Coming home to hear people whining about TV and radio and how it’s all bollocks and why do we pay the license fee etc.? Well… go spend an evening in the outer reaches of Burma and see hundreds of people gather around to listen to the World Service in Burmese reports - although the World Service is not supported by the license fee… Watch Vietnamese state run TV for more than a day and you’ll pay your British license fee just to turn it off. I find it very sad that it looks as if the license fee and all that it funds is going down the pan - you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone etc.

Secondly, voting in elections. I went with my wife to vote in the second round of the French local elections today. The toad and me played football in the school playground outside the polling station while smartly dressed folk poured in and tramps with dogs and bottles of spirits along with students, the place was busy and got me thinking of a report on BBC podcast last week when Hugh Sykes reported from inside a polling station in Iraq when a suicide bomber blew him or herself up outside. How many of these folk I saw in France this AM, and more importantly how many of those who stayed at home and could not be arsed to vote, would turn out if getting blown up was a real possibility?

Humbug, mumble, mumble…

it should read ‘ an Englishman/woman aroused it not a nice person’.

I did like being British, but as the Scots, North Ireland and Wales now want to be Scot, Irish and Welsh, guess British no longer fits. Their loss - not mine.

I don’t want to flag wave, grovel or shove it down anybodies throat. If it comes to the bottom line - I am a human warts and all.

I like the King/Queen as Head of State - would have done my nut if any of our past prime ministers had been like a President. So I guess I am not a republican. But maybe we could say King + Partner and Heir and spare the rest become commoners.

I always thought that - ‘oh let them all get on with it - just do not push your luck too far - a Brit aroused is not a nice person’.

Trouble is ‘they’ are beginning to shove a bit - and that spells trouble.

Not a nice combination :(

It’s shameful that people can’t fly the Union Jack in fear of being labeled racist. We’re a great nation; admittedly with faults like our track record in history and the tossers we have in power better known as politicians, but a great nation nonetheless.

You’re right though. Brits would ever have an equivalent to the American Spouses Club. We’re just not that anal. Still proud though.