April 23 is an important date in any Englishman’s diary. It marks both the birthday and the date of death of our greatest dramatist and poet, William Shakespeare. It is the day we commemorate our country through our patron Saint, St George.
Shakespeare is one of those great achievers that made our history and contribution to mankind special. From Ebenezer’s Garden cities to Brunel in engineering, from Josiah Wedgwood’s pioneering factory and ceramics to Whittle and the jet, from Wren in architecture to Turner in painting England has offered much to the world.
Shakespeare’s genius was in capturing timeless human characteristics and emotions. Jealousy in Othello, violent ambition in Macbeth, the inability to see and understand in Lear’s old age, the difficulty to avenge a crime in Hamlet ,the folly and fun of young love in Midsummer Night’s Dream are all spell binding accounts of modern feelings and events springing from their roots in Elizabethan and Jacobean England.
Shakespeare turned the Globe stage into many exotic scenes, from Venice to Denmark, from a French to an English battlefield, from court to country, from palace to a hovel. Most of the transitions were conjured in audience imagination by the power of words. Bon mots, jests, epigrams, perfect soundbites poured from his quill and enrich our modern language.
What fools these mortals be said Puck. To be or not to be agonised Hamlet. The Fool said to Lear you should not have been old til though hadst been wise. John of Gaunt spoke for England , in words we should all remember. Our land is indeed a sceptred isle, a blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this england.
April 23, 2025
I ask why thfe zealots of the left would deny the young the benefit of this within their education.perhaps they feel that a plant without routes has no culture, creating a void that can be filled with nonesense. They would turn educarion to its antithisis, ignorance.
April 23, 2025
Thfe the. Routes/roots. Apologies.
April 23, 2025
No modern failure can extinguish the extraordinary accomplishment and feats of our ancestors. If you are a boomer, then your father’s generation was ‘the greatest’. So no great feat in remembering.
Happy St George’s Day.
Let’s make Britain her humane, just, funny, glorious, generous, brave self again.
April 23, 2025
The “happy breed of men” described by Shakespeare are being deliberately eradicated by the British Establishment by decades of nation-destroying mass immigration.
The moat, which protected the scepter’d isle, has been deliberately left undefended by the British Establishment and due to their deliberate actions “That England, that was wont to conquer others, Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.”
I would like to celebrate St George’s Day. But the England Shakespeare described no longer exists; it has been deliberately destroyed.
April 23, 2025
@Donna
The erasure of culture has always been part of the Communist playbook.
April 23, 2025
Dear Mr. Redwood,
Reading your words and those of your readers reminded me of the Soldier’s Poem.
“If I should die, think only this of me that there’s some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England”
Sometimes I wonder if it will always be true?
April 23, 2025
Being deliberately destroyed indeed it is being. 14 years of the Tories promising one thing and delivering the complete reverse. Even the words English and England are being virtually banned and then we have Lady Nugee attacking our flags and white van men!
Borrowing out of control again today thanks to the moronic economic and energy policies. The Tories tax, borrow and piss down the drain agenda continued and made even worse.
“a sceptred isle, a blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this england” Sceptred – invested with royal authority – alas our King of hypocricy cannot keep out of politics and is totally wrong headed on Net Zero and Energy. An I am in favour of Monarchy.
Kemi the no physics “engineer” still pushing the Sunak/Ed Miliband Labour agenda on this we are the same but not quite as quickly!
April 23, 2025
That would be nice Lynn but I’m afraid with the chancers in Westminster we’re doomed. 2TK is busy giving away our fish to Brussels because fishermen are hated by the left because they strive to be self sufficient. Just one more group to be destroyed by this government. They’ve gone for private education, the farmers, the pensioners, the fisherman and with free movement for under 30s denying our young employment.
It will be a struggle to get Britain motivated again whilst we have these wreckers in government and population replacement going at full speed.
April 23, 2025
Oh impossible to go in as we are. And the generation that restores the British to Britain will have to much tougher than me. We need to pay as much attention as do the breeders of Jersey cows!
It could easily be that no such generation will come forth. In which case we had a good run and only the last generation was rotten.
Just accept that. Nothing can extinguish what our people were. It’s a great achievement.
April 23, 2025
Quite, we need less rhetoric about “world beating” and just aim to be the best we can be, which could be plenty good enough with less Government interference.
April 23, 2025
Lynn….and tolerant, just, industrious, scientific, respected and respectful.
