Hello! I'm Boris (we'll I'm not, obviously, one of my cats is, but for the purposes of this Blog I am) and this is my first blog entry of any sort ever and you'll see why soon enough I suspect.

So a bit about me: I'm in my late 20s, live in the cosmopolitan cultural hub that is Oldham and work and spend most of my time out in Manchester. I'm married with two cats, an almost embarassingly small mortgage (I bought 5 years ago when I started my first real graduate job and it's in Oldham so it was cheap to start with because no-one wants to live there) and a burning hated of the Great British Public. I also use too many brackets and asides whenever I post but that's to do with my attention deficit problems so please bear with me- since this is written down I'll get back to the point eventually, or just post a list of thoughts about the topic because I can't concentrate well enough to put a cohesive entry together.

Don't get me wrong: I love this country and I love the people of this country. There are however some pretty big caveats on these statements, and I suspect it's true for all of us on this Megablog of Doom.

I'm probably the resident Grammar Nazi and will tell everyone off for putting apostrophes in the wrong place (or maybe just fix their posts), and if I use big or fancy words when I could say something far simpler it's not because I'm some snooty, pretentious git, but that I love the variety of the English language (Which Witch is which and they're, there and their being particular bugbears). I think I'm a little bit older (still under 30 though- I'm not a real grown up yet) and a little less angry that the others, but we'll see if I can contribute anything useful.

So before this turns into a LiveJournal post let's get on with it:

We don't wanna be,
Your enemy,
But when we're on the field,
It's red, white and green,

Got beat by the Irish,
Got beat by the Scots,
The French had a struggle,
But you're the one we want,
We want...

As long as we beat the English,
As long as we beat the English,
As long as we beat the English, we don't care

As long as we beat the English,
As long as we beat the English,
As long as we beat the English, we don't care
We don't care

A song by The Stereophinics who, correct me if I'm wrong made a lot of their money in England, some of it deserved even (first album and a half). This was apparently made for BBC Wales for their 6 nations coverage a couple of years ago (and no doubt subsidised by my English license fee), I wouldn't be surprised if BBC Scotland has something similar by The Proclaimers (how did they decide which one got the guitar and which one had to just shout and stamp?), also subsidised by the English license fee.

Now I'd consider myself British first, then English and I'd support any of the home nations (Ireland too) over their opposition, but apparently my Welsh cousins wouldn't- they love it when England lose, and can't stand it when we win. An almost first hand example of this comes from my Nana-in-law (my Mrs.' mum's Welsh) who, after watching the England versus Wallabies match last weekend declared that England played a dirty game and that the forwards "Did nothing all game,".

You see, in the game I watched, the Aussies were dirty- hitting late or off the ball, taking down men in the air, all sorts of naughty things and our pack was absolutely monstrous, almost turning the Aussies over at will. Now the backs were only ok, but and we didn't have any finishing power, but in the end we ground out a well deserved victory, but not in the eyes of the Welsh apparently. Perhaps ITV Wales has a special filter that's applied to all programmes to make them suitable for the Welsh palate (like overcooked meat and boiled to death vegetables).

Welsh and Scottish supermarkets have seperately labelled Welsh and Scots milk, BBC 1&2 have their own continuity announcements, but does England? Does it heck, probably because it'd be racist or something.

So I say cut the buggers loose- independance for Wales and Scotland and an end to the Union. They'll be back before you can say "Land of Our Fathers".

Sorry if this isn't angry enough, but like I said this is my first time and it's just one of my pet peeves which annoys me. To make it up to you I'll compile some of my "favourite" incidents from the bus to and from work for next time, there's some good material there I tells ya!

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