i don't know how the demographics break down now but i wd say that a significant majority at least want to live in quite small towns. also i suspect quite small towns are increasingly really dissipated cities.
― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:19 (twelve years ago) link
Anyone bothered with Paul Kingsnorth's book on this very subject?
― Lars and the Lulu Girl (NickB), Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:21 (twelve years ago) link
but y'knaa this whole problematic word "Real" - is this intended sarcastically, like is this thread about "what are the sort of people who use the phrase 'Real England' talking about?" or are we positing a defining core of Englishness that has history and still survives however tenuous?
― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:21 (twelve years ago) link
i think it would be facetious to pretend the issue can be approached entirely unfacetiously
― Nigel Farage is a fucking hero (nakhchivan), Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:22 (twelve years ago) link
i was not aware of paul kingsnorth but now i see he has written a book called real england colon something else, i would guess it isn't the only book/treatise/pamphlet with similar title
― Nigel Farage is a fucking hero (nakhchivan), Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:23 (twelve years ago) link
work filter has thoughtfully blocked access to my first google search result, some blog with the delightfully making-me-want-to-stab-the-author subtitle "The Battle Against the Bland". i assure you guys if there is a Real England it is not battling against The Bland and that is an excellent virtue in itself.
― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:24 (twelve years ago) link
oh right, that is the subtitle of Kingsnorth's book. okay then i will probably never read it since i infer from the book's post-colonage that the guy is a big douche.
the usual English attention to the wrong details
― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:25 (twelve years ago) link
and some sadness for stuff passing that has not passed or was not what he claims it was before it passed
― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:26 (twelve years ago) link
is john terry 'real england' dyou suppose
― blind pele (darraghmac), Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:27 (twelve years ago) link
i infer from the book's post-colonage that the guy is a big douche.
― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:24 (1 minute ago)
h but f, nv, h but f
basically i was looking at the squad list for peterbrough town and noticed ryan tunnicliffe and lee frecklington and thought maybe those names were shibboleths that uttered in a certain way might usher you into the innermost real england
― Nigel Farage is a fucking hero (nakhchivan), Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:27 (twelve years ago) link
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01185/arts-graphics-2008_1185572a.jpg
the city hobgoblin as a good place to start! (of course he said british not english, right, re the wrong detail)
― mark s, Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:35 (twelve years ago) link
"... heir to an immense fortune, gifted by nature with a mind susceptible of noble cultivation, and a body endowed with admirable physical powers with the wretched drunkard who died in a gaol at the age of thirty-eight, a worn-out debauchee and drivelling sot... " <-- i am this very second ensconced in the village that surnamed this regency rake, tho he mainly lived on the other side of shrewsbury
― mark s, Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:41 (twelve years ago) link
nigel farage isn't real btw, he speaks for only his own constituency, which is seldom more than symbolic
is there a real england that is incapable of any sort of assimilation into colonned literature? a planar england that resists signification or commodification by interlopers from other englands
― Nigel Farage is a fucking hero (nakhchivan), Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:43 (twelve years ago) link
south dublin iirc
― blind pele (darraghmac), Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:44 (twelve years ago) link
leatherhead is a promotory over a large and brackish inland sea that is never spoken of
― mark s, Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:45 (twelve years ago) link
beneath the leylines, the true underground
― mark s, Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:46 (twelve years ago) link
"Winter, 1981: the headless, skinned bodies of two bears are found by the River Lea."
― mark s, Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:51 (twelve years ago) link
real england is all mates and and blood sausage and big bottomed birds reading thew newsie-wewsies
― max, Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:57 (twelve years ago) link
nah it's hedgerows and birds and complete lack of public services
― blind pele (darraghmac), Thursday, 3 November 2011 14:08 (twelve years ago) link
Oh it's all about the public services nowadays; a bus to take you into town so you can spend all night trawling the happy hour bars, a streetcleaner to mop up your vomit from the pavement, a policeman to give you a place to spend the night. No-one needed public services when an evening's entertainment consisted of watching the sun set over a russet autumnal hedgerow, lulled into a reverie by the carefree birdsong.
― ceci n'est pas un nom d'affichage (ledge), Thursday, 3 November 2011 14:17 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.photohistory-sussex.co.uk/UckFrisbyPiltdown03.jpg
― mark s, Thursday, 3 November 2011 14:19 (twelve years ago) link
"Searching for the Putdown Man"
― ceci n'est pas un nom d'affichage (ledge), Thursday, 3 November 2011 14:21 (twelve years ago) link
Interesting question which I wish I could answer.
