THE BRITISH THREAD II

It's jailbirds like you sponging off us Southerners that we could do without.

That's not a subtle thing to notice.

I once heard a man from the Isle of Wight. Not sure if he was "upper class," but he spoke like it. That was an amazing accent.

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People who come down South to work have got a lot more right to live here than criminal scumbags fresh out of Leicester Nick.

I miss Smorgs.

Ditto. Perhaps McTag might know more.

You want me to do subtlety on A2K Tico?

You are kidding I hope.

I had noticed in commentaries on horse races that the upper-class accent was the easiest to follow. Perhaps it is only my conditioning.

I can hardly tell a word that Greta Van Susteren says on Fox News.

Sonny Fabuloso doesn't get that the former empire rode hard and fast over others of many lands. As has my country. As an observer, I've been interested in immigration in the isles; I think, that like with the u.s., that immigration is enriching, for the most part.

Do I get to post? My descent is irish (whatever) and 1/16 welsh, but I am a long time california woman.

I have done a little hard and fast riding in other lands myself osso. Whether it is justifiable I don't know.

It is easiest though to say it wasn't.

Continuing as if I'm ok here, I'll say that I have impediments to understanding the voices of all the isles, being now hard of hearing at best. I think I need subtitles sometimes.

I once had a stupid fling, really stupid, with an idiot with a lovely scots dialect sound to his voice.

Watch out, or they'll take over.

‘London beganas a city of foreigners, and long continued as a government town, whose resident authority overawed native British custom’ (Morris, 1982, 280-281).

Around 1500, London had a population between 50,000 and 100,000 with more than 3,500 foreigners. In the 17th century, about 20,000 European Jews immigrated from continental Europe to England/London, about 20,000 Black inhabitants lived in Georgian London, ... ... ...

London and England have "long experience of playing host to cultural elites (or cultural servants of the elite), to refugees and would be revolutionaries, to upwardly mobile people seeking an introduction to the world of affairs, and to larger numbers looking simply for work".

(All quotes from London School of Economics and Political Sciences/City of London: The Impact of Recent Immigration on the London Economy, London, 2007)

On understanding videos and the lyrics or speeches from a2k links as from Izzy, or from the Guardian, I'm down something like 10:2. But I'm working it.

I'm always quick to point out that I was born and bred in the english midlands city of Leicester because I want people to know I'm not from the soft south coast where half the men are gay along the line Southampton to Brighton..

How'd you fare with Tom Brokaw?

Is that why you moved south? Not just to avoid being recognised back home?

Don't recall seeing him I'm afraid. Is he another who talks fast in order to avoid anybody understanding him and to be just over-awed at him being famous?

National TV network news anchor for many years. Here's one comedian's impression of him:

In northern England the men are named George, Bert, Jack, Bill and so on, but the further south you go you find the 'men' are called poofy names like Adrian, Justin, Francis, Simon etc..

Indeed, all those antique Celtic and Latin names spoil the real Englishness.

Just wondering: why does Gerard (sic!) Batten, MEP (Ukip), employ the Polish (sic!) citizen Kamila Zarychta as his accredited assistant? And why does he have a Russian (sic!) assistant (Pavel Stroilov) in London?

Ukip's east Midlands MEP Roger (!) Helmer employs at least an Italian accredited assistant, and William Dartmouth, Ukip MEP for the south west of England, has a proper English first name and employs a Danish assistant ("Vilhelm Erobreren"