— nofarhorizons (@nofarhorizons) October 27, 2015
Hillary Has Millennials sign loyalty pledge in order to attend #cleveland event http://t.co/NJshGnYt4p pic.twitter.com/XwqLONkz3g
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZitoTrib) September 7, 2015
Well this isn't right... Where's the Union Jack!?!? @BritAthletics
(this is the kit for worlds) pic.twitter.com/RAVoi6yRex
— Greg Rutherford (@GregJRutherford) August 13, 2015
The trouble with the United Kingdom’s flag, when you come to think about it, is that it is really quite ugly. I have every sympathy for the designers who removed it from the British athletics team’s vests for the imminent World Athletics Championships in Beijing. Olympic long jump champion Greg Rutherford has complained that “it isn’t a British kit any more” because it hasn’t got the union flag, but the decision makes sense aesthetically. The new vest is an elegant flowing dance of red, white and blue – the flag’s colours, remember – and has Great Britain written on it in big letters. It just doesn’t have that jagged, explosive, aggressive flag.So, your problem with the Union Flag is an aesthetic one, right ?
I don’t mean the union flag is aggressive because it embodies an imperial arrogance or a coercive union that keeps Scotland in its place. No, it just looks as if it does.Nothing to do with divisive politics then...Go on, do say...
Look at it, if you can bear to. With its cluttered burst of both right-angled and diagonal radiating lines, the British flag is heavy and overbearing, forceful and strident. On a battlefield it would make sense. Sure, this virulent standard served to rally regiments at the Battle of Waterloo. But today? At sporting events? It looks crap. Instead of suggesting unity, its sharp-angled divisions imply fragmentation. In fact, the relentless dynamism of its design evokes the shock and shatter of a cannon ball smashing into a French ship at the Battle of Trafalgar.Who wants a dynamic flag, with any sense of urgency or purpose, huh ? And those 'sharp-angled divisions' sure as hell put me in mind of a 'cannon ball smashing into a French ship at the Battle of Trafalgar'...wait, you meant that as a...bad thing...right ? So, anyway, go on with your aesthetic critique...
This was fine when Britain ruled the waves but its military hysteria makes no sense nowadays. To see how visually repellent* the union flag really is you just have to contrast it with a truly great national flag, that of the United States. The American flag is beautiful, as the artist Jasper Johns saw very clearly when he made one out of collage and waxy paint. The stars and bars** are soothing and reassuring to look at. Those layers of repeated lines have a quality of minimalist art, although they date from long before such art was invented. Perhaps America’s flag has had a hidden influence on all its art movements, not only on Johns. The bars hang there in harmony and peace, and the stars float majestically in their blue ether.You.Have.Got.To.Be.Shitting.ME.!!! The American flag, scraped hastily together out of scraps of its own forebear ? That stripey-assed Waldo-esque remnant of centuries past ? I'll acknowledge that there are in fact worse flags...by far...but, as a symbol of the supposed leader of the free world, the US flag is a joke. I could take your argument seriously if you acknowledged just about any other iconic flag but that one...
...The same goes for the French tricolour, another of the world’s most attractive flags. Its simple rectangles of colour are bold but beautiful. No wonder it has been imitated by so many other nations in varying colours.Erm, yes. Yes, indeed.
You don’t see many other countries imitating the British flag.Wha...wha...what ? Never mind how many flags explicitly incorporate the Union Flag directly, such as a certain US state, or are otherwise symbolically based upon elements of the Union Flag, such as the flag of the United States itself, or use similar motifs such as Jamaica. Just WTF are you talking about ?
The flags of the United States and France are the results of 18th-century revolutions that gave their creators a sense of starting afresh. No ghosts of the past or compromised histories influenced the design of these revolutionary standards. On the contrary, they needed to be totally new, to symbolise new constitutions, new beginnings.Bull-fucking-shit !
...Perhaps Rutherford’s objection to the British flag’s disappearance from the national British athletics team’s kit reflects an anxiety about insidious anti-union propaganda, as if in the age of SNP triumph it is becoming politically incorrect to sport unifying British symbols too proudly. But I would argue it the other way around. Perhaps the union flag itself is a psychological boost to nationalists who want to break up Britain. Its sheer pompous ugliness unconsciously damages the image of the union.Fuck you !
So here is an idea to save the United Kingdom as a political, emotional and cultural entity. Let’s invent a new flag. Let’s visually forget the history of internal compromise and external violence this flag so unattractively embodies. A new flag for a new Britain might help us love our – whole – nation again.Like you give a flying fucking shit about the union...I just shat all over the evil emperialist entity that is the English, and would much rather see the damn thing dissolved, but yeah, let's fantasise about a new 'Union Flag' that we could all celebrate after we finally killed the beast... Not that we need bother given said arsehole's fondness for the flag of the United States of America:
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| US Flag with 51st star for additional state, such as Puerto Rico |
The Duchess of Cambridge is famed for her glossy, lustrous locks.
