#britain

I remember the very day, sometime during the first two weeks of my five-year amorous sojourn in Brutland, when I was made privy to one of the most arcane of their utterings. The time was ripe for that major epiphany, my initiation into the sacred knowledge—or should I say gnosis?—of that all-important, quintessentially Brutish slang term, the word that endless hours of scholastic education by renowned mentors, plus years of scrupulous scrutiny into scrofulous texts, had disappointingly failed to impart to me, leaving me with that deep sense of emptiness begotten by hemimathy; the time was finally ripe for me to be transported by the velvety feel of the unvoiced palato-alveolar fricative, the élan of the unpronounceable and masochistically hedonistic front open-rounded vowel, and, last but not least, the (admittedly short) ejaculatory quality of the voiced velar stop: all three of them combined together to form that miraculous lexical item, the word shag. ↗

— Spiros Doikas

#britain #british #english #humor #sex

This historic general election, which showed that the British are well able to distinguish between patriotism and Toryism, brought Clement Attlee to the prime ministership. In the succeeding five years, Labor inaugurated the National Health Service, the first and boldest experiment in socialized medicine. It took into public ownership all the vital (and bankrupted) utilities of the coal, gas, electricity and railway industries. It even nibbled at the fiefdoms and baronies of private steel, air transport and trucking. It negotiated the long overdue independence of India. It did all this, in a country bled white by the World War and subject to all manner of unpopular rationing and controls, without losing a single midterm by-election (a standard not equaled by any government of any party since). And it was returned to office at the end of a crowded term. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#british-people #clement-attlee #elections #india #indian-independence-act-

Sir, I shall not defeat you - I shall transcend you. ↗

— Benjamin Disraeli

#history #literature #politics #defeat

Britain today is suffering from galloping obsolescence. ↗

— Tony Benn

#galloping #obsolescence #suffering #today

I always say to anybody who's going over to America for the first time, 'Whatever you do, go and see a popular mainstream film with a big audience.' Because people shout out. You never get that in Britain. Everybody's so quiet, scared to laugh. It's like being in church. ↗

— Danny Boyle

#america #anybody #audience #because #being

Britain can be proud of its response to the tsunami appeal. ↗

— Gordon Brown

#britain #proud #response #tsunami

In terms of language, yeah we get bleeped and blurred and things, but in terms of content, I would probably say we're getting away with more here than we could get away with in Britain. And that surprised us so much! ↗

— Graham Norton

#blurred #britain #content #could #get

I did not want to put myself on the line, as an Australian playing Britain's greatest comic actor. The fans of Sellers are obsessive, possessive - and aggressive. I did not want to risk their anger - or my own reputation. ↗

— Geoffrey Rush

#aggressive #anger #australian #britain #comic

We have to ensure that our immigration system works in the interests of Britain, enabling us to make a realistic promise to our young school-leavers. It is part of our contract with the British people. ↗

— Iain Duncan Smith

#british #british people #contract #enabling #ensure

If the people in Britain knew the nature and disposition of the New England people as well as we do they would not find so many friends in England as I suppose they do. ↗

— Nathaniel Smith

#disposition #england #find #friends #i