction rates and alcohol consumption rates of anywhere in the Western world.

What Scottish word most closely relates to 'Yee-haw'?

 

[Death Grip]

On a scale from zero to Essex, how passed-out-drunk face down in the street are you?

What Scottish word most closely relates to 'Yee-haw'?

Mmmn, bawbag maybe?

 

[Meingott]

FUCK OFF, WE'RE FULL!

 

[Shining Wit]

What is Kent and Cornwall like? Like Canterbury and Plymouth? Are they any good?

Kent is nicknamed the Garden of England which i feel has contributed to it being permanently ram fucking packed
In the Northwest (Dartford/Gravesend) its basically London overspill, elsewhere its a few large towns (Maidstone, Ashford, Tonbridge Wells, Sittingbourne) and then villages literally in the middle of fucking nowhere with stupid names like Prat's Bottom

Special mentions go to Canterbury, home of the Church of England and a higher student population than permanent residents (hence why it flips red if the election is term time)
Also, Medway is a shithole. Its the name given to the meld of Rochester, Chatham and Gillingham (who have the only EFL football club in Kent) that sits on the mouth of the River Medway. Much like all kentish towns, full of pikies and other miscreants. Rochester is notable for being one of few towns with a cathedral thats not a city (in Medways glee at realising they can secede from Kent, they forgot to do paperwork to keep city status)

On the note of pikies, they're everywhere and worse than the london gangs. Usually you can see their caravan encampments destroying green spaces across the county as the police ask politely then shrug as the gyppos ignore them. Good fun to watch them beat each other up when coked up outside the nightclubs

Thanks to Dover, Maidstone and the Dartford Crossing the roads are fucking shit and it can take hours to cross your town if some spastic crashed in a tunnel. At least people jumping off the QE2 only affects Essex

All in all its a shithole like most of england but we say grarse and barth. Kent Invicta though, which makes us better than the rest of you easily conquered losers

 

[AcidityLiquidity]

Liking the thread, good stuff OP.

One thing I was wondering though, in the britbong kiwi's opinions, what do you feel are the causes of the decline in national pride from the 'Rule Britannia' times to the sad, self-loathing irrelevance the UK finds itself in today?

What we're taught in 'murrica is WW1/2 bankrupting the empire, and some parallels can be drawn to the decline of the US we see now- so would love to hear a native's opinion on the sun set of the UK.

Spoiler

I blame the Jews

 

[Fireman Sam]

Informative, precise and accurate, good work!
Reminds me why I left too!

 

[Easterling]

Liking the thread, good stuff OP.

One thing I was wondering though, in the britbong kiwi's opinions, what do you feel are the causes of the decline in national pride from the 'Rule Britannia' times to the sad, self-loathing irrelevance the UK finds itself in today?

What we're taught in 'murrica is WW1/2 bankrupting the empire, and some parallels can be drawn to the decline of the US we see now- so would love to hear a native's opinion on the sun set of the UK.

Spoiler

I blame the Jews

Read Peter Hitchins if your intrested in that kinda of thing, he's got a pretty good outlook on the situation, Personally I blame the USA for our deminished postion on the world stage, not to say I have a seething hatred for America like a lot of yanks do for old blithy though. I dont blame your desire to eclipise our nation, it only makes sense in the inevitable competition of world powers. WW2 was the key turning point for us, WW1 weaked the empire but USA economically raped the UK after WW2 with lend lease, It also doesnt help that you wanted to break up our empire to open up the free market for yourselves. Prior to that we had a Royal Charter system which Gave British Imperial companies a defacto monopoly in any given colony which ensured foriegn competition wouldnt be able to get a foothold on any raw resources, you'd have to trade through us for rubber or ivory instead of owning a direct source which is much cheaper.

What really destroyed our national pride was the Suez crisis so in part your sort of right it was the machinations of isreal in a sense since they did most of the fighting aganist Egypt, BUT. It was President Eisenhower refusing to support British and french forces becuase we didnt get his permission to do so. The whole fiasco destroyed our national pride, ended the political career of Sir anthony Eden and the UK was only able to barely drag itself out of that level of shame during the Falklands war.

