'English Country Dances', Please

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 11:01 AM

Didn't realise this one was still open; so much I missed as well...

Thanks, ESAM for this:

I don't want to live
in
postwar
       austerity
                Britain
I don't want recieved pro-nun-ci-a-ti-on
       on black and
                                           WHITE
TV and bastard Enoch in the late
1960s
with his "rivers of
                      blood"
(giving sainted Wolverhampton
                              "A BAD NAME")

No.

Give me e-ceilidhs
       Brummie baltis
       Good Polish beers (and better Polish plumbers)
       Bhangra beats and Bollywood chic
       Jerk chicken and dumplings
       Bagels
       Pizza (stoned baked)
       Even the Imagined Village (for the concept if not the execution)
       English cricket captains with subcontinental names
       Even Aussies...

NONE OF THIS
Ruins my Melton Mowbray Pork Pie
Or Shirley Collins albums
Or Wychwood Hobgolblin
Or, By God, Mrs Kirkham's Tasty Lancashire

Its all part of
               My
                beautiful
                         chaotic
                                 multiculti
                                           England

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Def Shepard
Date: 30 May 08 - 04:39 PM

THREAD R.I.P

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 30 May 08 - 04:38 PM

Whilst I have no desire to perpetuate this thread, I wish to apologise to 'WAV'.

My post (as Guest) about not being able to get a job was mean spirited of me. I've been unemployeyed myself and it's deeply crap. Apologies if I hurt you on that count.

However, you still come across as a Fascist, which is a REALLY bad thing.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Def Shepard
Date: 29 May 08 - 06:22 PM

Phil Edwards said in brackets," (This isn't strictly relevant, but then what is?)

I think we're both making a point, I'm not sure what THAT point is. That being so, it's right in line with anything WAV has been saying. :-D

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: GUEST,Ewan Spawned a Monster
Date: 29 May 08 - 06:20 PM

Erdington, eh? That's where me Dad's from. Not relevant to the thread but just thought I'd say.

Could I also say that despite various of my ancestors being here for a long while, my surname is of Norman origins, so maybe I'd better repatriate myself back to the wilfully flattest bit of France I can find.

To me, espousing views on immigration that almost exactly replicate those of the BNP is at worse racist, at best stupid. If that shower o' shite got any real power, you'd probably get your monocultural, retrogressive England, but at a hell of a price. Maybe you think it's one worth paying, but if you truly joined forces with those who'd like to expel or marginalise my black and asian British mates, as a modern Englishman, I'd be forced to indulge in the "tradition" of fighting you all the way to A&E in their defence. Bollocks to the niceties, then. Don't you realise you're playing with fire with these fascistic opinions, WAV?

Why can't we celebrate that many of our best traditions either originated abroad or were influenced by things brought in from abroad? Morris (possibly 'Moorish') dancing, for instance. What we have becomes stronger when it takes on new life.

It's a bit like the European royals. Keep it in the family for too long and you start growing prehensile tails and webbed feet. Allow a - shall we say - broadening of the cultural gene pool and there's loads of new and exciting tangents to explore. Culture - like folk music - is a process not an arbitrarily frozen moment in time.

WAV - please try to enjoy the England you live in. If you truly don't like it, may I suggest a move to a small town (any small town) in New Zealand? It won't be the imaginary 1950s Britain you dream of, but it does in some ways replicate aspects of 1970s Britain, complete with the "shite comedy" style racism. You'd probably feel right at home. I couldn't wait to get back to good old multicultural Blighty, myself.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 29 May 08 - 06:14 PM

My father used to wear a (fake) fur hat, to keep his head warm. One winter's day we were in the East End of London, my father in his fur-effect hat. A local little old lady caught his eye in the street and beckoned him over. Being a lay reader, back at home, he was quite used to people coming up to him in the street and complimenting him on his sermons or passing on messages about the church fete, and I think he vaguely thought this was something similar. Anyway, he walked across to the beckoning East Ender and leaned over so that he could hear what she was saying, and what he heard was:

"Why don't you f*** off back to Russia!"

(This isn't strictly relevant, but then what is?)

