Serious point this actually. Brexit does give us the chance to adopt a new national anthem for a new country in a new area. I'm going to add that to my list of Brexit positives. It's been stuck at 2 entries for ages so I do need to remember where I put it.
Rule Britannia is surely the best choice: rousing, Britain-wide and entirely distinctive. Also the line about Britons never being slaves seems appropriate for when we leave the EU.
Interestingly, and it seems almost incredible now given how far the BBC’s values have moved in that time, but BBC1 was still playing the national anthem every night over closedown until 1997.
Still played at the end of programming on Radio 4, the last time I was listening at that hour.
Did they stop it because BBC 1 went 24 hour? Do they do anything when BBC 4, etc, closedown?
Given all the discussion about schools, thought I would share my experience visiting my local comprehensive with my year 6 son. My daughter is there already in year 9, she was showing other parents around. We were given a tour by two of her best friends, lovely girls who took particular pride in the school's library. The teachers were enthusiastic, the new head gave a good speech. The facilities are certainly far from what you would get at a private school, and most of the school looked like it needed a lick of paint. But the students loved their little drama studio, even if it wasn't the kind of professional standard theatre you would get at Eton etc. For me a couple of things stood out. The head girl gave an inspiring speech. She arrived in the UK aged 7, far behind her peers. Now she is applying to Oxford. The other thing was the feeling of community - my son's friends from school were all being shown round, there were so many faces from the neighbourhood. And we could all send our children there, no question of whether we could afford it, no begging for the charity of a few subsidised places. Yes our neighborhood has many £1mn plus houses, like most of London. But it also has loads of social housing and flats for private rent, and the school has a diverse intake in every sense. Bringing my children up in a real community, surrounded by a broad cross section of our society, for me is a huge advantage of the comprehensive system. A lot of posters here speak so disdainfully of comprehensive schools, I just wanted to give an example from the real world of how they can be a real force for good.
Thank you for sharing. Where roughly do you live, if you don’t mind sharing?
Zone 2 SE London. I don't know how relevant this is - I went to a comprehensive school in a very different environment (a small town in Scotland) and the two schools are fairly similar.
Wouldn’t that make them bigger consumers? I don’t see how that is w positive thing for the environment (see China, for example).
The average consumption of someone in China is not very large. China produces lots, but that mostly is consumed in the West. This is why it isn't really fair to look to China or India for emissions cuts, for example, because actually the industrialisation is to keep up with mostly Western demand. If their production went towards their own consumption it might be an issue, but it currently is nowhere near the problem of European and American consumption.
Globalisation has been a great positive. I am not someone who sees Globalisation as a four letter word. One of the very big downsides of it though is pushing many of the problems of civilisation somewhere else. You can see this in terms of employment conditions, pollution (incl. C02) and processing rubbish.
Just as an example of how deep this problem runs, even if your trendy clothes shop checks that the manufacture of its clothes are "ethical" the supply chain for the producers of the clothes are rarely followed closely. Maybe, just maybe, the factory where the material is woven (a different factory) is checked by the trendy clothes company, but forget the workers in the cotton fields, the workers in the powerplants, the coal miners supplying the coal, .... and so on.
The scenario that it would be more interesting to model would be something like:
"if held after the Conservatives tried to leave without a deal on 31st October but were prevented from doing so by votes in parliament by Labour, LD, SNP and other MPs"
Given the stunning inaccuracy of previous ComRes hypothetical polls, as judged by their current polls, I think this is with ignoring.
Earlier people here were getting very excited about a related ComRes hypothetical poll that told a different story, so I posted that to even things up.
And yes, my perhaps too subtle point is that even if you take any notice of hypothetical polls, and ignore the record of the polling company involved, you need to be asking the right hypothetical question in the first place.
Yes, it applies to that one too - regardless of how entertaining it would be.
Hen lad Fy Nhadau (Land of my Fathers) is a rousing National Anthem, as is the Marsellaise. The Star Spangled Banner' isn't bad, either, nor the new Aussie one. "God defend New Zealand' always seems a bit naff, although having one English verse and one Maori one is novel.
I have always liked Deutschland Uber Alles as well as the Marsellaise. UK anthem is absolute pants.
Please! That was the German national anthem when the Nazis were in power.
The first verse was abandoned just after the end of the second world war. If you sing those words in Germany today, people will think you are a Neo-nazi.
But the tune is good, and written by Haydn an Austrian!
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Did they stop it because BBC 1 went 24 hour? Do they do anything when BBC 4, etc, closedown?
Just as an example of how deep this problem runs, even if your trendy clothes shop checks that the manufacture of its clothes are "ethical" the supply chain for the producers of the clothes are rarely followed closely. Maybe, just maybe, the factory where the material is woven (a different factory) is checked by the trendy clothes company, but forget the workers in the cotton fields, the workers in the powerplants, the coal miners supplying the coal, .... and so on.
The first verse was abandoned just after the end of the second world war. If you sing those words in Germany today, people will think you are a Neo-nazi.
But the tune is good, and written by Haydn an Austrian!