So yeah, the UK is a Vassal state of the US now and has been since in the 1950s, Christ we even import your own subversive and destablizing politics such as the George Floyd shit from last year.

 

[Poppavalyim Andropoff]

What's with Grandma just randomly trying to be Siouxsie Sioux?

How old you think Siouxsie & the rest of the Banshees are now

 

[JULAY]

Read Peter Hitchins if your intrested in that kinda of thing, he's got a pretty good outlook on the situation, Personally I blame the USA for our deminished postion on the world stage, not to say I have a seething hatred for America like a lot of yanks do for old blithy though. I dont blame your desire to eclipise our nation, it only makes sense in the inevitable competition of worlf powers. WW2 was the key turning point for us, WW1 weaked the empire but USA economically raped the UK after WW2 with lend lease, It also doesnt help that you wanted to break up our empire to open up the free market for yourselves. Prior to that we had a Royal Charter system which Gave British Imperial companies a defacto monopoly in any given colony which ensured foriegn competition wouldnt be able to get a foothold on any raw resources, you'd have to trade through us for rubber or ivory instead of owning a direct source which is much cheaper.

What really destroyed our national pride was the Suez crisis so in part your sort of right it was the machinations of isreal in a sense since they did most of the fighting aganist Egypt, BUT. It was President Eisenhower refusing to support British and french forces becuase we didnt get his permission to do so. The whole fiasco destroyed our national pride, ended the political career of Sir anthony Eden and the UK was only able to barely drag itself out of that level of shame during the Falklands war.

So yeah, the UK is a Vassal state of the US now and has been since in the 1950s, Christ we even import your own subversive and destablizing politics such as the George Floyd shit from last year.

If it wasn't for lend-lease, you faggots would be speaking German.

 

[Easterling]

If it wasn't for lend-lease, you faggots would be speaking German.

true, im just saying its effects crippled our economy in the process, there's other factors at play as well. At any rate, we traded one set of masters for another so what difference does it even make?

 

[Octavia]

On the note of pikies, they're everywhere and worse than the london gangs. Usually you can see their caravan encampments destroying green spaces across the county as the police ask politely then shrug as the gyppos ignore them. Good fun to watch them beat each other up when coked up outside the nightclubs

Some of my work involves getting rid of pikies like the scum they are, we ask nicely first but won't hesitate to beat the shit out of any rat arse kid that throws bricks at us. First thing we do at any sign of hostility is strap on the riot gear.

Fuck pikies, they deserve a spot in this thread for all the shit the government does to appease them.

 

[Spunt]

Fuck pikies, they deserve a spot in this thread for all the shit the government does to appease them.

Oh I'm getting to them don't worry.

 

[419]

Some of my work involves getting rid of pikies like the scum they are, we ask nicely first but won't hesitate to beat the shit out of any rat arse kid that throws bricks at us. First thing we do at any sign of hostility is strap on the riot gear.

Fuck pikies, they deserve a spot in this thread for all the shit the government does to appease them.

One of my favourite things about local markets around London outside of Central is that you can clearly tell if it's a dumb pikey trying to sell (likely stolen) shit like old power tools when everything is just piled up and strewn about on the ground next to a van instead of being neatly presented in an actual stall. Even when they're not trying to beat you up everything about them just comes across as detestable.

 

[Octavia]

One of my favourite things about local markets around London outside of Central is that you can clearly tell if it's a dumb pikey trying to sell (likely stolen) shit like old power tools when everything is just piled up and strewn about on the ground next to a van instead of being neatly presented in an actual stall. Even when they're not trying to beat you up everything about them just comes across as detestable.

Yeah, it's fucked. Wherever they are, they're always up to no good whether it's theft, squatting, vandalism & other crime or just generally being a drunk nuisance. Even when they're moved out of somewhere you can be sure their presence is felt from all the (fly)tipping they do. Not to mention they just move onto somewhere else and become someone else's issue.