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Def Shepard
Date: 29 May 08 - 05:38 PM

In situations like this I'm always reminded of the time, in my youth, when a friend, whose parents were East Indian, and I were walking along the road when a group of yobbos yelled, at my friend, the old "GO BACK WHERE YA CAME FROM!" To which my friend replied to me, in a stage whisper "Oh are they going to me me bus fare back to Erdington, then?" We were in Handsworth, the area of Birmingham I lived in at the time :-D

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 29 May 08 - 05:37 PM

But maybe that's Manchester?

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 29 May 08 - 05:35 PM

Phil,If we can do anything about it they will!

Cheers

Les

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 29 May 08 - 05:31 PM

most adults do understand the difference between questioning immigration and being racist

Maybe, but I don't understand the difference between questioning immigration in the name of English culture and racism. What are they going to do to your precious English culture (whatever that actually is)? Who are 'they' anyway - the French? the Scots? the Irish? the Jews? (Sorry, but this kind of thinking goes back a long way.)

I saw an Asian lad on the news the other day, talking about how he crosses the street if he sees a group of white lads on the corner. (In the interests of fairness, the programme also interviewed some white locals, who were telling horror stories about the local Asians.) Anyway, I was having trouble understanding what this lad was saying - blimey, I thought, he's got a broad accent... After a moment I realised it was a broad Yorkshire accent. Born and bred in England, I don't doubt - and in twenty or thirty years' time there'll be plenty of kids with Albanian and Somali parents, speaking English with broad Yorkshire accents. I shouldn't think they'll be going to English Country Dances, though.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Def Shepard
Date: 29 May 08 - 05:26 PM

If you say so

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: catspaw49
Date: 29 May 08 - 05:18 PM

Well then welcome to the 'Cat Noob.........You'll find I am the least serious member around here.

Spaw

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Def Shepard
Date: 29 May 08 - 05:11 PM

well I love silliness once in awhile, keeps me from getting TOO serious about things, oh long time member

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: catspaw49
Date: 29 May 08 - 05:06 PM

Nah...... just a longtime member amazed at the overall silliness of this thread!

Continue along at your own rapid pace. I expect this thing will implode of its own inanity somewhere in the 500 post range........

Spaw

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Def Shepard
Date: 29 May 08 - 05:00 PM

Oh look, a troll

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: catspaw49
Date: 29 May 08 - 04:59 PM

300 Up Yours!!!!

Spaw

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Def Shepard
Date: 29 May 08 - 04:55 PM

Oh, oh, he's telling teacher on me, but it makes little difference, he is what he is and it seems others noticed along time before I did.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 29 May 08 - 04:53 PM

Not always, but at some interviews I get not "why did you come back?" but "why ON EARTH did you come back?" or even "mad" - which makes it difficult to land the job. DS - you've used false and defamatory language again (please note this moderator). In a democracy, someone can question immigration, & you last 3 or 4 posters should accept that.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: irishenglish
Date: 29 May 08 - 04:53 PM

Ruth, WAV only selectively responds to direct questions asked of him. I've asked him several, but he's only answered a few.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 29 May 08 - 04:47 PM

WAV, as you haven't managed to specifically answer the points I made, I'll assume you agree with them. Whether you'd get on with people in their home countries is immaterial.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Def Shepard
Date: 29 May 08 - 04:36 PM

Guest said, " Why can't you find yourself a job then? "

I was suggest an answer to that question via a PM, but I don't think he'd like that answer :-D

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: GUEST
Date: 29 May 08 - 04:31 PM

I would get on as well or better with the locals as any of you (via much travel and studies in humanities),

Why can't you find yourself a job then?

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Def Shepard
Date: 29 May 08 - 04:20 PM

You've been sussed, dearie, and you don't like it. You are racist regardless of what you try to say, as I've already said, your own words condemn you, and there you go again, using this alleged degree in humanities and your travels to illustrate... what point exactly? You put yourself across as being better than everyone else, you're not.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 29 May 08 - 04:11 PM

Some of you may not like it and even try to create confusion, but we are at the stage now where most adults do understand the difference between questioning immigration and being racist. In other words, some of you who like immigration try to paint those who question immigration as racist - but it's harder for you to do that now. Drop this group somewhere in Asia or Africa and I, e.g., would get on as well or better with the locals as any of you (via much travel and studies in humanities), and I do question immigration.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 29 May 08 - 03:51 PM

racism is where someone says they are all like this or that, which I have never done

That's precisely what you are doing - you're saying that 'they' are not like us, so that our country and our culture won't be enriched by them but must be protected from them. To quote from your earlier comment, "the law, the land, the people, the culture should be linked". Our land, our culture, our people, our law - it's not theirs and it's not for them.