― Ned Trifle X, Thursday, 3 November 2011 14:29 (twelve years ago) link
I don't know if I would like that England even.
is there a culture that can't be commodified? and i have to be v. v. careful not to paint my cultures, or the cultures i've drifted along the fringes of, as the only real England. the problem is that the word is usually only spoken out loud by a certain kind of cultural capitalist, whose vision of it is just as tangential as mine. bullshit about fair play and honest toil and love of the land that i'd counter with a nation of sneak thiefs, factionalists and urban wastrels. the contestedness is always part of the Reality of the nation, any nation really.
― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 15:39 (twelve years ago) link
for every sleepy Sunday C of E-attending agnostic Tory there's an apocalypse-welcoming hair-splitting anabaptist
― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 15:41 (twelve years ago) link
Everywhere north of Enfield is basically a wasteland isn't it? Brrrr... Nothing there. Just a man collecting lumps of mud and putting them into a cloth bag.
― Glo-Vember (dog latin), Thursday, 3 November 2011 15:42 (twelve years ago) link
yeah but the determination of that which is essential need not be a question of mere majorities
― blind pele (darraghmac), Thursday, 3 November 2011 15:43 (twelve years ago) link
everybody shd read The Uses of Literacy to see how you can constructively get this wrong in a way that doesn't just mourn real heritage centres. obv Williams and E.P. Thompson and Stuart Hall too
― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 15:43 (twelve years ago) link
the determination of that which is essential need not be a question of mere majorities
quite so, how about the British Isles then as a dumping ground/refugee camp/Wild West for Europe and parts south-east, over millenia, fuelling endless negotiation and conflict over territory, and that is the quicksand underneath Real England that we think of as bedrock?
― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 15:46 (twelve years ago) link
look mate there's no need to get fucking personal, alright
― blind pele (darraghmac), Thursday, 3 November 2011 15:49 (twelve years ago) link
btw if i was gonna put forward one Real England it wd be old photographs of works sports teams or outings or other ceremonial jollies
― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 15:49 (twelve years ago) link
it would be the commie permawheezing mustachioed drunk one in tinker tailor, tho no doubt they'd have you b'leev it's smiley or haydon
― blind pele (darraghmac), Thursday, 3 November 2011 15:52 (twelve years ago) link
wait haydon was the commie?
― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 15:54 (twelve years ago) link
SPOILERS
nah think he was the aesthete on a protest against the yanks more than anything else, wasn't the dude ciaran hinds played proper lefty in stated methods tho
― blind pele (darraghmac), Thursday, 3 November 2011 15:56 (twelve years ago) link
the sparking point of Real England is where the plummy port-swilling foxhunter runs up against the chippy millenarian work-dodger and we drink each others' health and promise ourselves deep down that one day our kind will crush theirs
― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 15:57 (twelve years ago) link
the phoenicians sailed up round to albion to trade tin for spice before the romans had even got out of bed, and if they weren't trading with aboriginal pre-celt and pre-pict inhabitants, then it was certainly aboriginal+1: an island of proto-druid shopkeepers since time immaterial
stonehenge is actually a kind of cashpoint machine
― mark s, Thursday, 3 November 2011 15:58 (twelve years ago) link
xp
oh, Roy Bland. yeah Bland is the angry Puritan I've been talking about, defending his country so's his people can crush the effete Squire class one day
― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 15:59 (twelve years ago) link
but mark, who's to say the aborigines hadn't hopped off the boat from Boulogne just ahead of the celts themselves and so on and so forth??
― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 16:00 (twelve years ago) link
irish close to turks dna-wise iirc
― blind pele (darraghmac), Thursday, 3 November 2011 16:03 (twelve years ago) link
i think that's exactly what mark is saying, tbf
― blind pele (darraghmac), Thursday, 3 November 2011 16:04 (twelve years ago) link
Of all the Tribe of Tegumai Who cut that figure, none remain On Merrow Down the cuckoos cry The silence and the sun remain
xp he's called smiley, he has to be of outlander extraction
― mark s, Thursday, 3 November 2011 16:13 (twelve years ago) link
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2007/07/17/chalkhomer460.jpg
― mark s, Thursday, 3 November 2011 16:17 (twelve years ago) link
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8Xw7LplzFws/TpDJGHBmFGI/AAAAAAAAArE/CCJlpL9TMeU/s1600/yeo+valley.jpg
― you don't exist in the database (woof), Thursday, 3 November 2011 16:31 (twelve years ago) link
^ I wasn't at that FAP
― R. Stornoway (Tom D.), Thursday, 3 November 2011 16:34 (twelve years ago) link
clun forest all-mercian jug band champions, tractor runs on wattle and daub
― mark s, Thursday, 3 November 2011 16:34 (twelve years ago) link
never get away with haircuts like that up in the Danelaw
― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 16:36 (twelve years ago) link
post pictures of men who look like offa's dyke
― mark s, Thursday, 3 November 2011 16:37 (twelve years ago) link
― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 15:41 (58 minutes ago)
there is definitely a book to be written about those south-midlands dissenter sects, maybe in a sort of gently sardonic louis theroux tone, 'britain's very own wild east and its fire and brimstone pastors '
so a good effort, but not really real
― Nigel Farage is a fucking hero (nakhchivan), Thursday, 3 November 2011 16:45 (twelve years ago) link
My uncle had a rottweiler called Bear when I was a kid. He was a bit of a nutter. The uncle I mean. The dog did jump at me once which was pretty scary given it was probably bigger than I was but somehow I avoided getting a dog phobia
― Colonel Poo, Tuesday, 6 February 2024 11:03 (two months ago) link
I got attacked by a huge German Shepherd at a farm in Kerry when I was a kid and despite it being a short one-two snaps attack I was bleeding a lot and had bite scars on my belly and hand for years afterwards, but I've never had a dog phobia over it, but you do need to exercise legitimate caution with some dogs. With this being the 70's nobody suggested I should have a tetnus booster - ah.. it'll be reet with a bit of germolene.
― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Tuesday, 6 February 2024 11:14 (two months ago) link
Is Jaywick still the most deprived town in England? It's a weird place anyway.
Its usually in the mix but I think Blackpool's the one
― anvil, Tuesday, 6 February 2024 11:23 (two months ago) link
bloody coastal elites getting all the bragging rights!
― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Tuesday, 6 February 2024 11:27 (two months ago) link
I too got a German shepherd bite as a small child, but when I was taken to Emergency to get stitches, the doctors found weird swelling near my spleen while looking for possible inflammation and it turned out to be kidney cancer. The dog belonged to our neighbour and was not put down.
― steely flan (suzy), Tuesday, 6 February 2024 11:39 (two months ago) link
I wonder if the King has a weird swelling anywhere...
― The British Boy of Film Classification (Tom D.), Tuesday, 6 February 2024 11:40 (two months ago) link
I love German Shepherds and I think in a way that story enhances their rep as innately good creatures. Some dogs just don't like kids or get nervous around them - which is understandable tbf
― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Tuesday, 6 February 2024 11:48 (two months ago) link
Not just dogs tbf.
― The British Boy of Film Classification (Tom D.), Tuesday, 6 February 2024 11:51 (two months ago) link
Hans was a good boy, plus I was definitely a kid that pestered dogs and had been bitten before. He did not have to go live on a farm for my sake.
― steely flan (suzy), Tuesday, 6 February 2024 12:38 (two months ago) link
This morning I was waiting for a connecting bus in the centre of Cambridge, it was about 10 minutes late, and the queue was now snaking past the other bus stops. A group of five men started a new queue next to ours, so I was stressing a bit about that when the bus finally arrived. Somewhere behind me I heard a Spanish woman telling off two teenage boys for dropping litter, their response was "It's too early for this shit" then "why don't you go back where you come from?" - wish I had intervened but was distracted by the fact that the woman in front of me had just let the five men go in front of her without a word. As I got on the bus the teenagers were discussing whether "Why don't you go back where you come from?" was racist (their conclusion was "no" and "it's too early for this shit") then the packed bus was held up for a further five minutes behind a bin lorry, and as I stood there stressing about missing my train I thought "yes, this is the real England experience, just need some miserable pissy rain to seal the deal" so thanks ILX.