 

[Green Room]

That was a fun read. Especially to hear your take on the cities my favorite British 'Tubers live in. "A steelmaking town where no ones made steel in 40 years" describes well most of PA and OH honestly. A paper-mill town where the mill closed 40 years ago (or a lumber-mill, furniture factory, textile-mill, etc..) describes probably a fair amount of the East coast in general.

Your image in the Welsh blurb reminded me again of the whole 'Travelers' subculture, which has always fascinated me as an American because I suppose theres some sort of American spirit to just be like "fuck it, we'll live in the car". I mean look at how often we talk about "Vanlife" here now. Walmart even welcomes people to camp out in their parking lots and hook up to electricity so long as its a legit camper. The fact that 'Travelers' go so far as to call it their heritage and identity is interesting, and somewhat akin to the old-timey Hobos in the 30s in America, which are still somewhat lionized in culture, with historical renactors, faires, etc.. but I do get that most people think 'Travelers' are a menace. Honestly if they just moved to the US they could live that life and no one would not bat an eye at all, they'd probably hear their accent and think they're charming and have plenty of places to go without being disturbed at all.

 

[Spunt]

Northern Ireland

​

OK here we go. It's impossible to talk about Northern Ireland without letting your own opinions cloud it, so I'm not going to try too hard to stay neutral. Inevitably I'll make someone mad, it's just one of those topics that you can't be objective about, and if you disagree, other opinions are available.

I'm not going to go into the history of Protestantism vs Catholicism or what beliefs they differ on. If you care at all about this topic you probably know already. But in order to explain how Norn Irn (as the locals call it) became such a clusterfuck, we're going to have to go a long way back, all the way back to 1642 and the outbreak of the English Civil War.

The English Civil War was fought between King Charles 1st and England's Parliament. Charles had raised a series of incredibly unpopular taxes to pay for yet more fruitless wars against the French, and when Parliament refused to pass any more taxation laws Charles tried to abolish it. The result was the bloodiest war ever fought on English soil. By the time Parliament won in 1651, nearly 250,000 people were dead, including Charles himself who was beheaded for Treason.

One of Parliament's key generals was a man called Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell was a joyless, sadistic Puritan religious fanatic with a near-psychotic hatred of Catholics. Naturally, he was the man chosen to lead Parliament's campaign in Ireland, at that point an English colony. Cromwell decided to take the opportunity to, erm, deal with the Catholic question while he was at it. Cromwell's actions in Ireland were not so much a military campaign as a psychopathic genocide, burning, looting and slaughtering his way through the countryside, ignoring military targets to take out his hatred for the Catholic locals.

This portrait of Cromwell is the origin of the phrase "warts and all". Cromwell, like any good fun-hating puritan,
insisted that his portrait painters capture his Lemmy-esque face lumps.​

After the war, for the next seven years England (later Scotland as well) became a Republic for the only time in its history (at this point in time England and Scotland were still separate countries but shared the same monarchy) under Cromwell, who styled himself "Lord Protector" like something out of a shitty YA novel. Cromwell's fanatical Christian Taliban literally cancelled Christmas, and banned dancing and sport as being Satanic. He also took the opportunity to kick the Irish around whenever he got the opportunity.

By the time of his death he was so hated by Catholic and Protestant alike that not only did Parliament decide to restore the Monarchy, they dug up Cromwell's corpse, put it on trial for treason, decapitated it, and put his head on a spike in London for everyone to cheer. Charles 1st's son Charles II returned from exile and crowned king of England, Scotland and Ireland, and everything seem set to calm down. But instead things got worse.

Whilst all you inbred continentals had your deformed Habsburgs, Charles II had the best hair
in Christendom and fathered almost 30 children, none with his wife. Absolute fucking Chad.​

It soon emerged that Charles II's younger brother and heir James (Charles II had many children, but no legitimate ones) was a closet Catholic, and This Would Not Do. England's last Catholic Monarch, "Bloody" Mary Tudor, had tried to forcibly convert England back to Catholicism by burning Protestants at the stake and persuading the Spanish to try to invade her own country, which as I'm sure you can imagine did not go over well (imagine a Democrat president inviting Putin to invade to kill Republicans, which would be a rough equivalent). Some attempted to pass a law barring James from the succession, but failed. After his ascension to the throne as James II of England and James VII of Scotland, all hell broke loose as most Protestants refused to acknowledge him as King, and it got worse when he had a son, raising the possibility of an entire dynasty of Catholics (whereas the Irish thought this was a great idea, obviously).

