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Notice of revocation of independence

by Open-Publishing - Wednesday 15 December 2004
30 comments

Edito Elections-Elected USA

by Basil Fawlty (or John Cleese)

To the citizens of the United States of America, in the light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories.

Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Then look up "aluminium." Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. The letter ’U’ will be reinstated in words such as ’favour’ and ’neighbour’, skipping the letter ’U’ is nothing more than laziness on your part. Likewise, you will learn to spell ’doughnut’ without skipping half the letters. You will end your love affair with the letter ’Z’ (pronounced ’zed’ not ’zee’) and the suffix "ize" will be replaced by the suffix "ise." You will learn that the suffix ’burgh’ is pronounced ’burra’ e.g. Edinburgh. You are welcome to respell Pittsburgh as ’Pittsberg’ if you can’t cope with correct pronunciation. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary."
Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up "interspersed." There will be no more ’bleeps’ in the Jerry Springer show. If you’re not old enough to cope with bad language then you shouldn’t have chat shows. When you learn to develop your vocabulary then you won’t have to use bad language as often.

2. There is no such thing as "US English." We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter ’u’ and the elimination of "-ize."

3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents.
It really isn’t that hard. English accents are not limited to cockney, upper-class twit or Mancunian (Daphne in Frasier). You will also have to learn how to understand regional accents - Scottish dramas such as "Taggart" will no longer be broadcast with subtitles. While we’re talking about regions, you must learn that there is no such place as Devonshire in England. The name of the county is "Devon." If you persist in calling it Devonshire, all American States will become "shires" e.g. Texasshire, Floridashire, Louisianashire.

4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys. Hollywood will be required to cast English actors to play English characters. British sit-coms such as "Men Behaving Badly" or "Red Dwarf"
will not be re-cast and watered down for a wishy-washy American audience who can’t cope with the humour of occasional political incorrectness.

5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.

6. You should stop playing American "football." There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good game.
The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football.
Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US Rugby sevens side by 2005.
You should stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the ’World Series’ for a game which is not played outside of America.
Since only 2.15% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. Instead of baseball, you will be allowed to play a girls’ game called "rounders," which is baseball without fancy team strip, oversized gloves, collector cards or hotdogs.

7. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry guns. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous in public than a vegetable peeler. Because we don’t believe you are sensible enough to handle potentially dangerous items, you will require a permit if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 2nd will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day."

9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. All road intersections will be replaced with roundabouts. You will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Roundabouts and metrication will help you Understand the British sense of humour.

10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips. Fries aren’t even French, they are Belgian though 97.85% of you (including the guy who discovered fries while in Europe) are not aware of a country called Belgium. Those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called "crisps." Real chips are thick cut and fried in animal fat. The traditional accompaniment to chips is beer which should be served warm and flat. Waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.

11. As a sign of penance 5 grams of sea salt per cup will be added to all tea made within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this quantity to be doubled for tea made within the city of Boston itself.

12. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all, it is lager. From November 1st only proper British Bitter will be referred to as "beer," and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as "Lager." The substances formerly known as "American Beer" will henceforth be referred to as "Near-Frozen Knat’s Urine," with the exception of the product of the American Budweiser company whose product will be referred to as "Weak Near-Frozen Knat’s Urine." This will allow true Budweiser (as manufactured for the last 1000 years in Pilsen, Czech Republic) to be sold without risk of confusion.

13. From November 10th the UK will harmonise petrol (or "Gasoline," as you will be permitted to keep calling it until April 1st 2005) prices with the former USA. The UK will harmonise its prices to those of the former USA and the Former USA will, in return, adopt UK petrol prices (roughly $6/US gallon - get used to it).

14. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you’re not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you’re not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you’re not grown up enough to handle a gun.

15. Please tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us crazy.

(16.) Tax collectors from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all revenues due (backdated to 1776).

Thank you for your co-operation.

Forum posts

  • Um, we welcome the help here but I don’t think Tony Blair is competent either.

    Why don’t you do us all a favor and arrest both W and Blair and bring them up on war crimes charges at the ICC?

