WHY I HATE ENGLAND

And Africa.

Yeah, but I bet they don't get daylight savings time.

We call it British Summer Time.

You've got a special way of saying everything, huh?

I still don't understand what half of them say. Fortunate for me I have a neighbor who finally learned English after being here in the U.S. for a few years.

If you want socialized medicine, that's fine with me.

It's not that you think the Tea Party is a joke or that Obama is wonderful that pisses me off, it's that you think you know enough about America to draw a conclusion while insisting Americans don't know anything about your country and Europe.

Pomposity pisses me off, and you izzy have it in spades.

you got a lotta balls, to call someone else pompous...

And you have no balls what with your constant snipe and run practice.

Based on past experience with you, and keeping in mind that you always sling the first stone, let me predict how this exchange will go:

Rockhead: More nasty **** about Finn

Finn: Responding in kind

Rockhead: Yet more nasty ****.

Finn: Responding in kind

Rockhead: "I'm going to retire from this thread because you Finn are so nasty and that's not what I'm about."

So have it wimp.

see.

pompous...

hypocrisy at its best.

I wouldn't let it bother me so much if I were you, finny.

they say that the things that bother us most about other people are the same spots we come up short ourselves...

give us a little kiss, eh?

God you are predictable.

Yeah pompous and very anal and superior acting sort of nails the overriding vibe you get from SOME English toward Americans and our culture.
The other day I was talking about driving in Italy and said that I was very surprised to see that they used the same stop signs as are used in America and then when someone asked me how I found driving in Italy, I said that it was fine but a little difficult because none of the road signs were in English and then one of the guys made his snobby and predictable and tiresome joke that I've heard 3,000,000 variations of in the last 8 years, 'Where's that then where they don't speak English or use English on the signs - America?!'

'Ha, ha, ha, I said- how very, very funny and original!'

I'm so happy I live here, I love it - but I'm even happier that I grew up in America first because obviously that's where I had it instilled in me that there is almost always more than one way to do something and that's OKAY! The world won't fall apart and go to hell in a handbasket if people are original, individual, creative and/or different in their approach to life.

(PS - I didn't expect Italy to have English road signs - that'd be like expecting America to have English/Spanish/German/Polish/Italian/Arabic, etc. translations on their road signs- I just answered that question about what made it difficult for ME- because I don't speak Italian. I found the Dutch and German road signs much easier to interpret and follow and in France, I've retained enough of my highschool French to easily understand and translate).

you don't need to call me God, finny. Rock is just fine with me...

You certainly seem to be one of them - though you are perhaps slightly better knowledgeable about some facts.

Take your term "socialized medicine" for instance.
Universal healthcare was developed (sourcing in the Christian idea of "hospitality") from the statutes of guilds (they already had a kind of it for its members in Medieval Ages) to the universal healthcare which was started by Bismarck's government here in Germany in 1883.

It was the same in Sweden.
During the Catholic time the cloisters often took care of old, sick and other needing help.
After the reformation one had to depend on the family.
The families gave the network needed when Sweden was purely a farming land.
With idustralization around 1500 the guilds also started with giving the sick and old the help which earlier the farmer family had done.
Around 1750 the first kind of health insurances started.
Also in Sweden the health insurances - in whatever form - started from the idea of helping the needy as the Bible says.

It's really interesting that the voluntarily donations by the mining workers and craftsmen, which started already in the 14th century, later - about 1500 - became mandatory with the so-called "Büchsenpfennig" ('box pfennigs' = a small amount of money [some pfennigs] was collected for the health supply).

The guilds, however, had a quite good working system - we've still got the "Innungskrankenkassen" (health insurances of guilds).

I want Universal Health Care, I don't believe in perjorative language. I don't call your system let the poor die medicine, because I would never stoop to your level.

Finn has a woinderful ability to feel personally insulted by broad social trends.

I suspect he doesn't really care--he just comes here for a dose of dust-up, and to practice his (rather poor) acting abilities by feigning righteous indignation.

He also is very good at deliberately misinterpreting what you post. Is that what you refer to as a straw man argument?