The response was for many prominent Protestants to put their weight behind the next Protestant in line to the throne, James' son-in-law and Dutch Prince William of Orange. Matters reached a head and William invaded with an army of mercenaries and Protestant defectors, deposing James in a bloodless coup and sending him into exile. William was crowned as William III of England and William II of Scotland, but the Catholics weren't done yet. James landed a force in Ireland in 1689, aiming to recruit a Catholic army and seize control of Ireland, and then press his claim to the English and Scottish thrones as well. William intercepted him though, and crushed James' army at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, possibly the most significant battle in Irish history. This battle established that Catholic Ireland would be ruled by Protestants for the next 250 years. Not long afterwards the Act of Union was passed that created the UK, including all of Ireland (which didn't get a say).

Since the beginning of the 17th century, successive governments had pursued a policy of Protestantising Ireland by settling Scottish Protestants there in an attempt to replace the local population (good thing that kind of thing doesn't happen any more, eh?). It was only really successful in the northern Duchy of Ulster, and even then the ratio of Protestants to Catholics remained about 50/50, as it does to this day. During this time, British persecution of the Irish continued, with outrageous taxes and forced agricultural monoculture that resulted in the devastating Irish Potato Famine when the only crop the Irish were allowed, by law, to eat was destroyed by blight. The Irish took this until 1916 when a violent insurrection broke out, led by a group calling themselves the Irish Republican Army, trying to secure Irish independence by force.

In 1922 the British Government agreed, and the Irish Republic (or Eire in the native Gaelic) was born. But the British held on to half-Protestant Ulster to protect the Protestants living there who wished to remain British. As part of the settlement, the IRA was formally disbanded.

Except of course it wasn't.

The IRA were not only unhappy with Ulster remaining part of the UK, they were also unhappy that Eire allowed it to happen and that the new Irish government were generally cool with the British government (despite all the mayhem, the governments and peoples of the Republic and the UK were in general and remain on surprisingly good terms. Go to any pub in London and you'll find mixed groups of Protestant Englishmen and Catholic Irishmen drinking together and agreeing that the real enemy are the fucking French*). This is something that both the British AND the Americans forget - the IRA were devoted to not only driving the remaining British out of Ireland, they were also dedicated to overthrowing the Irish government as well for not hating Protestants or the British enough for their liking.

*The English hate the French because they have been at war with them for almost 400 of the last 1000 years. The Irish hate the French because of something that happened in the football in 2009, and they probably hate them more than the English at this point. Football is Serious Business.

Things kicked off again in the late 1960s for reasons that nobody seems to be able to agree on, but by the early 1970s Northern Ireland was a warzone. Around this time the British government began to crack down on the IRA and the disorder in general, and not in a gentle, targeted or reasonable manner. There were a series of events where Catholic civilians were killed, most notably "Bloody Sunday", on the 30th January 1972. Exactly what happened that day is to say the least disputed, but during a protest rally against the British both the British army and the IRA were present, and at some point *someone* opened fire. By the end of proceedings 14 unarmed Catholic civilians were dead.

​

The IRA switched tactics. Their earlier campaigns had targeted soldiers, police and pro-British ("Loyalist") paramilitary groups. But now the IRA wanted to kill civilians, and they did, by the hundred.