But she has been offered some sage advice by celebrity hairdresser Nicky Clarke, who fears she faces potential "disaster" by letting them go grey.
The Duchess, 33, has occasionally revealed a small patch of silver, most recently in February when she was six months pregnant with Princess Charlotte.
But Clarke has urged her never to do so again.
"Kate needs to get rid of her grey hair — it's not a good look," he told the Daily Mail.
"She does have amazing things done to her hair and it can look great, but unfortunately it's the case for women — all women — that until you're really old, you can't be seen to have any grey hairs."
Clarke, 57, who has styled Princess Diana and the Duchess of York, claimed grey hair would be "disastrous" for the Duchess.
He added: "It's different for men. Men can go grey in their mid-50s and still be considered attractive. It's the whole silver fox thing. But it's not the same for women. Kate is such a style icon that even a few strands of grey would be a disaster, so I highly recommend that she cover it up. I hate grey hair."If I could actually resign from humanity, and there were anywhere else the fuck to actually go...I'd do it. And don't doubt it for one moment.
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Bolivian president Evo Morales presents a hammer and sickle-shaped crucifix to Pope Francis during the exchange of presents in La Paz.
Photograph: Agencia Boliviana de Informacio/EPA
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Vatican officials appear to have been flummoxed after Pope Francis was presented with a communist crucifix depicting Jesus nailed to a hammer and sickle by Bolivia’s president Evo Morales.
The gift from the leftwing leader caused an immediate stir among conservative Catholics who said the pontiff was being manipulated for ideological reasons.
The response of the pope was less clear. After being handed the wooden crucifix during a formal ceremony, he examined it for a few seconds before returning it to a Bolivian presidential aide.
His comments were largely drowned out by a flurry of camera clicks, prompting a flood of speculation. While some have claimed he expressed irritation, muttering the words “eso no está bien” (“this is not right”), Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said the pope was more likely to have uttered “eso no sabía bien” (“I didn’t know that”) in bemusement at the origins of the present.
The Bolivian government insisted there was no political motive behind the gift. Communications minister Marianela Paco said Morales had thought the “pope of the poor” would appreciate the gesture.
Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont who is vying for the Democratic nomination for president, took offense on Wednesday to a statement from a radio talk show host who suggested that he is a dual Israeli-American citizen.
According to a report in the online news magazine Politico, Sanders, who is Jewish, was surprised when WAMU radio host Diane Rehm remarked during their interview, "Senator, you have dual citizenship with Israel."
The liberal senator, who is officially an independent but is running as a Democrat, replied: "Well, no I do not have dual citizenship with Israel. I'm an American. I don't know where that question came from. I am an American citizen, and I have visited Israel on a couple of occasions. No, I'm an American citizen, period."
Rehm, whose show is syndicated nationwide by National Public Radio, said that she learned of Sanders’ purported citizenship status from “a list” that was circulating on the Internet which alleges that a number of senior figures in Congress and the administration hold Israeli citizenship.
"That's some of the nonsense that goes on in the Internet. But that is absolutely not true," Sanders said.
Malaysian authorities have detained four tourists - two Canadians, a Briton and one Dutch national - for allegedly stripping naked on Mount Kinabalu
, an act some locals say angered tribal spirits and caused a deadly earthquake, officials said.
Pictures of 10 naked tourists had spread on social media and infuriated locals following the 6.0-magnitude quake that struck near the mountain on Friday and killed 18 people. Six other tourists are still apparently at large, according to police.We must hunt the evildoers down now and BRING THEM TO JUSTICE !
Britons are still living in the same 'tribes' that they did in the 7th Century, Oxford University has found after an astonishing study into our genetic make-up.
Archaeologists and geneticists were amazed to find that genetically similar individuals inhabit the same areas they did following the Anglo-Saxon invasion, following the fall of the Roman Empire.
In fact, a map showing tribes of Britain in 600AD is almost identical to a new chart showing genetic variability throughout the UK, suggesting that local communities have stayed put for the past 1415 years.
The ‘People of the British Isles’ study analysed the DNA of 2,039 people from rural areas of the UK, whose four grandparents were all born within 80km of each other.
Because a quarter of our genome comes from each of our grandparents, the researchers were effectively sampling DNA from these ancestors, allowing a snapshot of UK genetics in the late 19th Century before mass migration events caused by the industrial revolution.
They then analysed DNA differences at over 500,000 positions within the genome and plotted each person onto a map of the British Isles, using the centre point of their grandparents’ birth places, they were able to see how this distribution correlated with their genetic groupings.
