Returning artefacts?

[eggbasket]

I think these people have some ideas about how we should deal with all the finds in the BM and our cultural heritage:

http://www.britishreparations.org/

Go to The Facts page and read about how they propose that we should pay the money they want. You might also want to check their facts since they are wrong on several counts.

Cheers,
Eggbasket
Gentleman Adventurer and Antique

"A great victory for rangers and hamsters everywhere. Right, Boo?" - Minsc

[BAJR Host]

Nice one there... and I thought I was tough!

"Beginning in the 18th century, Britain began making our lives worse through the introduction of machines in the workplace. The health, safety, and wages of workers took a back seat to owners' greed for ever-higher output and profits. "

I thought they were talking about diggers in 20th century UK Archaeology!

"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu

[Austin Ainsworth]

Eggbasket,

thanks for the link, I haven't had such a good laugh in ages. Try the news coverage section, it had me rolling around on the floor.

[Anna Stocks]

Got to be a spoof, surely - under the book, 101 ways that England ruined the world - reason 99 - they made Elton John a Knight!

[Andy A]

I love the internet, what a website! I didn't know the British Empire was 500 years old. I didn't know we forced America into the second Iraq war! And I consider myself a fairly informed individual.

[Gog]

I wonder if this originates with some dim-witted Yank. Interesting that the Americans are mired in Iraq because of what the 'British' (??) did in the Crusades, rather than Bush and his evil neocon mates desiring to enrich their oil industry buddies. It reminds me of an American on the Today programme blaming us for all the ills in the world, even 4x4s on the basis that we invented the Landrover - someone rang in to point out that the Landrover was based on the Wileys Jeep, an American invention.

[Austin Ainsworth]

A fantastic spoof, the publicity photo for Penny Rimbaud who wrote the introduction for the book shows him naked sitting on a toilet! Good to see that Penny is still the same irreverent idiot as he was in his days as the drummer with the agit-punk band Crass.

[Oxbeast]

Surely a spoof, but full of so many factual errors as to make it less funny. They seem to be under the impression that Saddam was a radical islamist, for example. And mixing up Britain and England a couple of times.

I've got to love the way they 'prove' that we're all idiots based on Clarkson, though...

[BAJR Host]

Not a spoof I am afraid...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Evil-Empire-Engl...98&sr=11-1

you can indeed buy the book...

my favourite review is this one...

quote: am an Englishman and approached this book with the same emotion that all English people approach all American humour - with the urbanity of born of pure indifference.

The articles it contains, one by one, are sophomoric in their scope and detail but, hell, so is the American Pie franchise so beloved of US audiences. If you like that, you'll like this. What a comment on George Bush's America, eh?

But the name. Grasse... Grasse... Why did it ring such a bell with me? And why would such a person with such a name take such a dislike to the British who have done nothing more than give him the language with which he speaks and the economic, cultural, political, artistic, strategic and sexual systems within which he operates? Then it struck me. Grasse is a descendant of François Joseph Paul, marquis de Grasse Tilly, comte de Grasse. Americans will know him as the French admiral who assisted George Washington during the War of Independence. British readers will know him, of course, as the Frenchman who betrayed the bold American colonialists by withdrawing his ships at a time crucial to their struggle so that he could go and loot for his own personal benefit the rich shipping lanes of the West Indies - and was soundly trounced by a much smaller squadron of Royal Naval ships under the command of Admiral Hood at the Battle of the Saints. Beaten like a gong, believe me.

So of course Grasse hates the British. He is, after all, a scion of one of the most consistently destructive nations that history has ever known. France. The common enemy of all the world.

"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu

[1man1desk]

Thanks very much Eggman - that's one of the funniest things I have read in years.

I particularly liked the 'Bad Inventions' section, where the English are credited with inventing the Black Plague!

1man1desk

to let, fully furnished