If that isn't racism, I don't know what is.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Def Shepard
Date: 29 May 08 - 03:50 PM

False and defamatory am I? Well you do have a choice, sue me. All your words including "yes, Phil, frankly I wish it had occurred before I was born, such that I'd been brought up here, and all the mass emigration from, and immigration to, England of late had not occurred. I think I would have still built a good CV, which would have been of use, and that I'd be finding it easier to get on, in general" condemn you.

Seems to me you're using the old, old saw of blaming immigrants in this case, for your lack of a good CVand, a job it sounds like. Ever thought there might be other reasons?

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: irishenglish
Date: 29 May 08 - 03:50 PM

How convenient you pronounce this a dead thread WAV. Was that because no one agreed with you? Was that because you can't answer, or refuse to answer questions that I and others have asked of you? Or for that matter defend statements that you make, with verbatim quotes from your "website" ad infinitum? Do you accept any form of disagreement WAV? You are the one trying to make a point. At no point on this thread have I seen you step back and say...I respectfully disagree. Instead you send us a link back to your entire website in search of some vague point that may be related to the point in question. Here's the thing, I disagree with people on here all the time, a lot of time we find agreement, partial agreement. Because of your bold pronouncements upon a form of music you have only fairly recently become acquainted with, you alienate people who have decades more working experience with the form than you have. Instead of taking the advice and wisdom of professionals like Chris Parkinson and Eliza Carthy, you have chosen to disregard even their words. Which is why this leaves you with a thread in which no one has agreed with your starting premise of English Country Dances as being the necessary phrase you feel should apply to a dance event, despite ample evidence against your claims. So therein lies another point WAV. If this were a court, and you had presented your case to all of us. The rest of us all countered with our own evidence to disprove your argument, as we have been doing. Going in to the jury or to the judge-who's evidence was more solid, and had more tangible proof, versus who's evidence was more about conjecture, and speculative? Listen mate-you like English folk music. I do too! Lots of us on here do as a matter of fact. Lots of us like other types of music too, as it seems you do as well. Why the need for rules to govern it by? Music is about emotion. Music is about laughing, or crying, or smiling, or anger, or hope. English folk music is underappreciated, thats one of the great things about this forum, we may disagree, but we are all talking about English folk. Why be so strict about how and where it should be played? Go to a ceilidh, tell them right after that Irish song they should tell people-THIS, is an English song, ladies and gentlemen, enjoy it for what it is, as I have for over 20 of my, gulp, almost 40 years on this planet! Cheers.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 29 May 08 - 03:49 PM

From the BNP website:

"On current demographic trends, we, the native British people, will be an ethnic minority in our own country within sixty years. To ensure that this does not happen, and that the British people retain their homeland and identity, we call for an immediate halt to all further immigration...We will also clamp down on the flood of 'asylum seekers', all of whom are either bogus or can find refuge much nearer their home countries."

"We also call for preference in the job market to be given to native Britons."

"We will also seek to instill in our young people knowledge of and pride in the history, cultures and heritage of the native peoples of Britain."


Sound familiar, WAV?

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 29 May 08 - 03:43 PM

"racism is where someone says they are all like this or that, which I have never done. Questioning immigration - which I will keep doing - is antother matter"

your narrow definition of racism is kind of irrelevant. There are many definitions of racism. For some years, the BNP have been running on a very similar platform to the one you espouse, WAV: foreigners are fine, as long as they're not over here; our culture is being diluted because of outside influences; foreigners are keeping English people out of jobs...

are these sentiments you agree with, or not, WAV?

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 29 May 08 - 03:34 PM

I've never heard of the ENP, I'm not a member of any political party, the nearest safe country for an assylum seeker could be England, and what you just said is false and defamatory - racism is where someone says they are all like this or that, which I have never done. Questioning immigration - which I will keep doing - is antother matter, DS of Birmingham.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Def Shepard
Date: 29 May 08 - 03:20 PM

So WAV is giving up and taking his cricket/tennis ball home with him. A dead thread, but of course it is, because no one will agree with his nasty racist points of view and opinions, and WAV is, without a doubt a racist, whether he cares to admit it or not. Please don't say hello to your BNP/ENP/Justice for England friends from us and watch your arse on the door knob on your way out.

