I Love the Brits, I Love Them Not
I was thinking earlier today [as I fried 12oz. of bacon and topped it with sharp cheddar, which I write to induce "Americans are so fat" deprecation so the foreigners will feel better about what follows] if there’s any group of people, any country, any anything in the world about which my feelings oscillate so often and so quickly. I mean rapid shifts like those in sports - he’s a hero when he hits a home run and a bum when he strikes out - but about more rational subjects.
No - the Brits win the prize. I can go from thrilled and proud to eyes-closed-and-shaking-head in about 3 minutes.
Boris Johnson, the recently elected mayor of London, is a Brit I’ve loved for many years. He’s sharp, funny, too honest and too open. He wrote a piece on the BBC licence fee that Wikipedia describes:
“In the United Kingdom and the Crown dependencies, a television licence is required to receive any publicly broadcast television service, from any source. This includes the commercial channels, cable and satellite transmissions. The money from the licence fee is used to provide radio, television and Internet content for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and Welsh-language television programmes for S4C.”
I think it’s about 150 GBP right now - or about $275 USD.
Boris introduced his editorial, which advocated relaxing gripes about the fee, by saying:
“Treachery, thy name is Edmonds. After decades in which his hairy chops have been clamped about the hind teat of the BBC, Noel Edmonds has announced that he will not pay the licence fee, and I can imagine that some people will declare him a hero.”
And that’s why I love Boris Johnson.
Then some dolt of a [retired] professor has to muck it up by suggesting we throw out spelling and apostrophe rules to improve literacy, which I wrote about over at the GlobalScholar blog.
At least it’s not as bad as the imposition of sharia courts in the UK.
You guys drive me mad.
Aw, I can’t stay mad at you.
