For those of you unaware that youtube is not all teeny girls sighing over some spotty jackass, you know, like Xanga much of the time, here's a tip:

Enter "documentary bbc". Lots of good stuff broken up into ten minute clips. For instance, I'm watching "A History of Britain - Part xx of 15 - xxxxxxxxxx x/6"

That is, there are 15 parts, each broken up into six clips of about ten minutes each. 15 hourse of British history, from the pre-Celts (Mater's DNA) through the Norsemen shagging all the monks and putting maidens to the sword (that's how Wolfgang the Woofter did it). That's Pater's DNA but the way. I think it goes through the First Empire (America, etc) through the Second Empire (Africa, India, etc) to the failing collection of islands off the coast of Belgium today.

I'm on part nine at the moment, near the end of the 17th century - all puritans and restorations. I'll be interested to see where the puritans all went (next door to you, probably) after Charles II was invited to take back his throne and who then promptly dug up Oliver Cromwell and the other regicides and hung 'em from gibbets.

An interesting point with some relevance to contemporary problems with extremists in America wanting to order people about according to their interpretation of how they outght to behave. Law by scripture.

Cromwell did a coup de grace against the corrupt self-pertpetuating Parliament. He refused the monarchy, all well and good because it saved England slipping into true dictatorship of a modern kind. He ruled by the army and the common people loved him for it. However, Ollie then blew it for the Republic of England and thereby lies the similarity with America today.

He let loose the Major-Generals. These became not only the local legal authorities but the moral police as well. Everything from Maypole dancing to Christmas, from taking Mass to playing cards on a Sunday were banned and strictly policed. The English, being a practical people with little time for the finer points of religious observance, deeply resented this and after a short time, the Major-Generals were recalled. Too late! The average Englishman is far from being a strict ascetic or a gluttenous reprobate, but the latter is by the by.

When Cromwell went to wherever it is that Puritans go, the corrupt Parliament tried to reassert itself. Rather than have such as the Major-Generals back, the people opted for the king and his bishops. The first English republic failed due to the excesses of the righteous. Take heed that the second English republic, The United States, does not suffer a similar fate. Not everyone wants to stop playing cards on a Sunday or indeed, to cease fondling Maiden's wobbly bits as they gyrate to whatever is "la mode" at the mo.

I'll shut up now while I take a crate of beer to do an indepth study of "Maidens and why they get all sweaty and excited when dancing around the Maypole."

What are three reasons why you love the country you live in?

I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!

My comment reply to a comment by a well-meaning American Christian capitalist; on my recent blog on being at war with the (UK) government. I have adapted the text.

The government takes care of everyone and controls society and industry. Isn't that socialism?

Well, it is certainly not American capitalism or indeed, any other kind of capitalism. Although capitalism does attempt to control “everyone, society and industry,” it can hardly be said to take care of anyone at all, now can it?

What we have in the UK is a government supportive of and controlled by the concerns of big business. Words are cheap. One thing this government is not, is socialist. The present crowd of lick-spittle opportunists call themselves the Labour Party but the last thing they concern themselves about, unless it affects their masters’ profits, is the labour force. My taxes are going to profit mongers not to the needs of the people.

I am in rebellion against a puppet regime of corporations. What we have in the UK is benign fascism. In America, you have a more overt version of less benign fascism but that is to some extent an aside. Americans are more in your face about things and so what their government actually is is more overt. The British government is no different in essence. They just don’t shout about it.

There are many version hawked about of what is called socialism, much of expounded falsely by opponents as what I would call “social fascism”. The Nazis called themselves socialist as Pol Pot did and even the religious dictatorship in North Korea. That no more makes them socialist than the Inquisition calling itself a Christian organization made it so.

Socialism is where the people run government and control expenditure and taxation. A truly socialist government is not the ultimate power but the servant of the people. The means of production, distribution and exchange, basically, heavy industries, the infrastructure, essential services and finance are no longer owned privately by corporations and run for their ultimate benefit alone; but is universally of the people, and run by the people and for the people. The government is vigorously controlled as to what it can do without the direct permission of the people.