    Who killed JFK? C’mon it is the same assholes that are currently running the US government. They got away with it then, and they have been running rampant since. Have you seen the 911 commission report? Probably written by the same person as the warren commission. It is all a blatant coverup, but fortunately the US media has just about lost all credibility, and in America’s search for truth on the internet all will be exposed.

    Of course we could use more help from the foreign press.....

    • Keep looking over your shoulder, nutso. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that the VRWC isn’t out to get you.

      Just give up. We own you, and there’s nothing your 9th Circuit Court Of Appeals, ACLU, Rev. Jesse Jackson or Sen. Barbara Boxer can do about it.

      Welcome to 21-st century slavery, American style. Assume the position and have the K-Y jelly handy. We promise not to be gentle.

    • I like the idea of the roundabouts, especially the multiple lane ones with traffic lights on them and so big you can spend hours going round in circles looking for the right exit. When you do you have to be really skilled at cutting people up so you can get in the right lane.

      That’ll teach those guys in the states what aggressive driving is really all about.

    • Buggery does seem to rank high on your wish list.This is not unusual ,I suppose, in a country renowned for raping much of the world.Be not anxious to be a slave master.You tried it before and it got you into so much difficulty you had to have the odd Klansman out and about to do a little lynching.How does the song go, "Strange fruit haning from ---"? A country that sees fit to do such things and to elect Shrub is no leader of people.Your national debt means you own far less than you think,if you do think.Remember that before anyone can respect you or your words,they must first respect your intelligence.Your words are worth very little.Did you notice the Star Wars interceptor rocket failed to get off the launch pad?Again America can,t get it up.

    • Well,...Well,...Well, we have Viagra, we have...Cialis...we have internet porn...you stinky poo butt.

    • Dear Anthropod,

      Our national debt is only a fraction of our GDP (Gross Domestic Product) which NO industrialized nation on the planet can paralell. We do own more than YOU think, and for "raping" much of the world - it’s a buyer’s market and who are we to refuse a bargain when we see it?

      Let’s not forget that following WWII the USA gave reconstruction loans to Germany, the UK and Japan. Guess which one repaid theirs with interest? We own you and the Queen too.

      Regards, The Ugly American

    • ALL TRUE!!!

  • Finally a sensible suggestion but do agree Blair should be made to take mandatory U.S. citizenship so he can live with his pal Bush and a nationwide search should be done for someone with a brain, there must be someone, to set up a political party in the U.K. which can win the forthcoming election. Someone who understands the meaning of the word ’democracy’ and the ’will of the people’ and who preferably has an intimate knowledge of Climate Change and the dangers it poses and a burning desire to ACT on measures to curtail further changes.

  • America-hating sounds like a great past time for the jealous. Feel free to stick to your bangers and mash. You may want to reconsider not flouridating though.

    • You may wish to consider learning how to spell fluoride.

    • Only in USA you will see the president make a film with his dog,lol. He should save the tax payers money for either duct tape or fix those Hummer in Irak. Get a life, stop living like sheeps.

      I feel sorry for you.

    • Jealous of what? Having a dumb bastard as our president? Having the trinity of Christ..football, porn, and God? Poorly educated citizens who from now on will be taught creation nonsense as science? An economy that will soon rival Mexico’s? A theoracracy? White wonder bread? Ford and Chevrolet? Name one thing that someone would envy.....

  • Funny but let me correct an error the Original Budweiser had always and still is brewed in Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic and not in Pilsen, Pilsen brews a beer called Pilsner, which does sort of follows. But really funny.

  • Both the US and the UK should be absorbed by the Grand Duchy of Fenwick.

  • Wonderfully funny article and I was never so glad to be American. Imagine having to deal with people as stuffy as the author—GAG ME!

  • Those leftists are writing even sillier texts in order to vent up their frustration since they have been disaproved by the majority they always pretended to represent.

    Like the soviets, they always claimed to represent the people, in fact they only represent themselves.
    They can’t stand people who contradict them. Communist countries used to use concentration camps and tanks against people who didn’t thought correctly. 100 millions people died this way.

    Usually, leftists are arrogant and spend their time telling us what to do and what to think, but today, they become so enraged, that some of them want to overthrow bush.
    Of course, here this text is a joke, but other texts in bellaciao were written in a more serious tone.

