bovril

Hopefully BBC resurrect the 1994 opening credits

Started so well!

This fixture always makes me want to break out the "hello whales, are you from England" joke

Not sure there's ever been a phrase I hate more and yet is always so appropriate as "game's gone"

And about 2 millennia younger than Zoroastrianism.....

Leaving aside the sentence about the respective age of monotheistic religions... I think Brits like to tell themselves conflicts in places like, I dunno, Ireland, Palestine or India/Pakistan just as totally random examples are down to ancient ethnic or religious conflicts and not because of, you know...

Moved to Palermo in 08 and it's changed massively since then so can just imagine what it was like in the 80s. Intimidating sounds about right. Still is in some parts.

It's a cliche but Sicily isn't really Italy. Especially the western part of the island. Verona is nearly as close to Gdansk as it is to Trapani. South western tip of Sicily is about 95 miles from the coast of Africa.

So, Israel...

West Sicily is amazing. Levanzo, Favignana, San Vito, Mazarra, Scala dei Turchi, Selinunte. Great beaches, history, food and a quite north African vibe. Feels very different from anywhere else in Italy.

I see your point but Israel was founded as a homeland for Jewish people. Not really comparable to European countries. You can't really disentangle the country from the religion. But yeah don't want to get the thread closed again...

Well exactly. My point is that the relationship between Jews and Israel is different than probably between any other ethnic or religious group and a country. so it's inevitable if rather unfortunate that there is going to be more conflating going on.

Jews are considered both an ethnic and religious group. Israel is an explicitly Jewish state. It's very different from e.g. Poland and Catholicism, or Iran and Shia Islam. I'm not saying that all Jews have to support Israel or that they are responsible for what Israel does but obviously it's a very specific situation and people who claim otherwise I think are either naive or being disingenuous.

Good luck untangling all that in the case of Israel

lmao "immigrants aren't integrating into British culture" *ten minutes later posts a photo celebrating British citizens waving the flag of a middle eastern country carrying out ethnic cleansing*

I think it's a bit cruel forcing immigrants to dress as badly as English people.

Perhaps the alienation a lot of younger, second or third generation immigrants feel from England is not that dissimilar to how those from native families feel towards a country with now quite little to offer them either materially, culturally or spiritually. The descendents of migrants have a ready made identity to fill the void of growing up in a nation that has more or less sold out all its principles and traditions.

Oh God there are more than one of them?!

"the Middlesbroughs, the Coventrys" Coventries?

This is very similar to a lot of the British 'expats' I met in Bulgaria who seemed to like it because there were very very few MENA immigrants. Then 75% of them voted for Brexit and ended up having to leave.

Really enjoyed your character arc over the last week. Been a rollercoaster.

That's because England is a country that is famously very open and welcoming to Eastern Europeans

I think certain aspects of multiculturalism as it plays out in some English cities are quite worrying. Immigration is good and I want to be able to emigrate easily myself; ghettoization is not so good. Don't think what he said was that controversial.

The angry white men stuff is cringey and immediately undermines his argument

"It won't set a precedent because we were gonna do it anyway"