You might infer from the beginning of this article that I sympathise with the IRA's cause. And to a large extent I do, as do many regular Brits, but I do not at all sympathise with what the IRA did, and in the view of the vast majority of British people any legitimate grievances they had were outweighed by the sheer sadistic savagery of the IRA's methods. Giving in, in the minds of the British, would have been an endorsement of the IRA's tactics and only result in escalating demands and more atrocities. And they were atrocities. Many Americans are not aware of the true horror of the IRA's terror campaign against innocent civilians with no say in the conflict they were caught up in. For all the IRA knew, the civilians they killed in bomb and gun attacks on crowded pubs, railway stations, hotels and town centres may have been sympathetic to their cause, or even Irish Catholics like themselves, but they didn't care and killed indiscriminately.

One of the IRA's favourite party tricks was the "Proxy Bomb". This involved kidnapping a random Protestant's family, handcuffing him to the steering wheel of a car rigged with explosives, and forcing him to drive to an often civilian target and blow himself up on pain of having his entire family killed if he didn't. That isn't the action of an "Army", or "Freedom Fighters". That's the action of hate-fuelled sadists high on human suffering. This is some Saw movie shit.

The IRA were not alone in their atrocities of course. The Loyalist paramilitaries (notably the UDA and UVF) were not as well funded or armed as the IRA, but they had the tacit backing of the British Police and Army, who fed them information about Republicans the British wanted out of the way and used them as extrajudicial kill squads for IRA members (or alleged IRA members) they didn't have the evidence to convict or the ability to capture (or, on occasion, people unconnected to Republicanism that they just had a grudge against). The Loyalists, filled with just as much hate as the Republicans, exploited this relationship to have the authorities often turn a blind eye to their own, frequent, massacres of Catholic civilians or lower-level criminal activity like robbery, smuggling and extortion.

Why were the IRA better funded than the Loyalists? Because they were funded by Americans. The "Noraid" system funnelled funds from sympathetic Americans to the IRA, which they used to buy weapons from Libya's Colonel Gaddafi. Gaddafi had a policy of indiscriminately arming terrorists and rebels anywhere in the world, regardless of cause, due to his batshit insane "Third Universal Theory" ideology that claimed that fighting imperialism necessitated aiding any and all rebel groups, even those with diametrically opposed aims. In 1986, the US bombed Tripoli on the grounds that Gaddafi was "arming terrorists", at the same time that Americans were paying him to do exactly that. If that doesn't sum up US foreign policy in the 80's, I don't know what does. Noraid continued even after the formal dissolution of the IRA, funding dissident splinter groups unhappy with the idea of negotiating with the British in any way. These splinter groups contained some of the most insane and sadistic Republicans, who wanted killing without end and without a clear aim, and these groups, without any political leadership to restrain them, committed some of the very worst atrocities of the Troubles.

The Republican dissident group the "Real IRA" planted a bomb in the red car in the foreground.
19 seconds after this photograph was taken, every man, woman and child you see in it, including the photographer, was dead.​

This went on right up until the 11th September 2001, when all of a sudden the Americans decided that funding crackpot religious fundamentalist terrorists who murder civilians wasn't so glamorous any more. No idea why that was.

We have not forgotten any of the above, by the way.

The IRA held several ceasefires during the 1990s but broke them with devastating bomb attacks on London because the British wanted them to decommission their weapons before they would negotiate with them. It took the intervention of the Clinton administration and a Labour government in London before negotiations got anywhere, and one of the great unsung heroes of British politics in Mo Mowlam to put together an arrangement that all sides were happy with. In the end it was the Republicans that blinked first, and they agreed to a permanent ceasefire in 1997 that enabled progress to be made, probably under pressure from their American paymasters.

Wikipedia says that the Troubles were a political conflict, but that's bollocks. You don't do the kinds of things that those people were doing to each other because you disagree about what flag should be flying over the town hall. The Northern Ireland conflict is a centuries old ethnic and religious conflict. It's obvious why the powers that be want it to be thought of as political, because admitting it being about one set of immigrants deliberately trying to displace the natives and the resulting complete inability for two ethnic groups to live with each other without bloodshed has ... unwanted implications in Current Year.

