What is the most British thing ever?
What is the most British thing ever?
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Christine Moseley, Small yacht owner and offshore racing crew. Participated in 20+ RORC races.
I heard somebody say that it is the shipping forecast,
Britain is made up of a number of islands and the obsession with the weather is well known,so all forecasts are important but despite all of the modern technology available to mariners the Shipping forecast continues to be broadcast by the BBC on its Radio 4 (news and spoken word programmes) station each evening at 17.54 just before the prime time daily news update at 18h00,
Thus we have many thousands of people tuned in listening to storm warnings for Fisher, Dogger, German Bight and Portland Bill etc whilst driving around city centres or standing cooking their teas, all knowing that this weather forecast is not really for them but that it might allow a ship heading into danger to take appropriate evasive action,
And we still listen in awe!
The link is here: Why we love the Shipping Forecast, Radio 4 in Four - BBC Radio 4
I stood in a line of soldiers with riot shields while Iraqis burned a Union Flag in front of us. Our overwhelming views were:
Someone tell them, “We are not Americans. It really doesn’t upset us. You bought the flag, feel free to burn it!”.It was a windy day, the Iraqis were wearing traditional Arab robes, and they had just poured petrol everywhere . We were worried they were going to set fire to themselves.Should we pretend to be upset as it is a bit rude for someone to go through all that trouble to burn a flag and not get any reaction?So we looked angry and banged our shields with our batons, which seemed to please the flag burner. The demo ended, they got back on the coaches, we got out of our riot gear and went back to doing whatever we did normally.
Meanwhile, several years ago in Bosnia, a Royal Marine in a drunken prank burned our regimental flag. Colonel had to beg regiment not murder anyone and said Marine was sent back to the UK in disgrace and Marines made an apology. Veterans are still more upset about that than anything the locals did to them.
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