This is England

London Calling

Lancashire Hotpot
and Cornish pasty,
Summer days on the beach
Ice creams and donkeys.
Morris dancers and village fates,King Arthur and St George,
A stiff upper lip that got us through wars.
This is England, and it holds my heart truly,like hot cups of tea and Punch and Judy.
This is England, so fly the flag high, and on St Georges day, fly it with pride.

Austin Barry

The best of England is now a chimera adrift on a receding tide of nostalgia. In its place: well, look around, and pass the hemlock.

Nicholas

You forgot bowls on Plymouth hoe and Drake's drum, contrails in the sky over Kent and an inherent, understated decency of behaviour that is all but gone.

England. A once halcyon past and, hopefully, a future free from the dual blight of a Scottish New Labour government and "multi-culturalism".

Fergus Pickering

England is the country that nurtured the poet Philip Larkin, the novelist J.L. Carr and the cricketer Ian Botham who, on being hit on the mouth by a fast, rising ball, spat out his front teeth and continued to a century. Actually I'm not sure about the century bit, but let's hope it was true. Botham's true heir is the Stuart-locked Ryan Sidebottom who will win back the Ashes for us in due course.

dave, surrey

pointy faced feral youths with weasel eyes filling the upper deck of the bus, smoking and swearing, and me and boy staring out of the window pretending not to notice.. Such is life in England under the yoke of Stale Labour

Ian C

Q. What is England? A. The south coast of Scotland.

dexey

Ian C
April 17th, 2008 3:27pm
Q. What is England? A. The south coast of Scotland.

Yes indeed. The SUNNY South coast of Scotland. A land of people who can laugh at themselves, so long as they are traditional WASP's. the other 'English' hardly know how to laugh.

Antonio Gonzalez

From across the pond I've always seen England as "my England", that supportive grandmother that engendered America. And America,in turn,as the adoptive land which has given me sustenance and succor.

England has always seemed an unquenchable source of freedom and a bastion of reason which no one can assail. But more recently, I've seen that stronghold of free thought shaken to its' very foundation by an increasing cadre of apologists, all quite willing to ignore and even coddle imported intolerance on the most ironic of grounds: tolerance herself.

We (Western democracies) are allowing enclaves to pop up and entrench themselves in our midst. Warps in geographic space that seem to grow overnight and where neither the light of reason, nor our democratic laws are allowed to exist or to apply. Most troubling of all, we're permitting this phenomena to spread in deference to a perverse cultural relativism that will eventually allow those who wish to smother our freedoms to impose their will. I've seen a "low calorie" version of this phenomenon in America, specifically in South Florida. That intolerant enclave is described in a novel titled "Up Dog Street" and ironically, its' protagonist is a man from Sussex, who refuses to consider himself English.
www.updogstreet.com

THX1138

I bloody love this country.

All you Speccie whingers can sling your hook.

Leave you won't be missed.

Max Kaye

Consensus seems to be that England ain't what she should be.

Luckily, a short walk down my local country lanes abounding with budding hedgerows, nesting birds and spring flowers calms my grumpiness about the current dismal state of this sceptred isle, and reassures me that this too shall pass.

Ian C

Yes Dexey and that's where I reside - in the sunnier warmer climes of the very south coast! I hoped I'd get someone going with that one!!

Perry

Thank you Peter for starting this timely thread.

A beautiful sunset this evening over part of unwrecked England reminds again what a lovely green and pleasant land this is. Reading these positive responses is heartening.

[Just some of the reasons I detest the default arid rocky landscape portrayed on the BBC TV weather map by the apparatchiks of NooSpeak.]

Charlie T

George Lucas`s numberplate has confused nation and state.
The odious centralised police state dystopia that nulab has created is what he/she bloody loves.The gutter society in the hollowed out shell that used to be England.

Austin Barry

Well, yes, I suppose England is a primrose-laden hedgerow in a deep insect-buzzing Devon sunken lane, but it is also a grey graffiti-scarred sink estate in some "diverse" community with feral youngsters wreaking havoc. Thank you, Nu-Labour for the Dystopian world you have provided.

Isles a believer

To me, England represents Shakespeare and Chaucer, village cricket on a sunny Summer afternoon, Tea and scones, the Queen, Windsor Castle, but not the House of Windsor (like Mountbatten, a creation born out of war), fair play, a sense of humour, fox hunting, the mother of all parliaments, parish churches, and a place where a strong Christian heritage in ages past spurred her men and womenfolk on to greatness.

If you don't agree with me I'm a Dutchman - which I am!

Fergus Pickering

Yes, Austin Barry, but yu can get the sink estates and feral youth anywhere, the Devon lanes you can get only in England. And a Tory government can dismantle the estates and educate the youth surely. Maggie could have done it if other things hadn't (rightly) come first.Oh, and wasn't she right about the Poll Tax, somthing EVERYBODY PAID?