April 23, 2025
Morning Sir John,
Perhaps our current government should reflect on this quote…
“To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
I wonder whether St George will get a mention in PMQs today.
April 23, 2025
I believe Starmer, Johnson-the-destroyer etc are true unto themselves. That is the tragedy of it. The British people did not cherish what they had – they were not worthy of it and so lost it.
April 23, 2025
Dear Mr. Redwood,
@Cliff.. Wokingham.
I watched PMQ’s today. The PM said “May I wish everyone in England a Happy St. George’s Day. There is a lot to celebrate, our history, our values and our culture” – even as he sets out to destroy these very things.
He is so patently false. He might as well have asked The Right Honourable Dame Emily Anne Thornberry, Lady Nugee DBE MP to provide ‘the toast’ to St. George.
April 23, 2025
Good morning.
Sorry, but what are we supposed to be celebrating ?
The only nation of this so called, Union that has a national day which is not celebrated. Even an alien religion gets better treatment.
A non-citizen in my own country.
April 23, 2025
Seem so, they even broke the UK up into alien Wales sized regions with the dire Kahn and other Mayors and yet more layers of expensive & essentially parasitic government. Rendering the UK even less competitive with vast government and energy circa 4 times the cost it should be!
April 23, 2025
You may be correct to suggest we get little recognition. However, you have the power to celebrate it, as many do.
April 23, 2025
Catholicism – the traditional religion of this country – is relatively thriving.
The C of E is a sinking ship, The Titanic, joining the other Protestant ships that have already sunk to the bottom of the sea like in Scandinavia.
This isn’t about Catholic Triumphalism (I hate that).
But that Catholicism now is the only hope this country has. Because Catholicism and patriotism are completely interlinked (it’s heresy to reject patriotism) (and secular nationalism just leads to Communism or Fascism which eats itself / destroys itself in time).
And when it comes to matter of state, Catholics owe allegiance to their King and elected government – NOT the Pope. Anyone who says otherwise is a heretic (Catholics have to follow the Pope on matters of doctrine but NOT on political issues. That is heresy).
Lastly, it was Catholicism that gave us Parliament, the Monarchy, Westminster Palace, Windsor Castle, Oxford, Cambridge, Magna Carta, Eton, Westminster Abbey, Grammar Schools, Chaucer, Guilds, Tower of London, Winchester and all the great medieval towns and cities and villages of England, all the great medieval cathedrals, and all the beautiful medieval churches all over the country.
April 23, 2025
Pity the likes of Wycliffe and Tyndale messed it all up, by aspiring to make the Bible available to every English ploughboy in his mother tongue.
Read Revelation 2:18-29 and Revelation 17-18 – who is being spoken of here?
April 24, 2025
As a Catholic though (although C-of-E mother and I have a huge time for Protestants in general – from both the past and present), just want to say there have been some awful Catholics and some great Protestants in our country (and outside, in particular, Bach) from Jane Austen Sir Christopher Wren – and so many others). 100% not here to be triumphalist about Catholicism (Guy Fawkes was a terrorist and Catholic King Philip II with his Armada was more like a dictator. I’m glad – for both patriotic and religious reasons because he represented a bossy, triumphalist sort of Catholicism at least with his Armada – I’m glad Protestant England gave him a right, good bashing!).
April 24, 2025
Well said, and with a kindly spirit, Ed. Scripture forewarns of the apostasy you speak of (E.g. Sardis, and Laodicea: Rev 3) and the dangers of idolatry in worldly religion. I would rather commend you to ‘the simplicity of Christ’ – that we might know him, and the power of his resurrection, even in the here and now – that blessed assurance that one is saved by grace through faith in Christ’s finished work at Calvary, from which our works then follow. Glorious!
April 24, 2025
Thanks Norman. Same to you (‘kindly spirit’)
April 23, 2025
Shakespeare perceived and articulated the human experience like no other. His works have helped everyone who has read them. A brilliant Shakespeare quote which I have always been mindful of is from from Measure for Measure:
‘Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.”
I will be raising a glass to him this evening.
April 23, 2025
Having discovered that imposing tax on the interest on non-ISA cash savings has not been the cause of rioting on the streets, Reeves has now instructed HMRC to aggressively claw savings tax back from people who have always paid their tax on time, or via the PAYE system
Reeves reduced the allowance on savings interest to £1000 for a 20% taxpayer and £500 for a higher rate taxpayer. HMRC has demanded that savings providers such as the banks and building societies provide them with details of peoples saving accounts, in case they can extract tax. Many non-ISA accounts are paying 4% – a £25,000 deposit is going to yield the £1000. HMRC is now aggressively going after any more.
