John Cleese's Letter to America

To the citizens of the United States of AmericaIn 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 immediately.

Her Sovereign Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, will resume monarchical duties o ver al l states, commonwealths and other territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy), as from Monday next.Your new prime minister, Tony Blair, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may 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," and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.
2. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour', 'favour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix "ize" will be replaced by the suffix "ise."
3. Yo u will learn that the suffix 'burgh' is pronounced 'burra'; you may elect to respell Pittsburgh as 'Pittsberg' if you find you simply can't cope with correct pronunciation.
4. Generally, you will be expected to 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 unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.
5.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."
6. You will relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out Task #1 (see above).
7. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday. November 2nd will be a new national holida y, but to be celebrated only inEngland. It will be called "Come-Uppance Day."
8. 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.
9. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
10. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.
11. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric immediately and wit hout t he benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.
12. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling "gasoline") -roughly $6/US gallon. Get used to it.
13. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called "crisps." Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with mayonnaise but with vinegar.
14. Waiters and waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.
15. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred t o as " beer," and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as "Lager." American brands will be referred to as "Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine," so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.
16. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English dialogue in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.
17. You will cease playing American "football." There is only one kind of proper football; you call it "soccer". Those of you brave enough will, in time, will be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).
18. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to ho st an event called the "World Series" for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable.
19. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.
20. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due backdated to 1776.

Thank you for your co-operation.

John Cleese

All go

Well the school term is now up and running and in usual form scouts has now restarted and appears to be going quite well. We have lost a few members over the summer and seem to have replaced some of them with new members which is quite nice.

The weather is even on our side tonight we were outside and in true British style is rained all dayt and still turned out nice for us to spend the evening on the heath playing a wide game, in the darkness with a couple of glow sticks to mark out the mid-point and the bases plus the two flags that we were using.

The weekend wil lbe fairly quiet a meal with some friend tomorrow night then Underwater hockey training on Sunday. All ready to go back to work on Monday

Birthday Time

Every year there is one day that scares everyone and of course is the thought of waking up officially a year older than you were when you went to bed. This years birthday was a little strange, although Ive been away from home now for 6 birthdays this was the first time that I didnt have contact with my parents. In their wisdom they decided that early september was the ideal time to go for a bu trip and cruise through the rockies amd one of the Alaska Fjords.

However all wasnt lost I still had the usual barrage of cards (although the presents are starting to become fewer but at 28 I guess that is part of the course. 17 of us went out for a meal at the local Napalanese place that was absolutuly fantastic, I even got a present from them in the form of two bottles of champers that we all shared after the meal along witth the two mint ice creams that acted as cakes.

Summer Sun

Well is is now the beginning of September and although my birthday is only a week away (yes Im getting older still 28 this year) it appears that the summer sun is slowly starting to fade. The last couple of weeks has seen some more rain (which is quite good as we have needed it down here).

I recently spent two weeks at home visiting the family, friends and walking in Scotland so that I could get a small break from work before everything starts up again for the winter, Scouts, football and preparations for the Jamboree (although they have been shooting through at a frantic rate even over the summer).

What have I been up to well, as Ive just said the Jamboree preparations have kept me busy as I in charge of all the merchandise that we are selling thats the Clothing line and the Badges (see here for details) which takes a surprising amount of time. As a Contingent (Unit) we have to think of what extra items we need to buy for the Jamboree too.

The rest of the summer has been fairly relaxed actually a few days here and there the rest spent at work. My sporting life continues as normal although my Underwater Hockey moved to and from the outdoor pool for the heat of the summer for our midweek session.

Apart from that that seems about it.