Then again, as an outsider, it is kind of mystifying that these people spent 500 years tearing each other apart due to a disagreement about whether Jesus is, or is not, made out of bread. Thousands of my countrymen died because you lot couldn't calm the fuck down about your stupid medieval slapfight. Fuck the lot of you. Tow Ulster into the Atlantic and just fucking sink it. Or give it to the Americans if they think they know all the fucking answers.

NornIrn Politics today​

Anyway, on the rare occasions that someone hasn't stormed out because someone brought the wrong biscuits to a meeting, the four main parties who share power in the Northern Ireland assembly are as follows. The parties who stand for election in the mainland* UK do not stand for election in Northern Ireland because there wouldn't be any point and someone would probably get mad enough about it set fire to someone's car.

*For some reason, some in Ulster get their Jimmies seriously rustled if you refer to Great Britain as the "mainland" in the context of Northern Ireland. I don't know why and don't really care but if you're triggered by this you can either explain why or go fuck yourself, either is fine.

The Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP)


I couldn't find an interesting picture of them. I don't think there are any.​

This is the "reasonable" pro-unification Catholic party, roughly equivalent to the British Labour party in policy outlook. They're a dull, serious bunch who always sought a peaceful solution to Irish reunification. There was much interest in 2010 when their leader wore a poppy to a Remembrance Day memorial ceremony (Remembrance Day is closely equivalent to Memorial Day in the US and is a pretty big deal over here. The Poppy is a reference to the poppy fields of Belgium in WWI, and became a symbol of the blood unnecessarily spilled in history's stupidest war. But some lefty types get BIG MAD about it because they think it glorifies imperialism blah blah blah). That this was seen as a Big Deal shows a) how petty NornIrn politics get and b) how dull the SDLP are.

Sinn Fein


Gerry Adams (right) with future Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Gerry's mortar bombs got much closer to Downing Street than Jeremy ever did.​

These guys are the more spicy Republicans, and spent three decades denying that they controlled the IRA, then somehow enforced the IRA's disarmament, but they definitely weren't in charge of them, OK? Post-peace process, and with their more objectionable and terrorist-linked leaders like Gerry Adams* and Martin McGuinness gone, they're doing very well electorally these days at the expense of the SDLP. On the regular occasions that the Assembly falls apart, it's either because Sinn Fein have walked out or because someone else has walked out in protest at something Sinn Fein said or did.

Sinn Fein win several seats in the national parliament each election, but refuse to take them up because doing so would involve taking an oath to the Queen, whose father-in-law they blew up on his fishing boat, killing his wife, his daughter and his two young grandchildren in the process. This stand, if principled, has effectively handed several seats to the Tories every election, because the Tories can count on the Unionist parties to back them up when things get tight, often resulting in legislation being passed that was directly against Sinn Fein's interests.

Policy wise, these guys are hard, hard Left.

*Fun Gerry Adams fact: In the 80s, the Thatcher government passed a law banning all British broadcasters from broadcasting Gerry Adams' voice on TV or radio, showing that it wasn't just the Ulster factions who could be pointlessly petty. This backfired when broadcasters simply overdubbed his voice. The voice actors they used were generally articulate and charismatic, and this gave everyone the impression that Gerry Adams was some kind of master orator, and when the restrictions were lifted many were surprised to discover that he was just a hairy little terrorist with a reedy, petulant voice.

The Ulster Unionist Party

​

These are the "reasonable" Unionists, without any confirmed links to murder squads. They swap militancy for incompetence, and everything they touch falls apart. They're not as reasonable as the SDLP though, and their antediluvian religious views are on full display to everyone. Currently effectively without a leader after Arlene Foster agreed to resign over her role in the Green Energy Subsidy scandal (see my last post) after a long period of trying to brazen it out. She hasn't formally left her post yet either, insisting that a new leader be elected first, and with that process taking forever due to the usual petty slapfighting so common in Ulster politics, she will probably cling to power a bit longer.

The UUP are in a semi-permanent unofficial voting pact with the Conservatives, whose platforms they broadly share, though the Tories' softening on issues like gay marriage and abortion under David Cameron did poison the relationship a bit. Many accuse the UUP of using their kingmaker power over minority Tory governments to extort concessions from them, and they're probably right about that. Though not these days, as such is the scandal and ineptitude that follows them around that they got wiped out in terms of Westminster seats in 2019 after a long period of decline.

