How Patriotic? - Page 3

Tealeaf · 07-06-2004, 16:22

Well there's nowt worth getting excited about the footy team. It's just interesting comparing this hype to the Rugby team last year...similar in many ways, with the exception of course that England were then favourites. Do you remember the piccys of Beckham & Wilkinson booting the ball about...an interesting comparison....but look at the contrast,,Wilko spent every day, 7 days a week, several hours a day, just practising his kicking, right up to the tournament itself. What does Beckham do?

He goes and gets a tattoo on his neck, thats what. Do you think if I was a Frog or a Croat that would scare me? Do you think that would make Beckham more of a marked man? The frogs and the croats are pi**ing their pants at Beckhams performance so far. Well, He's been a joke in Spain and he's going to be a joke in Portugal.

Will I be taking part in this Charade by smacking back my lager in the pub with the rest of 'em when it's an England Game? You must be joking.

Ceejache · 07-06-2004, 16:46

What has Icelands population got to do with anything? The old Soviet Union was hardly a footballing powerhouse was it? Besides - there is no such thing as an easy International game anymore.

Shall we all only sing when we are winning? What kind of people would we be then.....? Wheres your fighting spirit 'leaf?

Up the Oranje....lol

Neal · 07-06-2004, 16:52

It could be, most do like us Brits anyhow so wait until it all dies down, about 70 years or so! lol!

Get one on your car!

Tealeaf · 07-06-2004, 16:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ceejache

Besides - there is no such thing as an easy International game anymore.

lol

In Englands case, there's definatly no easy game any more......

Acrylic-bob · 07-06-2004, 17:04

The national flag represents us as a nation. In the past it represented the brave lads who fought under it on the Somme and also on the beaches in Normandy. It represented an idea of a country where fair play and civility were ideals to be aspired to. It represented a love of culture for it's own sake. It appalls me now to see that it represents a nation in whom the love of culture is limited to some overwieght Italian Tenor screeching that 'none shall sleep' as though this summed up all that it meant to be English. It appalls me that it represents a nation where the ideal of fair play is subsumed to the desire to win at all costs, or we will riot, and where civility is limited to those employed in the service industries.

This urge to display the national flag will disappear shortly, until the next tournament revives the urge, proving that it comes not from love of country, but from fashionable partisanship, which is an entirely different thing.

WINGY · 07-06-2004, 18:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roy

Well my company fly the union jack every day, and they recieve no public funding. They always have flown the flag as far as I know, you can't see it as well now since they built the extension but it is still flown.

What is wrong with that tealeaf? In this day and age with the way life is, it is nice to see the country come together, so why not for football?
The way you speak of the UK/government/councils why would you ever want to fly the flag? If people want to do it to support the football team then so be it, I don't see many other reasons these days to get excited about being english.

It sure is still flown, and i must add that if we have any foriegn visitors , there flag is flown at the side of it.
Pretty good me thinks.

Bagpuss · 07-06-2004, 19:49

Ceejache you're wasting your time with Tealeaf on this occasion he follows that silly game of Rugby Union when he should be watching footy or Rugby League.

JohnW · 07-06-2004, 20:03

Ah AcrylicBob,

I have, sadly, to agree with you wholeheartedly. There was a time in the world, when all you had to do to get excellent service and respect abroad was to be British. Not any longer I fear, we are hated throughout Europe and much of the world. There was a time when you could make a telephone call from a public call box at any time of the day or night in complete safety. You are not safe trying to walk to the call box now and if you manage to reach it, all the glass will be smashed and the telephone will not be working because it will have been ripped out by its cord. Once in a while you would see a fight in a pub or nightclub. Now you can hardly find anywhere where there isn't a fight. We have been overtaken by the yob culture and it has ruined the country. America is supposed to be one of the most violent nations in the world with many people carrying guns etc. I work in the largest city (by landmass) in America and do not see hardly any mindless damage to property. I drive a convertible car and I leave it for hours in car parks with the top down and I have never returned to find the car damaged in any way. Can you imagine doing that anywhere in England? I have attended packed out professional sporting events (American Football and Baseball) and have never heard so much as anyone swearing never mind beating the crap out of each other. I don't know what has gone on to bring about this shameful turn of events, but until it is righted, our great old country is going further and further down the pan and is going to end up in the sewer. What a sad, sad end to a country which was, less than 100 years ago, the greatest country the world had ever known. I wonder how the men who died at the Somme and Normandy would feel had they known they had given their lives so that such unworthy decendants could live in comparative peace and wellbeing. It is a tragedy beyond words.

Ceejache · 07-06-2004, 20:18

I totally agree about the decline in our countrys behaviour. However, the rest of us 'decent folk' are just looking forward to a footy tournament and seeing as its England then we just want the right to wave the English flag and be as proud as we can.

Cheers Bagpuss, but I kinda got that feeling somehow....

Mik Dickinson · 07-06-2004, 20:24

Got the Union Jack and the St Georges cross going.Also have a Union Jack, British Bulldog sticker on the car.Now the one i have on the windscreen is an England Player peeing on a German National football shirt with the immortal 5 - 1 underneath it.

yerself · 07-06-2004, 21:40

There's a website www.politicalcompass.org that may interest one or two of you, why don't you take the survey? You could well be surprised. One of the statements you are asked to either agree or disagree with is: "No-one chooses their country of birth, so it's foolish to be proud of it." Bearing in mind that a vast proportion of the so-called patriots who fly the Union Flag do so upside down do you agree with the statement?

Acrylic-bob · 07-06-2004, 21:45

I thought that since we are now all Europeans we were supposed to regard each other with respect. Do you not think that your windowscreen sticker fosters a sense of distrust, disrespect and animosity? All right England beat West Germany at football nearly forty years ago. Are we so insecure that we still need to crow about it? What happened to magnanimity in victory? What happened to humility? I ask because I really do not understand.

Bagpuss · 07-06-2004, 22:27

We might be Europeans but some of us are English first and a bit of humour towards the germans for a game which was not 40 years ago but Sept 1st 2001, I personally don't have a problem with, if the score had been the other way around I'm sure it would be us who where the butt of some jokes.

Bazf · 08-06-2004, 02:12

"No-one chooses their country of birth, so it's foolish to be proud of it."

We dont chose our parents or siblings either are we then foolish if we are proud of what they achive?

Are we so insecure that we still need to crow about it? What happened to magnanimity in victory? What happened to humility?
Lets stop all the parades when we win...........
Age cannot wither these legendary veterans of Operation Overlord.

And as the survivors, now in their 80s and 90s, defied the heat of the French sun to officially walk together for the last time in front of the sands of Arromanches, they still looked like the callow young men who landed here to free the world from an awful tyranny.

A look that can only be described as throat-tighteningly, heart-thumpingly magnificent.

To be in the small Normandy town of Arromanches yesterday was to witness a haunting communion of the living and the dead honouring the finest generation of men any of us will ever know.

Up on the cliffs where, on June 6th 1944, German troops watched helplessly as the greatest-ever seaborne invasion unfolded

Acrylic-bob · 08-06-2004, 06:02

You appear to be supporting the idea that football is a sublimated form of warfare. Tealeaf is right in his suggestion that history has taught us nowt. I'm sorry but a bunch of overpaid, pampered, arrogant and egotistical, halfwitted fashion victims, prancing around with a ball while thousands of drunken louts scream xenophobic encouragement under the mistaken belief that they are being somehow patriotic, leaves me cold.