Even worse, if you delayed moving your savings into a cash ISA – maybe because you had already used up your £20,000 allowance – HMRC is assuming that you still have the money in a non-ISA account and are taxing you on it anyway. So, many pensioners etc are now getting tax demands on interest that has not been received.
Of all the insidious tax rises that Reeves has placed on the long-suffering British public, taxing folk for putting a bit away for a rainy day is the worst.
April 23, 2025
SG
Do not forget all those with a Sipp Pension will now have the unused lump sum added to their estate for IHT when they die.
Thus Pension pot could be taxed at 40% on death, and then whoever draws down on what is left will pay tax at their going rate as well. Thus 60% tax minimum in total.
Retrospective tax is simply legalised theft !.
April 23, 2025
Not before April 2027
sippadvice.co.uk 03/03/2025 ‘SIPP Inheritance Tax, What you need to know’.
April 24, 2025
What difference does that make hefner?
Most people currently paying into pensions are looking to retire decades ahead.
April 23, 2025
Indeed taxed for saving. So the bank pays you less than the inflation rate (caused by governments) then they tax you on this at 20% to 45%, then when you die they take another 40% of all you capital off you.
All the UK taxes together, plus the inflation tax can very easily take 90%+ of your wealth of you over circa 20 years. Then they talk about wealth taxes too. Is 90% not enough already for these robbers?
April 23, 2025
What on earth has this got to do with today’s topic ?
Can you not think and comment on anything other than yourself ?
April 23, 2025
SG :
Unfortunately the Civil Service is desperate for money to pay the subsidies and expense of their planet saving Net Zero policy. NESO estimate (probably an HS2 estimate as some technology does not yet even exist) the Clean Power 2030 project will cost “over £40bn annually”.
April 23, 2025
Banks and building societies used to take the tax due on interest from non-ISA savings accounts at source, with no tax relief. Up until a few years ago, interest on savings was so low that it wasn’t worth HMRC collecting it, so they didn’t chase anyone. Only those, like me, who filed tax returns paid the correct amount. I don’t like Reeves, but this one can’t be blamed on her. Maybe HMRC should go back to letting the banks collect this tax.
April 23, 2025
St George, we need you now. Will your cross be flying above Downing Street today? Unlikely. Also unlikely is any heartfelt speech about England from our establishment politicians. Well, the rest of us can celebrate for now. Who knows if such thoughts will be thoughtcrime in years to come. Perhaps they are already?
As for our great bard, bless him. I have asked Grok AI to write sonnets in the shakespearean style, and its efforts are astonishingly commendable. It shows how vulnerable many jobs are, once organisations incorporate the technology in their workings.
April 23, 2025
Glad you mention one of my heroes Frank Whittle of jet engine fame. His statue in Coventry city centre has still not been removed by the Labour controlled council.
April 23, 2025
There’s time yet.
April 23, 2025
For all his faults – and there are many – POTUS Trump has apparently achieved the impossible. He has managed to drag the war criminal Putin, kicking and screaming, to the negotiating table.
Of course, Putin is still attempting to achieve concessions and impose conditions, red lines etc.
The one thing that must happen at the end of this apparent peace process is that Putin ends up at the Hague, being prosecuted for his numerous war crimes. And Russia, not Ukraine should be paying reparations.
April 23, 2025
Who do you think is going to drag Putin to the Hague?
And why don’t they drag Blair there first, since his crimes were even less defensible than Putin’s?
April 23, 2025
In your dreams.
April 23, 2025
Your last sentence seems rather an unlikely prospect. Will there even be any charges for the Covid gain of function experiments and the lab leaks, or for the millions of Covid Vaccine injuries coerced into people who had no need of them, even had they been safe and effective!
Or any proper investigations for Blair and Campbell and their war on a lie?
April 23, 2025
Dream on. The Russian advance is now being described as ‘a lava flow’. They are so secure that they could afford an Easter ceasefire, being a Christian country that was important to them.
They absorbed more than 4,400 hits from Ukraine or from those fighting for Ukraine, like the ex-Conservative unemployable genetic Italian MP during the ‘ceasefire’.
Hurrah for the Cheaters – is that what you are saying? Close your Orchid House and donation the money to Ukraine, also your savings and your son, then I will believe that you believe that they can win or even just stave off total defeat.
April 23, 2025
When I feel dispirited at what our politicians have done to our country, I console myself with the thought that ‘the whole world speaks English’.