From All in Birmingham

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Def Shepard
Date: 29 May 08 - 03:12 PM

WAV said, again, "I've argued the UN should take contol of emigration/immigration and help genuine assylum seekers to their NEAREST safe country" As long as it's not England.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 29 May 08 - 03:09 PM

To Phil - I've argued the UN should take contol of emigration/immigration and help genuine assylum seekers to their NEAREST safe country; and, because you repeatedly asked, yes I wish it would have occurred earlier; further, asked about repatriation, another matter, I'm not saying everyone should do as I've done. That's as clear and frank as I can be on this, so, unless a little birdie has news of an English county dance, this is a dead thread, as far as I'm concerned.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Def Shepard
Date: 29 May 08 - 02:54 PM

Actually that's what I had for tea (three of them), I feel SUCH a traitor and terribly unEnglish :-D

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 29 May 08 - 02:53 PM

I've always been a wrong 'un, me. I'm only here to take your men and pollute your bloodstock.

Anyone fance a cheeseburger?

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 29 May 08 - 02:49 PM

You contradict yourself, WAV.

for the record, Ruth, I'm NOT saying my family or you should repatriate - I am saying that, FROM NOW ON, the UN should agree to slow emigration down

"Do you regret that immigration wasn't stopped or limited a few years ago?"...yes, Phil, frankly I wish it had occurred before I was born

Evidently you don't just wish immigration could be limited FROM NOW ON, you wish it could have been limited a few decades ago. Presumably this is because you believe too many of the wrong sort of people have pitched up here in that time. So here we are, us good English types over here and those pesky wrong-sort first generation immigrants over here - presumably you think the country would be that much more green and pleasant if they removed themselves. Yes?

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 29 May 08 - 01:44 PM

Very clever, Nick!

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Nick
Date: 29 May 08 - 01:27 PM

I need to go and practice for two gigs at the weekend so leave you with this quick poem (one of them is outdoors so we need good weather) -

I NEED A SUNNY SUNDAY

Disappointed at the five day weather forecast
And Sunday needing sun for the gig to go right
I rediscovered my butterfly net
And found an unsuspecting cabbage white.

I booked him BA first class to Chile
"Create the right sort of chaos" was my wish.
If we have a hurricane on Sunday
It won't be the fault of Michael Fish



I'm afraid my interest with poetry probably died with Yeats so that will be the last of them. Drivel anyway.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 29 May 08 - 01:25 PM

ne gelæd þu us on costnunge ac alys us of yfele soþlice!

That's easy for you to say.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 29 May 08 - 01:19 PM

Hurrah, ESAM!

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Nick
Date: 29 May 08 - 01:18 PM

Alf Ramsay was an anachronism. Look at the turmoil, change, passion and excitement of the mid-60s that was happening all around him. You are very fond of quoting wikipedia so here's a quote from there which accords more with my memory of the 60's -

"The 1960s have become synonymous with all the new, exciting, radical, and subversive events and trends of the period, which continued to develop in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and beyond. In Africa the 1960s was a period of radical political change as countries gained independence from their European colonial rulers, only for this rule to be replaced in many cases by civil war or corrupt dictatorships."

Tension between the superpowers at an increasing level; student riots in USA and Europe; the Civil Rights movement in the USA; etc etc

With even the slightest grasp of a historical perspective one sees that each era holds the seeds of future change. Even radical change is rooted in strands that go way back in time. Unfortunately those who look back to a halcyon time when everything was fine neglect to see that the agents of change present in those times was what led us (fairly inexorably) to where we are today. The past you yearn for is unfortunately the father of the world you live in now and you can never return and re-write that history (except of course in a mutlidimensional world - I recommend the book and site Imagining the Tenth Dimension to anyone who wants to bend their brain for a while). The past is the engineer of it's own destruction.

Passion and youthful thought are a product of all ages. If you had to pick two decades in the last century I would guess the 20s and 60s would be the ones most would pick rather than now.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: GUEST,Ewan Spawned a Monster
Date: 29 May 08 - 01:15 PM

I've avoided this dreadful thread so far because sedayne and Phil Edwards and Ruth Archer have done such a good job of sucking the thoughts from my head and presenting them to the world.

However:

I don't want to live
in
postwar
       austerity
                Britain
I don't want recieved pro-nun-ci-a-ti-on
       on black and
                                           WHITE
TV and bastard Enoch in the late
1960s
with his "rivers of
                      blood"
(giving sainted Wolverhampton
                              "A BAD NAME")

No.