― This is Dance Anthems, have some respect (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, 7 February 2024 09:24 (two months ago) link
It's been a landmark in Weston-super-Mare since 1935 🌸But the group looking after the floral clock say they needed to make it easier to look after.This is their plan ➡️ https://t.co/2OQO2AA8wb pic.twitter.com/5JmD5333g5— BBC West (@BBCBristol) February 8, 2024
― koogs, Friday, 9 February 2024 12:39 (two months ago) link
hahaha oh my godalso just reading your post now CaAL :( ❤️
― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Friday, 9 February 2024 12:43 (two months ago) link
actually, i'm not sure how true that is. acticle says 'plan' but the picture is in past tense and then you look and the clock is different. and then you look harder and the *houses* are different. so it's obv not the same place.
― koogs, Friday, 9 February 2024 13:25 (two months ago) link
oh, the old pic is 1935 and it IS the same place
― koogs, Friday, 9 February 2024 13:27 (two months ago) link
KEN likes it anyway
there are few bus stops that really sum up that feeling of faded dystopic england than north greenwich’s “Millennium Leisure Park East” unless you’re talking about the next stop along, “Millennium Leisure Park West”
― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Monday, 12 February 2024 10:33 (two months ago) link
followed two stops later by excellent pomo contradiction Millennium Village Oval Square. no I didn't need to look that up
― imago, Monday, 12 February 2024 10:44 (two months ago) link
Real England thread: xl bullies are child eating monstersDogs thread: xl bullies wouldn’t hurt a fly!
― Roman Anthony gets on his horse (gyac), Tuesday, 13 February 2024 18:45 (two months ago) link
They are also smaller dog-eating monsters.
― steely flan (suzy), Tuesday, 13 February 2024 22:04 (two months ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgQTymQSYQY
Interview with Mark Molesley of Gosport Borough
― Tow Law City (cherry blossom), Wednesday, 21 February 2024 17:57 (two months ago) link
https://i.ibb.co/MGHNc6T/Screenshot-2024-02-28-at-12-45-51.png
― Tow Law City (cherry blossom), Wednesday, 28 February 2024 11:47 (one month ago) link
This happened in Glasgow but still: 'Angry families turned up to find me dressed as Willy Wonka'
The only thing that's not Real England about this is that the organisers of the event apologised and refunded everyone's money.
― you gotta roll with the pączki to get to what's real (snoball), Wednesday, 28 February 2024 18:50 (one month ago) link
more here: fyre festival is going well
― mark s, Wednesday, 28 February 2024 18:52 (one month ago) link
Also, Glasgow's not in England
― Andy the Grasshopper, Wednesday, 28 February 2024 18:52 (one month ago) link
More and more are saying this
― Ethinically Ambigaus (Bananaman Begins), Wednesday, 28 February 2024 20:48 (one month ago) link
'cyberflashing' lol.. dude totally looks like a cyberflasher
Court jails first person convicted of cyberflashing in England
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/19/court-jails-first-person-convicted-of-cyber-flashing-in-england
― Andy the Grasshopper, Tuesday, 19 March 2024 17:30 (one month ago) link
Ian Beale – 2024 Wall Calendar
― you gotta roll with the pączki to get to what's real (snoball), Tuesday, 26 March 2024 20:51 (four weeks ago) link
Becky for PM.
Hi Backy. Thanks for highlighting this, we will find the officer responsible and make sure that they are disciplined— Sandford Police (@Sandford_Police) April 1, 2024
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 1 April 2024 20:11 (three weeks ago) link
April Fool, and highly English
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 1 April 2024 20:13 (three weeks ago) link
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GKpEc7YWAAAcREG?format=jpg&name=small
can always count on the local community centre for some top class signcraft
― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Monday, 8 April 2024 12:18 (two weeks ago) link
HOtfOOD
graphic design is my passion
― mark s, Monday, 8 April 2024 12:26 (two weeks ago) link
It's like having an eye test
― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Monday, 8 April 2024 12:30 (two weeks ago) link
Those flags look like teeth
― if i just keep writing a plot will emerge by itself (Matt #2), Monday, 8 April 2024 12:37 (two weeks ago) link
one thing I've learned is that the ppl that put posters up for the line-dancing and martial arts have much better grammar and visual flair!
― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Monday, 8 April 2024 12:42 (two weeks ago) link
is tombola (a) a mobile phone service for the deceased, (b) bribery of the clergy to secure a more desirable plot, or (c) a product for removing those stubborn coffin juice stains?