But, alas, ‘they’ have won England has been successfully destroyed and there is no coming back.
April 23, 2025
We need a new “Restoration” as David Starkey explains in his excellent video – it seems unlikely we will get one!
I see that the late Pope was a fan of the Climate Alarmist religion:- He declared destroying the environment a sin, warned that humanity was turning the glorious creation of God into a “polluted wasteland full of debris, desolation and filth”, and located the cause of the climate crisis in people’s “selfish and boundless thirst for power”.
CO2 is a clean, odourless gas that is tree, plant and crop food, vital to life on earth and a net good. So why confuse CO2 with pollution, desolation, greed and filth? They did finally come round to the earth orbiting the sun and in 2013 even raised the age of consent from 12, so perhaps in 50 years or so!
Science is not the Vatican’s strongest point.
April 24, 2025
Each of the Popes have different political bent. Pope Benedict was the opposite to Francis. Far more Conservative politically I’d say. And politically Catholics overall follow the rest of the population (Jacob Rees-Mogg / Evelyn Waugh ultra Conservative whilst Graham Greene was quite left wing). And we’re not obliged to follow the political views of the Popes (unless in very extreme situations – like an evil Communist or Fascist dictator has taken over the country and killing lots of people and destroying the rule of law and our country overall etc but even here he has to be careful in intervention as Popes shouldn’t really be getting involved in politics) but generally Catholic Church leaders more Conservative than WOKE C of E as it has become). But Catholics are obliged to follow the Popes on doctrine etc
April 23, 2025
Hear hear!
April 23, 2025
The ghosting of England by the left and others in the establishment who remain in thrall to the EU is another snub to our indigenous population attempting to make incomers feel more included. Why? They have chosen to come to this country so should revel in our history, existence and achievements.
Shakespeare summed this up succinctly with the line “Cry God for England Harry and St George”. JD Vance was less succinct but not less articulate when he said “[A]s an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens. It doesn’t mean you hate people from outside of your own borders. But there’s this old-school [concept] — and I think a very Christian concept, by the way — that you love your family, and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world,”
We need to get back to this viewpoint as a country.
April 23, 2025
Well said.
April 23, 2025
Lovely words.
What we achieved in turning a fairly small set of islands into a country that was the envy of the world was quite remarkable.
We excelled in almost every field: commerce, industry, sports, arts, literature etc.
April 23, 2025
Is Shakespeare’s name mentioned in UK schools today, never mind his work be included in any curriculum?
I suggest that people view a current cinema masterpiece entitled “Mr Burton” starring Toby Jones et. al. for a truly inspiring cultural experience.
April 23, 2025
Not to mention Newton, Maxwell and others in the physical sciences, Darwin, Galton/Pearson/Fisher invented the science of statistics, Babbage/Lovelace and later Turing/Flowers/Tutte invented computers, Crick/Wilkins/Franklin/Gosling elucidated the structure of DNA …….
April 23, 2025
Thank you for that, the English always seem embarrassed to celebrate what was great about our country, other countries are not at all bothered ie. Americans proudly show their flag on their buildings and in their front gardens but we feel we have to hide ours. I always feel privileged as yesterday was my birthday and I’ve always said I was born between the late Queen Elizabeth and St George and Shakespeare. Well I am putting my St George’s Cross out today. So I say to everyone Happy St George’s day.
April 23, 2025
‘timeless human characteristics and emotions’
Unfortunately no longer timeless for the covid vaccinated and perhaps for their children, if they have them. You have wrecked us in a fundamental way.
April 23, 2025
With our education system reduced to wokism and so much negative press about what made Britain great, is it any wonder there is such a ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude in regards to historic figures of importance.
MSM Soundbites will maybe introduce some to the vagueness of people like Shakespeare, but unless such subjects are studied properly their importance will be lost to us.
An appreciation of our past and how we came to be what we were and what we unfortunately are today is vital to understand ourselves, our motivations, but also perhaps it can stop mistakes being repeated.
Our world today is so glib, generally. Without depth to our existence life does tend to become less meaningful. WE really do need to fix our education system!
April 23, 2025
Adding to the list of English greats must be Tim Berners-Lee without whose invention of the World Wide Web, we would not be reading John Redwood’s diary today.
April 23, 2025
Well like almost all “inventions” it would certainly have arrived without him perhaps just with different protocals. Once you have digital communication (like faxes and modems) and (as electronics became cheaper and cheaper by a huge degree it was inevitable.