You merely have the typical American conservative middle-class Christian fear of what you think is socialism. You probably think it godless. Maybe you think they will force your daughters into free love associations with Party members, so to speak; take possession of your house for use an official lackey’s Dacha; and burn down your church None of these is advocated by socialism. Socialism is an alternative system of social organisation and property ownership. It is not the spawn of Satan, although capitalism just may be.

The first organized socialists in near modern Europe were bible believing Christians. For example, see Gerald Winstanley and the Levellers of the Stuart revolutionary period. They got all their views on the dignity and total equality of human worth from the bible. Socialism sprang from Christianity. Christian socialism thrived in the UK during the 20th century and many socialists today are so because their Christian beliefs allow them no option. That Marxist-Leninism went off the rails under Czar Stalin the First and hopefully last, does not mean the principles of socialism are false. That would be like dismissing Christianity because of the lunatic Calvinist fringe today or the Inquisition and the Witch Finder Generals.

I'm tired of exchanging views on socialism with American Christians. On a whole, they equate capitalism with their religion; and socialism with Stalinism. One hardly ever sees that amongst European Christians any more, except amongst the verbose but relatively minor literalist lunatic fringes.

My two passions, Christian spirituality and socialism are to such as you, a dichotomy that never the twain can meet. Well, they have met in me. So return to the puppet Obama that Americans are wetting their knickers over at the moment like adolescent girly fans. Let's see in this four years just how much Obama changes. Nothing of note I'll warrant and the corporations will still own you.

Yours is a system of no change except the figurehead party. Tweedle Dum or Tweedle Dee. Well, it seems that Dum had just departed to a corporation directorship for Daddy. Dee has more charisma which means nothing outside the personality obsessed backwoods that America often appears to be.

I no longer hold out any hope for America to take the lead for improving human society. It seems Western Europe must go it alone and probably fail due to numerous factors, primarily that of hostile financial powers who run whole countries. Jack London’s analysis of the intensity and drawn-out struggle ahead for humanity, as shared in The Iron Heel, is spot on.

Nothing personal, I just took the opportunity to spleen my vent.

Why I am at war with the government

Example:

I took my property back into my name in early January. It was rented to the Local Authority for their purposes. A month before I took it back, the Local Authority tenant had moved out and the agency renting on the Authority's behalf applied for an exemption to pay the Council Tax. So far so good.

However, the Council Tax is calculated according to property history, not the responsbil name for the property on a given date.  That is the immorality I am complaining about.

Therefore, when I applied for the maximum six month exemption for the Council Tax, I only got five months exemption rather than the six months I am morally entitled to. That's the law.

I paid what is owed to date as the complications of fighting to get that extra month make the struggle not worth the bother. Better to pay and take the blow. This how I deal with this sort of thing. But I resent it.

This inconsequential example of a personal difficulty is just one of a relatively minor but constant steam of ways in which I am bled of finance by the authorities. I have no doubt this is happening to everybody. This ranges from anything from the way they lurk near difficult spots to fine drivers for pakring for a minute to post a letter, to the way they sold off public utilities to their cronies and now we pay more and more for essentials we cannot do without.

The Counical Tax department and via them the government and consequently the system, is acting in an overt immoral way, which in my palance, is the government are a gang of bandits and the law should be circumvented as often and as far as possible by everyone in the country. If the country thereby collapses due to financial difficulties, then I don't care. A revolution clears the ground to rebuild.

The system is capitalism and from personal experience, the name for that is banditry.

Increasingly, I sympathise with the common American belief that they are being drained of money by the authorites and can't see what they get back from it. They are right but that is their system and iindeed, mine. I am all for tax as a necessity for national operation. Indeed, I am all for a socialist system where the taxes go to provide such necessities as universal health care and education, infrastructure, etc etc etc. However, the example I just gave is of a trick to bled the people and I'm agin it.