― Bernard Quidbins (NickB), Monday, 8 April 2024 12:52 (two weeks ago) link
I can't remember if this thread covered the Woolaston Mystery Mime Man back in 2019
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/25/mystery-mime-artist-vanishes-fete-goers-cash-asking-pay-guess/
https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/0*tsHeNEee-T-AjT8e
A self-styled "Mystery Man" who asked village fete-goers to donate money to guess his identity literally turned out to be a mystery when he vanished after pocketing their cash.Revellers at Woolaston Carnival in the Forest of Dean assumed the individual was a local resident when he wandered around the fete dressed in a full body morph suit communicating only in mime.
Revellers at Woolaston Carnival in the Forest of Dean assumed the individual was a local resident when he wandered around the fete dressed in a full body morph suit communicating only in mime.
Carnival co-ordinator Andy Morgan Watts who led the parade in his vintage car dressed as a ringmaster, said: "He just appeared."Everybody was applauding him because it seemed such a clever way of raising money,"But when he disappeared it left a bad taste because people thought they had been giving money to charity.
"Everybody was applauding him because it seemed such a clever way of raising money,"But when he disappeared it left a bad taste because people thought they had been giving money to charity.
― soref, Monday, 8 April 2024 13:03 (two weeks ago) link
Does anyone know about this 'Auditing' thing on YouTube (and probably elsewhere, no doubt) YT has been presenting these clips and I watched a couple but the general conceit is baffling to me.
Blokes wandering around dreary industrial estates, filming and with the seemingly sole intention of winding up the security firms, who they condescend to and occasionally have silly shoving matches, just so they can pointlessly film or fly a drone over, a completely nondescript factory or warehouse building, am I missing something?
― Maresn3st, Monday, 8 April 2024 13:04 (two weeks ago) link
I don't mean to use ILX as Google, but I bravely clicked on a Daily Mail article and found that it's an American trend that has found its way over here and while under the banner of 'protecting public photography and drone filming rights' it's just some excuse to boringly needle security firms and the police for YT revenue by dull pricks.
― Maresn3st, Monday, 8 April 2024 13:18 (two weeks ago) link
seems like just another flavour of the attention economy, couple of degrees from freemen, couple of degrees from paedo hunters
― Bitchin Doutai (Noodle Vague), Monday, 8 April 2024 13:31 (two weeks ago) link
One of these auditors recently came to one of our offices (not mine thankfully) to start a fight and the video i saw on Tiktok of them trying to batter a security guard is the most embarassing thing I've ever seen
― boxedjoy, Monday, 8 April 2024 17:22 (two weeks ago) link
They need to try it at a military base or airport, might even be tempted to watch the resulting video.
― Dan Worsley, Monday, 8 April 2024 18:19 (two weeks ago) link
the US version of this seems to be about 1st + 2nd amendment rights knuckleheads pushing white privilege to the limits by wandering about with guns in public + trying their best to provoke police interventions so they can loudly challenge them on their knowledge of constitutional rights while filming it. I don't what the hell it is doing over here!
― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Monday, 8 April 2024 19:00 (two weeks ago) link
US law applies everywhere don’t ya know. During the Ottawa truckers thing there were some people asserting their “1st Amendment Rights”.
― Slorg is not on the Slerf Team, you idiot, you moron (Boring, Maryland), Monday, 8 April 2024 19:50 (two weeks ago) link
I'd guess the UK version is anti-vaxx types from Hove who got radicalised during lockdown and are now looking for that buzz again
― if i just keep writing a plot will emerge by itself (Matt #2), Monday, 8 April 2024 20:32 (two weeks ago) link
Racegoers fight each other as they scuffle on the second day of the Grand National Festival horse race meeting at Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool, north-west England (2024)#GrandNational pic.twitter.com/5F5wfCFexJ— Great British Getty Images (@shitbritishpics) April 13, 2024
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 13 April 2024 18:37 (one week ago) link
the video reveals it to be just a bit of playground shoving and a few soft taps exchanged and is over in seconds, the stills make it look more dramatic. I've harder hits from my son when he was 8 years old!
― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Saturday, 13 April 2024 18:47 (one week ago) link
*had*
real scotland
This city ain’t appreciated enough pic.twitter.com/lzQOmQZOSI— J67 (@Joyce6788_) April 12, 2024
― LaMDA barry-stanners (||||||||), Saturday, 13 April 2024 19:10 (one week ago) link