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Cenotaph....did I just imagine this?

Non Military Chat. A place for chats or dross and down right pointless posts, you decide.
Paddysprat
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Cenotaph....did I just imagine this?

Post by Paddysprat »

I'm currently sat watching the remembrance day parade as I will try to do every year. As like every year there is a fantastic turn out and one which we will no doubt see slowly grow over the coming years with new vetrans and families.

However, did I really see this? Gordon "the so called Prime Minister" Brown lay his wreath and then fail to bow his head?!

If I did indeed see this lack of respect then Brown has just possibly handed David "I'm down with the kids" Cameron a few more votes in this one simple action. Not that he was getting mine in the first place.
'Paddysprat' a phrase used when explaining the origins of an 'Army Brats' accent.
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owdun
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Post by owdun »

The ignorant bastard did indeed fail to bow his head,tells you all you need to know about his attitude to the Servicemen of this country.Mind you,he has sold the country to Europe,him and the Bliar who also had the brass neck to turn up,so we can expect him to be disrespectful .
:evil: :evil:
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got1
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Post by got1 »

Brown seems to have taken over from Prince Philip for gaffs,unfortunately Brown's are more serious.
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arctic lizzard
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Post by arctic lizzard »

what a liberty.

He surely has to be good at something?????????
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Paddysprat
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Post by Paddysprat »

arctic lizzard wrote:what a liberty.

He surely has to be good at something?????????
After watching the Festival of Remembrance today on BBC iplayer. He's good at looking very uninterested in anything that helps pick this country up off it's knees and instills the pride we so badly need injecting back in.

In the space of a week he has failed to show interest at the Festival of Remembrance (not everyones cup of tea granted, a little effort would have been nice though). He's failed to bow and show respect in front of a national monument. Then there's the child's letter he sent to Mrs Janes.

As time goes on I am becoming more and more demoralised with how this country is being run. Then to have a so called leader act in this manner is just pushing me further and further towards the emmigration option. :x
'Paddysprat' a phrase used when explaining the origins of an 'Army Brats' accent.
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Post by London Boy »

Paddysprat wrote:
arctic lizzard wrote:what a liberty.

As time goes on I am becoming more and more demoralised with how this country is being run. Then to have a so called leader act in this manner is just pushing me further and further towards the emmigration option. :x
Did it in 96 mate, as soon as I could, after a few years thinking the same. I could never come back now. I can thoroughly recommend Sweden for a whole host of sound reasons. My top five being:

1. Houses are dirt cheap compared to the UK. Comparing like for like, costing only about 10% of UK prices. I have an 8 room detached house in a small quiet village, huge garden,garage and so on, loads of room for the kids.
2. I'm in a country twice the size of Britain and there are only just over 9 million people in it
3. We have proper seasons here
4. Whenever I wake up in the morning it's because my alarm clock or one of my family has physically woken me up, not some anti-socal type outside or the traffic or workers etc.
5. The education system here makes that in the UK look as if those in charge are totally incompetent.




Also the women are very easy on the eye :D
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Post by waynepe »

Didn't you find the language barrier hard to deal with? or do you speak Swedish?
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Paddysprat
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Post by Paddysprat »

Sweden?? not somewhere I've considered to be honest. Not thought much about anywhere where they speak another language. I just can't get my head round other languages, how do you cope?

Canada is actually top of our list as my misses speaks French and is a teacher. Which means she more than surpasses the required score for entry.

We've also looked at New Zealand but it just didn't feel right to us.

It's also interesting to see how many ex pats regularly use this site....or used to!
'Paddysprat' a phrase used when explaining the origins of an 'Army Brats' accent.
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Post by London Boy »

waynepe wrote:Didn't you find the language barrier hard to deal with? or do you speak Swedish?
I studied Swedish part-time at university for 5 years in preparation and so was fluent when I moved here in 96. However, I'd been speaking Swedish since 82 anyway.
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Post by Paddysprat »

Don't suppose swedish is easy to learn is it? :wink:
'Paddysprat' a phrase used when explaining the origins of an 'Army Brats' accent.
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Post by gunner75 »