As were jet engines, steam engines, nuclear power, LED lighting, grafting, tractors, diesel engines… determined mainly by physics, materials, human needs and the human & economic drivers.
AI will be v. interesting as it will race ahead exponentially. This as better AI and better electronics is the tool you need for even better AI and even better, faster and cheaper digital electronics.
April 23, 2025
Happy St.George’s Day ….a day we once celebrated and was proud of, before our politcians became woke
April 23, 2025
Now we should consider it a national day of mourning.
April 23, 2025
Too true Mickey, my local authority sent a St.George greetings on facebook with text only, no image of St.George as the image might offend …..our best days are behind us
April 23, 2025
//Keir Starmer has called for the English flag to be “reclaimed” from the rioters who went on the rampage in the wake of last summer’s Southport killings.
In comments marking St. George’s Day, the prime minister said: “We must never concede it, because it is an expression of our values and our patriotism.”//
Starmer’s barefaced nerve is something to behold , when he runs a political party and Government that has discriminated against English people in the most fundamental way ,in matter of money with the Barnet formula , in constitutional matters with devolution that has made English people second class citizens, and now they are going to deny us the vote about carving up England into regional fiefdoms. Starmer should be made to explain why his Labour party is a racist Anglophobic party .
April 23, 2025
It’s reassuring to see that children are still studying Shakespeare’s plays; however what is less reassuring is the way they are examined; viz. “Macbeth and masculinity: the struggle for power” and “Romeo and Juliet: Juliet and female agency”. Presumably Mrs MacBeth was a typical housewife who let hubby do his thing and
Juliet was a feminist. Trying to extract modern day pathologies from Shakespeare’s works is to deprecate their universal message which explains why they are studied all over the world and have inspired operas, ballets and films.
April 23, 2025
Tomorrow afternoon at 3 pm there will be a Westminster Hall debate on our trading relationship with the EU.
Here is the briefing:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-2025-0080/?
Searching through the full report for “GDP” I find it is not mentioned at all, so some people may be left with the false impression that our economy depends entirely on exports to the EU, and especially exports of goods.
Nor are there any indications of how much we might gain by the various changes that are being mooted.
April 23, 2025
I am an Englishman and like I suspect most Englishmen April 23 is not and never has been an important date in my diary.
I am far more loyal to the Western system of political, economic, social and personal freedoms than to England or the U.K. in particular and indeed (though I don’t agree with her pacifism) I rather agree with Joan Baez’ view that nationalism is damaging to humanity with the qualification that just as company Directors should look after the interests of the company they manage, governments should look after the interests of the country they manage.
St.George is an outdated myth and when all is said and done Shakespeare was an entertainer who wrote fiction. Those great Englishmen who have produced beneficial innovation in the world like Isaac Newton, the many inventors of the Industrial Revolution (which is probably Britain’s most important contribution to the world) and more recently people like Alexander Graham Bell, Francis Crick and Sir Tim Berners-Lee have been of more consequence than Shakespeare.
April 23, 2025
Whilst not taking away any of the greatness of Shakespeare’s works I have not believed that they were written by William Shakespeare from Stratford-Upon-Avon ever since I watched a BBC programme on the subject back in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s. This programme asserted that this gentleman could never have received the education, the knowledge, the European and English court experiences or the necessary intellectual interaction with peers to be able to write all the excellent works.
The programme thought a more likely candidate was Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, who had a ceremonial position at court which involved shaking a spear. It could even have been a combination of persons which would explain publication after the death of the Earl of Oxford, although publicaion after death is of course not impossible.
April 24, 2025
Original Richard –
No coincidence that the guardian of art and wisdom was the goddess Pallas Athene, born shaking a spear.
If you haven’t already come across Alexander Waugh’s presentations on the 17th Earl of Oxford (who used the pseudonym Shakespeare), I would thoroughly recommend them.
April 23, 2025
I am not patriotic. But I love our English way of life. Even now such quaint affairs as a village fete with the Morris Men leaping about, with a pint of bitter in hand – with the WI meeting in a local hall – and I have to say, and I might be small minded – but I despise the politicians that have allowed multiculturalism to precipitate the feeling that flying a white flag with a Red Cross on it almost feels like an offence.
April 23, 2025
No mention of St George’s Day in the national papers. It goes back to our education system from nursery school to university. The history of the UK has been dumbed down; we are not supposed to celebrate great historical figures like Shakespeare.
