Prince Philip is, nevertheless, the oldest living great-great grandchild of Queen Victoria . . .



Scarcely the place to begin when flagging up icons of English culture or attempting to define it are a philandering, booze-sozzled Irish footballer or a Jewish South African comedian. Nor is dragging up a dreary, dodgy pop song with such monotonous frequency. That's the burden of what I have said in this thread, rather than that I have a personal antipathy to the Irish, to Jews, or even to Show Of Hands.

I admire a lot of Irish literature and music (though dislike it when performed as a go-faster sprint, and the same applies to bluegrass). Wow, two hits in one sentence, that'll get the small-minded suitably riled.

I have an interest in varied musical cultures of the Jewish diaspora and have many secular Jewish friends who make a clear distinction (as I do) between pride in their heritage and opposition to the unbelievably appalling behaviour of the state of Israel. That's pissed off quite a few more of the blinkered. Good.

As for SoH, they're nice chaps who have, individually, been involved in some very worthwhile musical projects, I just have no interest in the bland stuff they do in that particular combo, but I suppose it pays their mortgages. That will continue to annoy at least one person who wouldn't even recognise "culture" if it bit her on the backside.

It's really weird, these oiks who use "racism" as a playground taunt. Only a couple of decades ago, the culture (ha!) was entirely the reverse, Bernard Manning stylee. I once heard a painter and decorator vow that he'd never use certain shades because they were "wog" colours. Nice, eh? It wasn't as though he was being forced by law to use them on his own house (which might have been a tad coercive), but simply to slap in on and take his payment. It's the assumption of a god-given right to impose wilfully ignorant prejudice on those of the population who have minds that's so vilely offensive.

There are, of course, marked similarities with the coterie of "jokey-blokey", sexist, misogynistic "men" here on Mudcat who hunt in packs and seek to keep women in what they imagine is "their place". Tough, chaps. There are at least some, not all women, who actually know what we're talking about, because of who we are and what we've done.