Only Swedish I know is what I have picked up from various 'adult productions' over the years.... 'ja jaaa das ist zere gud ooooh JAAA'...or is that German? Anyway I digress....
Im all in favour of bailing out from this country, only difference between my friends and I is that they have actually taken the plunge and gone to New Zealand - I stay and choose to moan like hell about everything and not do much about it. Im very VERY tempted to follow their lead however as all reports have been good. The thing with this country now is that all of the system is rife with people in authority bending over backwards to come across as politically correct. Ordinary folk don't give a monkies about it and dont have the time or patience for it anymore. Its become 'soft touch' UK and the whole world knows it apart from the slime that run the country. English/ British people are fed up to the back teeth of being made to feel second best in their own country. As for this 'Land of freedom' tag I'm finding it hard to agree with it as I find there is bureaucracy, rules and laws to just about every thing - its almost like a nanny state. Bad times.
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Post by London Boy »

Paddysprat wrote:Don't suppose swedish is easy to learn is it? :wink:
Actually, and while not wishing to bore anyone with the rudimentaries of comparative linguistics, Swedish is one, if not the, easiest European language for an English speaker to learn.

Why? Well, because unlike Spanish, French, Italian and Russian, Swedish has a similar grammatical system to English.

This means that unlike those languages Swedish, like English, doesn't have a different ending for each noun - depending on person. And it doesn't have a different ending for each person for each verb tense.

So in English:
I can
You can
He/she/it can
We can
You can
They can

The same verb in Swedish:
Jag kan
Du kan
Han/hon/det kan
Vi kan
Ni kan
De kan

Whereas French, Russian, Spanish etc have different endings for each of those.

As regards nouns

English:
My book
Your book
His Book
and so on

Swedish:
Min bok
Din bok
Hans bok
and so on.

Again the other languages often have a different form for the noun for each person.

The other great advantage with Swedish over both English and French and Danish, is that once you've learned the alphabet, what you see on the page is what you say 99% of the time i.e. words are pronounced as they're spelled. So there's none of this cough (koff) versus bough (bow) business.

Also, Swedish like English doesn't have 3 cases as in German and Russian or even two as in French, Spanish. It has one, (common) except for a handful of persistent (neuter) nouns. So none of that masculine, feminine, neutral nonsense.

Swedish is a dream to learn if you struggled thorugh school with French or German, as yet another similarity shows, in that word order is very close to that of English, at least when compared to French and German

Jag kan rida en cykel =
I can ride a bicycle

Mitt hus är brun =
My house is brown

Mina barn är sex och elva =
My children (compare with Scottish bairn) are six and eleven

And of course, as you'll now notice a great deal of the vocabulary is either the same or very similar- both languages of course being Germanic, nicht var mein freund?

Though, to be honest, it did help (leanring Swedish) that I'd studied French for 6 years, Irish for 2 years, and Latin in school and church as well.

But at the end of the day it isn't all about linguistic aptitiude, it's about willpower. I NEEDED and WANTED to be fluent before I moved so I made sure I was.

That said, I have quite a few British friends in my town who've lived here some of them for over 15 years, who don't speak Swedish at all & aren't bothered about learning it, simply because most Swedes are more than happy to speak English with you, and they're very good at it.

Here endeth ye comparison. :D
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Post by Paddysprat »

:o

Stopped reading when I saw six is spelt sex. Thought you were taking the pee.

Just kidding Londonboy, that was actually pretty interesting. I may have to look deeper into this language. I actually felt I could understand what you said and how the language is similar to our own.
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Post by London Boy »

It is very similar.
And one good piece of advice I give to anyone starting out with the study of a new language is this -study your own language first, learn all the grammatical terms in English and understand how English is constructed.

That helps enormously, because all those terms are used by ALL language teachers when teaching.
So instead of sitting there looking like a wet weekend in skegness when the teacher says genitive, participle, infinitive, imperative, subjungtive and substantive you'll know what he/she means. :D
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Post by Paddysprat »

so what are the bad points London Boy? there's always bad points!
'Paddysprat' a phrase used when explaining the origins of an 'Army Brats' accent.
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