The fact it took the Supreme Court to define a woman as a biological woman shows how far common sense has gone out the window as well. If a man wants to dress as a woman, or a woman wants to dress as a man, I have no problem with that. But when their rights are supposed to trump our rights, then I do have a problem.
We should be proud of our history and the great men and women of the past. The UK did not get everything right, but it did far more right than wrong. Our education system should be teaching that!
April 23, 2025
Surely, England and the English was cancelled by the wrecking ball that was Blair. Then subsequently reinforced by expelling all traces or achievement, self-reliance and resilience from the Nation by Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Sunak and now Two Tier Kier. All setting out an agenda of destruction with their ‘one party’ State, the command-and-control form of Socialism that appears to have been indoctrinated with guidance from Klaus Schwab.
Might seem harsh, but when reflected on they have all pushed a similar agenda of fight the people to create oppression and control, with a completely refusal to work with the People, the people that in their own little way collectively causes greatness.
The centre ground of the Nation has been expunged and replaced by a Marxist Politburo.
April 23, 2025
I wonder if English schools have even marked it today, let alone a whole discussion about it. Most people think St George was Turkish, an error that news people spread.
April 23, 2025
Dear Sir John,
It seems hard to be enthusiastic about St George because: 1) he had no special connexion to England before being adopted by Edward 111; 2) so little is known for certain about him and 3) he has, as a result, become encrusted with so many dubious legends like the dragon-slaying. In today’s concerns, however, we should be much prouder of him because he is probably the most internationally revered and ecumenical of all saints.
The best attested story is that George was a high-ranking soldier in the Roman army of the East, who was martyred on this day in 303 CE, during the last great Roman persecution of Christians, because he refused to recant his Christian faith. The nearest equivalent in England is St Alban.
There was evidently something special about him because he is revered in so many countries, particularly in the Middle East and Balkans, either as patron saint of the nation or of groups such as soldiers (Armenia) or farmers (Ukraine). In Bulgaria, unlike England, St George’s Day is a public holiday. So George is a figure of solidarity for Christians there, who are still being persecuted or martyred on a weekly basis.
Finally, George’s appeal even extends to other faiths. He is specially revered by the Druze, but also in Islam. So hurrah for St George, whoever he was.
April 23, 2025
63 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday; from the safe country of France…
April 23, 2025
GC :
Whilst Sir Keir Starmer insisted that Labour was ‘the patriotic party’ today as he used St George’s Day to vow to ‘fight for our flag and what it represents’. No it isn’t and no he doesn’t. This invasion and the giving away of the Chagos Islands is the proof.
April 23, 2025
I don’t know what this facination is with with the US – personally I think the place is a basket case and we would be well advised to steer clear – anything Reeves gets from them now will only put us in the ha’penny place for sure and we’ll end up getting the plastic chicken
April 24, 2025
Well there are so many very different States, inland, coastal, mountainous, marvellous and others flat and little to see. They sort of speak English, enable eating of many cultures’ likes. They have electricity and plumbed water, although many visiting here are surprised we do too! They recognise business achievement and will admire expensive beautiful cars parked publicly, here we risk them getting ‘keyed’ by persons who hardly work living on handouts. The great majority have no need or desire to get a passport, the US seems to fulfill and wish to travel from their home state. Better a friend, why make an indifferent nation?
April 23, 2025
Oh to be (or not to be) in England!
2025 version (to be) updated….
April 24, 2025
Just to be clear, St George was / is a real saint. He’s not some mythical figure as some think. And veneration (not worship) to him, like veneration to Moses or St Paul or St Peter, results in blessings for our country. What we do know for sure is that he was an excellent solider in the Roman Empire but fell foul of the Emperor Diocletian who wanted him and other Christians to return to the pagan religion of Rome.
Lastly, St. George was formally recognised as the patron saint of England by King Edward III in the mid-14th century, specifically when he founded the Order of the Garter in 1348 (but his veneration in England goes back to the 7th century). And in the Church, official veneration to St George was given the green light in 1415 (where the Church forbade work on the festival of St George – except for essential work – in honour of St George. That’s how important veneration to this saint was taken in the past).
April 24, 2025
Perhaps it might be possible to change a Bank Holiday to St George’s Day in England as an opportunity to celebrate / be patriotic (where we celebrate St George but also everything English). A Bank Holiday for both religious people (not forgetting patriotism is meant to be a Christian virtue for sure) and non-religious people but where we can all celebrate something we should all have in common: patriotism (whether for religious or non-religious reasons)!