"Your time is limited so don't waste it living someone else's life.
Don't be trapped by Dogma which is living with the results of other people's thinking.
Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your inner voice.
And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become."
- Steve Jobs

Thursday, July 21, 2005

What's wrong with these lyrics??

"Land of Hope and Glory,
Mother of the Free,
How shall we extol thee,
Who are born of thee?
Wider still and wider
Shall thy bounds be set;
God, who made thee mighty,
Make thee mightier yet. "

Do these lyrics offend you? Do they seem to you to be far to patriotic? Too political? Or is it just a song aobut how proud we are of our country?

COUNCILLORS want to ban Land Of Hope And Glory from a Remembrance Day festival because it is “too political”.

Labour members are pushing for the stirring patriotic anthem to be kicked out and replaced with Rod Stewart’s 1975 hit Sailing.

Wolverhampton Councillor Peter O’Neill said: “It is my view that the song has political connotations. It should be replaced by Sailing because that will connect better with the younger generation.”

But old soldiers who will proudly carry the Union Flag blasted the plan. The Royal British Legion’s John Mellor said: “It’s nonsense. To say it is political is barmy.”


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FFS, what a crock of SHIT. WE ARE SAILING?? WTF?? So we can't even sing anthems to our own country now? Does this mean the end to "Last Night of the Proms" and all that pomp and flag waving and choruses of "Rule Britannia"? Heave forbid we should sing songs to praise our own country! Is all this crap in case we offend non-Brits living over here? Well I'm sorry but if you come to live in Britain then you should NOT be offended by some of our customs - in fact ALL of our customs.

"Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves..." we sing, even though she DOESN'T rule the waves any more, but hell, we like singing it, it boosts our flagging pride in this country we live in that seems to be slipping down the drain of political correctness, and having its identity stripped away from it by political do-gooders who are terrified of offending anyone and everyone.

These classic anthems remind a lot of us of the time when Britain was under a very real and tangible threat, when she stood alone in Europe with Hitler snapping at her heels from over the English Channel, when our brave and outnumbered Spitfire and Hurricane pilots held them back during the Battle of Britain, and when our morale and heads were held high despite the Blitz and bombings and death that surrounded us, and the worry of our loved ones away fighting. Songs such as this held us together, kept our pride alive, kept our belief alive that we WOULD succeed and we WOULD conquer, and we'd smash the Nazis into oblivion. And do that we did.

Today in the midst of accusations about the current war and why it was even started, and now the very real threat of more attacks in the UK thanks to Blair's ass-kissing of Bush, we are not allowed to sing those very same anthems. Not allowed to fly our flags, not allowed to be too Patriotic in case it is mistaken for racism against our fellow foreigners. I feel as if our pride is being slowly sapped and sued away, airbrushed, gone for ever.

We can sing what we like where we like, if we're proud of Britain we should bloody well be allowed to express it - if you don't want to hear the songs then put some bloody earplugs in or turn the radio/TV off.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

These sorts of politically correct fools really yank my chain. They seem to forget that WE live in GB, and not the continent. WE have a monarchy and a church of England and WE also have had a glorious past and a mildly irritating but industrious present. They are taking "multi-culturalism" the wrong way. It doesn't mean we change or loose our proud identity to make others feel less out of place, it should mean we make others more at home by educating them in our ways and welcoming their own traditions...

God save the queen!