    Recently, two "politically incorrect" Dutchmen were assassinated because of their opinions against Islamism among other things: politician Pim Fortuyn by a leftist, and film-maker theo Van Gogh (a descent of the famous painter) by an islamist.

    If I was bush, I would be very careful against assassination attempts.

  • hilarious. If you think you can dislodge Mr "my father ran the CIA" good luck trying,
    but there could be a grassy knoll in Her Sovereign Majesty’s future.

    • You don’t mention Anglo-phobes in your ’caution’ (above). The article has me grinning like a Cheshire Cat. (John Cleese...indeed!) Re the "...grassy knoll..." reply. A less than subtle suggestion you supercilious and condescending Limeys would do well to heed. There are still a few Americans alive and well in the United States...and I can assure you, in the event that you may have forgotten, that we make the wildest of your "Wild Colonial Boys" look like Girl Scouts. Thank you for your time. DOMINO24X

  • So sorry. Let’s review history just a tiny bit, eh? (No, not Canadian at all, but I bet it made you wonder.) What states were actually part of England at the time we declared our independence? Only a few along the coast. The French "owned" Louisiana and on up the Mississippi. The Spanish "owned" the West. (Gracias a Dios. California es de Espana y Espanol es nuestra lingua.)

    Also, notice that word "declared". The United States did not get your permission to be independent. On the contrary we defied you and declared it on our own. Our forefathers died for the privelege. Guess what? No matter how crummy our current leadership, we would die for the privelege now. If you’d like to test your ability to enfore no guns and taxation, please send your troops over.

    Finally, consider who the next in line for the throne is. You don’t even get a choice in electing him or not. If the Queen should pass on, prepare yourself for King Charles the adulterer. You’ll be stuck with him till he dies (long live the King!) and only then will his much more palatable son have a chance to reign.

    • Our ’queen’ and other ’royals’ are all there solely by accident of birth -nothing else. There ancestors stole, raped and killed with hired killers to grab the land, (-hang on, I’m seeing parallels with Iraq, Bush and his corporate cronies here ). Absolute parasites feeding off human kind. Sounds a bit Utopian/Socialist, BUT, WE have the real power, but no collective consciousness to wrest it from those greedy fucks.

    • Espanol es nuestra lingua...
      !Querido se escribe lengua, y mejor decir idioma !

  • I haven’t laughed so much in years! John Cleese certainly hit the nail on the head - it’s just a shame that Americans "can’t handle the truth!" But when you’ve been brainwashed all your lives and only been exposed to revisionist history, what can you expect. If it hadn’t been for the French, America would still be a British penal colony and Australia would still belong to the Aborigines.

    • And if it weren’t for America you’d be speaking German, not English!!!

    • No we wouldn’t. You Americans really need to learn a lot more about the war, and I am not talking about the truth according to Hollywood. We may never have been able to drive the Nazis back across Europe but Britain would never have fallen. We have nothing to thank you for - stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

  • Apparently none of you dunderheads have ever heard of humor in the sarcastic style. I would also like to point out to those of you who do not have a clue as to whom you are addressing, that John Cleese is one of my most talented and ingenious comedians ever to come out of England. Do the words, "Monty Python’s Flying Circus" have any meaning to you? And don’t you know when you are being teased without malice? Can you not take a joke? Some of you people need to calm down a little. Mr. Cleese deserves our gratitude and appreciation for providing us with countless hours of laughter of the kind that almost hurts. Thank you John Cleese and I salute you and the Ministry of Silly Walks.

  • Very funny and sarcastic.
    Brilliant.

  • This has been around since the 2000 election, and was not written by John Cleese (or Mr. Fawlty...)

    http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/weekly/aa112700a.htm

  • Well. Well, well, well. The US going back to Britain would be scary, and I don’t mean for the changes. What I mean is that Britain is just as bad if not worse than the US.

    Funny thing, though. I got a small chuckle out of it. Most "Americans"-ALTHOUGH AMERICANS ALSO INCLUDE CANADIANS AND MEXICANS, BOTH COUNTRIES EXIST IN AMERICA, DO THEY NOT?-really are stupid like that.

  • This would mean more if it came from a country that has had any world relevance since the end of the Victorian era, over 100 years ago.