British Politician Gives Hot Tip To Youngsters: Learn To Talk Like Hitler
We will totally admit that we do not know much about politics in Merry Olde Limeyland, mostly because the parliamentary system seems really fucking complicated. How do you British people keep track of them all? Do you just kind of lose track of some of the parties? Because we're thinking maybe that's a possible excuse for the existence of one Bill Etheridge, a UK Independence Party (UKip!!) member of the European Parliament (MEP!!) who gave a little public speaking seminar for aspiring politicians where one of his pro-tips was that speakers should emulate Hitler.
He suggested that the audience should take their oratorical tips from ‘a hateful figure who achieved a great deal’.
Mr. Etheridge, 44, said: ‘Look back to the most magnetic and forceful public speaker possibly in history. When Hitler gave speeches, and many of the famous ones were at rallies, at the start he walks, back and forth, looked at people – there was a silence, he waited minutes just looking out at people, fixing them with his gaze.
‘They were looking back and he would do it for a while. And then they were so desperate for him to start, when he started speaking they were hanging on his every word.’
He then told the audience that they shouldn't strive for a direct copy and they should just pick up little tips, so shut up you British versions of liberals who are yelling at him about this already.
No seriously, let's discuss the idea that Hitler's speaking style was the most successful speaking style on earth. This is very possibly a true sentiment if you define "most successful" as "most likely to move an entire nation of people into a sick murderous war rage," which is not actually what most of us are going for with our public speaking. Hopefully.
We are also utterly without surprise that Mr. Etheridge does not have an unblemished history prior to this.
He was suspended by the Conservative Party in 2011 after he posed on Facebook with a golliwog.
Shortly after his suspension he wrote the book Britain: A Post-Political Correctness Society – featuring a picture of two of the dolls on its cover.
In it he argued that ‘the political and social elite have cravenly surrendered to the diktat of the Politically Correct dogma that has crushed free speech, smashed enterprise and reduced Britain to a mere shadow of its former self’.
We did not have the vaguest idea what a golliwog is, because we don't speak poncy British talk, but we do know how to google, so we looked his book up.
If you were like "oh hey those dolls on the cover look totally fucking racist," you are right! Give yourself eleventy points. Apparently golliwogs are awful racist little minstrel-type caricatures of black people, a depiction that is inexplicably much more popular in Europe -- they were even the trademark for a jam company well into the 1990s -- so this dude probably just meant that he really liked soul music or something by using them on the cover. Haha no he did not, and he is proof positive that the British can be just as good at racism as their American counterparts, even though we kicked their English asses all the way to Kingdom Come. Congrats, England, for turning out this guy. Swell job.
[ Daily Mail ]
Although there's no particular singling out of Scots there - just ask Cannuck Greg Rusedski or Aussie Joe Bugner.
Not clear. Great Britain will remain the geographical name for the island on which we find England, Wales and Scotland.
The British Isles will remain the geographical name for the collection of islands including Great Britain, Ireland, Anglesey, the Isle of Man, the Isle of Wight, the Shetlands, the Orkneys, the Hebrides and depending on whether you include them for purely political reasons, the Channel Islands.
Of course, the inclusion of Ireland in this list does allude quite strongly to the fact that the concept of "Britishness" has managed already to survive the departure of a significant chunk of geography from the political union.
Just plain &quot;Britain&quot; is a shorthand for the political entity formally known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which would presumably become the United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland or something. Assuming that Scotland doesn&#039;t choose to remain part of the <em>Kingdom</em> - that&#039;s not actually 100% clear from the referendum question, which asks only about independence, not form of government - in theory one could retain the Queen as head of state but reject the Parliament in London, although if they&#039;re going to separate they might as well do it completely.