Oh, I say old chap--do you mind not going all "
immigrant" on me, and spitting all over the place? Thank you very
much.
(how Britain proposes to solve the problem of integrating its migrant population)
posted by hadjiboy
on Feb 6, 2008 -
109 comments
BBC Introducing is an excellent way to keep tabs on what's fresh in the British popular music scene without having to live in a rainsoaked armpit. There are four podcasts for you to download, the flagship
Best of Unsigned Podcast,
Homegrown Mix with Ras Kwame,
Scotland Introducing and BBC Radio Northampton's
Weekender. All feature bands that are either unsigned or just recently signed and the music ranges from hip hop to punk rock to what sounds awfully like the soundtrack for a NES game with half-hearted chanting over it. This is an excellent resource whether you're casual searcher for new songs or the kind of anorak who knows which British indie band was first to use an 808.
posted by Kattullus
on Nov 5, 2007 -
9 comments
In October 1947, the directors of
J. Lyons & Co (think - teashops, nippies, bakeries, ice-creams, steakhouses, hotels, Wimpy Bars and Dunkin' Donuts), decided to take an active role in promoting the commercial development of computers.
In 1951 the
LEO I computer was operational and ran the world's first regular routine office computer job.
posted by tellurian
on Oct 1, 2007 -
13 comments
David Oluwale arrived in Britain in 1949, one of many African immigrants. By the close of 1969,
he was dead. Two years later, two police officers were charged with his murder, although they got away almost scot-free despite a massive amount of evidence against them. Although it caused a national scandal at the time, more because of police malpractice than racism, Oluwale's sad story has been forgotten since (apart from a play, written by
Jeremy Sandford, a few years later). However, it deserves to be remembered not just because of a tragic and unnecessary death, but because it was
the first recorded death of a British black person as a result of police racism. A new book,
Nationality: Wog, The Hounding of David Oluwale is helping bring Oluwale's plight back into public consciousness.
Via the BBC's Thinking Allowed.
posted by humblepigeon
on Jun 6, 2007 -
8 comments
BBC News: "Gee, I just love your accent." The American nation may be more wary of crossing borders, but their love affair with the British accent continues unabated. Despite the fact that there are multiple variants therein, and what may be considered a "low-class" accent in the UK is still considered a "high-class" posh accent in the US.
Naturally, the Brits will play this up to the hilt - and it may help in getting them jobs, credibility, Oscars and Emmys, by no less an authority than
Stephen Fry.
posted by badlydubbedboy
on Mar 21, 2007 -
178 comments
There's about to be an
election (pdf) in the British Parliament's second chamber, the House of
Lords. Not an election where the public can choose their lawmakers: that's
still a matter of debate. No, one of the 92 hereditary Lords has died, and those of his party colleagues that remain
get to choose another hereditary peer to take his place. So the election, in which only hereditary peers registered as Conservatives can stand, will be decided by the votes of the 47 Conservative hereditary peers still clinging to the twig. And just to make sure it's properly democratic - the vote is by proportional representation.
posted by athenian
on Feb 18, 2007 -
40 comments
'Films from the Homefront' is a (new) collection of amateur documentaries, newsreels, government films, and home movies documenting life for the ordinary people in Britain during World War II, with background text descriptions/explication.
Browse the themes. The films are QT and wmv format. I found it both poignant and funny, for instance, seeing kids don gasmasks during air raid drills then attempt to continue writing in their lessons.
[via Glasgow School of Art Library]
posted by peacay
on Feb 16, 2007 -
4 comments
1956. France is losing Algeria. It’s lost Indochina. Sure, it’s culturally very productive, with
Nouvelle Vague cinema at its height and existential philosophy gaining ground in the world at large. But to the nation of Napoléon and to one that preferred to emphasise the Résistance in its more recent history, that wasn't enough. What to do? Why, propose political union with Britain, of course.
posted by Aidan Kehoe
on Jan 15, 2007 -
53 comments
Henry's Machyn's sixteenth-century Chronicle was nearly destroyed in an eighteenth-century fire, but editors Richard W. Bailey, Marilyn Miller, and Colette Moore have just published a new online scholarly edition, comprising both a reconstructed text (thanks to the very posthumous assistance of John Strype) and images of all the pages. There are several other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century diaries and chronicles online, including Dana F. Sutton's edition of William Camden's
Diary (in both Latin and English), J. G. Nichols' Victorian edition of the
Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, and the Earls Colne
project's transcription of the diary of clergyman
Ralph Josselin. (Machyn link via the very handy
Textual Studies, 1500-1800.)
posted by thomas j wise
on Dec 11, 2006 -
4 comments
The Memorial Gardens in Surrey has a pigeon problem, and has hired a marksman to come to town & conduct a three year program of pigeon sniping to resolve the issue. The people of Surrey respond, via some of the
funniest letters to the newspaper I've ever read (letters published at the bottom of the article).
posted by jonson
on Dec 6, 2006 -
33 comments