The Democratic Unionist Party

​

No! Never! Not an inch! No surrender to papists! Yep, these are the spicy Unionists, though like their Republican counterparts in Sinn Fein, they have mellowed a bit since things calmed down, to their electoral benefit, especially given the UUP's current problems.

Back in the day, though, they were led by Presbyterian Preacher and purple-faced human foghorn Dr Ian Paisley, whose utter refusal to negotiate with anyone about everything and his insistence on calling the Pope "His Satanic Majesty" made him either a folk hero or the very worst man in Northern Ireland depending on your perspective, but his barking "No!" (Pronounced "Nye!" in the local accent) was one of the biggest political memes of the 1980s - you can tell the age of a Brit by whether or not they can bust out an impression of him.

​

Even the good Doctor mellowed in the end and participated in the peace process. The DUP was linked to Loyalist terror groups like the UDA and UVF, but unlike Sinn Fein's claims not to control the IRA, it was generally accepted that the DUP were not the masters of the Loyalists - if only because it seemed that they couldn't run a bath, let alone a terrorist cell. Policy wise, as you would expect, they're probably the most right-wing mainstream party in the UK.

The DUP were, however (and still are) closely related to the Orange Order, a nebulous religious-political organisation dedicated to the personal cult of William of Orange, who every year on the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne go on a good old march that takes them through a number of extremely Republican areas of Ulster. Whether this is a proud exercise of traditional rights or a cynical attempt to piss off the Catholics as much as possible is up for debate, but a riot is the usual result either way.

​

You may notice that all the Republican parties are left-wing, and all the Unionist parties are right-wing. What happens if you're a right-wing Catholic, or a left-wing Protestant? Well, what happens is that a nice man in a balaclava explains your options to you by shooting you in the kneecaps.

---

Fuck, that was heavy. For the next post (whenever I get to it), let's handle a less sensitive topic - immigration.

 

[Spunt]

Honestly if they just moved to the US they could live that life and no one would not bat an eye at all, they'd probably hear their accent and think they're charming and have plenty of places to go without being disturbed at all.

You'll think that, until things start going missing.

Such as children.

 

[chickenbutt]

Honestly if they just moved to the US they could live that life and no one would not bat an eye at all, they'd probably hear their accent and think they're charming and have plenty of places to go without being disturbed at all.

Bless your cotton socks, but you have clearly never met a pikey.

eta: A++ post on Norn Irn. Seriously, I doff my cap.

 

[Return of the Freaker]

Your image in the Welsh blurb reminded me again of the whole 'Travelers' subculture, which has always fascinated me as an American because I suppose theres some sort of American spirit to just be like "fuck it, we'll live in the car". I mean look at how often we talk about "Vanlife" here now. Walmart even welcomes people to camp out in their parking lots and hook up to electricity so long as its a legit camper. The fact that 'Travelers' go so far as to call it their heritage and identity is interesting, and somewhat akin to the old-timey Hobos in the 30s in America, which are still somewhat lionized in culture, with historical renactors, faires, etc.. but I do get that most people think 'Travelers' are a menace. Honestly if they just moved to the US they could live that life and no one would not bat an eye at all, they'd probably hear their accent and think they're charming and have plenty of places to go without being disturbed at all.

"Travellers" in the UK aren't just hobos and drifters. The term can refer to both Gypsies and Irish Travellers, both of which are distinct ethnic groups. The Irish Travellers are actually genetically distinct from the general ethnic Irish population. Both groups are insular nomads who periodically squat somewhere and are basically the joggers of the British isles.

Pretty sure that's totally accurate, if any bongs can confirm.

EDIT: Unrelated, but what's the deal with the Isle of Man? Is that considered part of the UK or is it a weird autonomous zone like the Channel Islands?

 

[murdered meat bag]

i like the black country accent. watf fin abough nah pedal? zats a cooy babby