Colonel Panic wrote:The Queen can still issue edicts that override the vote of Parliament.

It's not invoked often, but the power is still there in place. And when it is invoked the results are never pretty.

Give me a recent example of this and I'll be amazed.

By recent I mean within the last 60 years.

I will be amazed.

Well I'm not too up on current events in British government, but the most recent example I know of was when a Royal Edict was used to displace some 2,000 natives of the Chagos Archipelago from their homes on Diego Rivera Island and relocate them en masse to a makeshift shantytown on the Island of Mauritius some 1500 miles away, where large numbers of them succumbed to prolonged disease and starvation. Parliament voted to leave the inhabitants where they were and the Queen signed an edict to override their vote.

The reason for this mass deportation? To clear the island for the construction of a US Naval base, ironically named "Camp Justice."

Since this gross civil rights violation occurred, the UK and US governments continue to deny any wrongdoing in the affair, and the dispatriate citizens of Diego Rivera Island have been repeatedly denied any form of retribution or compensation.

There was an excellent documentary made in 2004 about this incident, titled "Stealing A Nation." You can read about it here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1027.htm

I believe they have the documentary available for BT download on http://www.chomskytorrents.org

Watch the docu. I agree, it is quite amazing, though I can think of a few other adjectives that might be more apt.

The government in power at the time (Labour) asked for the royal edict, the royals themselves did not choose to override the vote on their own.

Um, ok...

tastes much, much better than


I just conducted a way-scientific comparison. Brits win this one.

Do Mounds contain coconut ?

Incidentally I shall never forgive Mars for changing the name of Marathon bars to Snickers.

I mean, ffs,.. Snickers

Mark wrote:Do Mounds contain coconut ?

Yep. The two specimens I posted are basically the Brit/American analogues of each other.

We also have Almond Joy, which has a big almond (duh) on top, and is milk chocolate.

Since I reject milk chocolate and all its evils, I did not partake of the blue Bounty in this case as a comparison.

Personally I prefer Cadburys to Mars any day

MrFood wrote:I'm not exactly over-the-moon that I'm Engish - but praise be that I'm not from fucking Wales.

The horror.

McClusky. Vic Reeves. Vic FUCKING Reeves. The man plays a raging air guitar and sings about his lucky lucky carpet.

Oh yeah - Kevin Balcom. My grand uncle (is that what my grandmother's brother would be called?), who didn't leave the UK with much of the rest of his family during WWII and remains on his farm in Wales to this day. I've never met him, but on my 8th birthday he mailed me a lovely wooden tobacco pipe with a note saying "Until you're 18, this pipe may only be used for beating Packies."

That justifies the Wales right there.

Uncle Ovipositor wrote:

MrFood wrote:I'm not exactly over-the-moon that I'm Engish - but praise be that I'm not from fucking Wales.

The horror.

McClusky. Vic Reeves. Vic FUCKING Reeves. The man plays a raging air guitar and sings about his lucky lucky carpet.

Oh yeah - Kevin Balcom. My grand uncle (is that what my grandmother's brother would be called?), who didn't leave the UK with much of the rest of his family during WWII and remains on his farm in Wales to this day. I've never met him, but on my 8th birthday he mailed me a lovely wooden tobacco pipe with a note saying "Until you're 18, this pipe may only be used for beating Packies."

That justifies the Wales right there.

I don't understand. Being a racist farmer is justification of what? Or is that "packies" being used to mean something else?

Plus, in what way is Vic Reeves Welsh? Not trying to do down the Welsh in any way, but, well, he just isn't. He's from Darlington.