Give me e-ceilidhs
       Brummie baltis
       Good Polish beers (and better Polish plumbers)
       Bhangra beats and Bollywood chic
       Jerk chicken and dumplings
       Bagels
       Pizza (stoned baked)
       Even the Imagined Village (for the concept if not the execution)
       English cricket captains with subcontinental names
       Even Aussies...

NONE OF THIS
Ruins my Melton Mowbray Pork Pie
Or Shirley Collins albums
Or Wychwood Hobgolblin
Or, By God, Mrs Kirkham's Tasty Lancashire

Its all part of
               My
                beautiful
                         chaotic
                                 multiculti
                                           England
                                                
So wind yer neck in, WAV!

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 29 May 08 - 12:42 PM

Goodness, you need to read more British history. Passion has always played a role. A really good place to start is TE White's Age of Scandal.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 29 May 08 - 12:29 PM

May I steal your thunder for a moment, Nick, and respond to Phil's promotion of the passionate attitude with this (it refers to a quote from the late Alf Ramsey, "It will all end in tears"):

Poem 150 of 230: TEARS

Watching a documentary
    Of the '66 World Cup,
And the way of England's Ramsey,
    I thought: "Let's give 'passion' up."

It voiced and showed his calm way -
    He playing things down a touch;
And, as his home team won the day,
    They showed care but not too much.

Analytical Englishmen -
    Cool over the tasks that lay;
We see some of it in Henman,
    But it's not the modern way.

Sadly, passion and youthful thought
    Have become the status quo,
And social-standards and sport
    Have sunk relatively low.

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 29 May 08 - 12:26 PM

So, people of all ages dancing many English dances, enjoying trad. music, having FUN and socialising, upsets you because the title of the event is a loanword?

Stop whinging and being bitter about what might have been and focus on doing something constructive.

" "Do you regret that immigration wasn't stopped or limited a few years ago?"...yes, Phil, frankly I wish it had occurred before I was born, such that I'd been brought up here, and all the mass emigration from, and immigration to, England of late had not occurred. I think I would have still built a good CV, which would have been of use, and that I'd be finding it easier to get on, in general. Having said that, I am genuinely happy to be here in England doing my best/bit.
To Nick - at least no-one's called you a Vogon, thus far! (See my Walkaboutsverse thread in the BS section, if you wish.) "

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 29 May 08 - 12:25 PM

Hurrah! I loved Beowulf. Bring it on.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Nick
Date: 29 May 08 - 12:18 PM

I am working on a prose poem in a much freer style about a happy Vogon trapped in a bubble that noone can get in or out of. I think it really lends itself to a more classic form to reflect it's rather tragic content. Also thinking of experimenting with writing it in Old English just to give it some proper roots - I was tempted but as we say - and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge ac alys us of yfele soþlice!

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 29 May 08 - 12:05 PM

I'd real rather listen to the real thing - be it hard-core hip-hop, field-recorded folk, or whatever

Here, I think, we approach the crux of the biscuit.

Take my friend who writes and sings in the style of Hank Williams, complete with fake American accent. Done badly or lazily, as it often is, that kind of thing annoys me intensely. Done well and with passion, as he does (I wouldn't be mentioning him otherwise!) it's brilliant.

Traditional English music is very rarely done badly or lazily - it's rare enough to hear it done at all. But that doesn't mean it's all good, let alone that everything else should be cast out. The passion is the thing - it's what draws us here, but it can be found elsewhere too.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: GUEST,Joe
Date: 29 May 08 - 11:58 AM

I think Nick's poetry is inspiring. I wish he used more free verse though.

Subject: RE: 'English Country Dances', Please
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 29 May 08 - 11:57 AM

Nick is making me laugh.

Howard, i made this same point ages ago, but he won't acknowledge or respond to it. To wit:

' "but it's also good to PRACTISE your own."

but as you have no idea what happens at an English celidh, you don't know what's being practised there. English culture IS practised at English ceilidhs, so the people who go to them are engaging with and celebrating English culture, regardless of what the event is called. You, on the other hand, are NOT engaging with one of the most dynamic and thriving aspects of the contemporary English folk scene just because you disagree with the name.

Maybe you ought to PRACTISE what you preach.'