We're Not Very Good And Nobody Cares

Commulus wrote...

Luke, some of us ‘died in the wool’ Geordies /Northumbrians take exception to being called English, and find this deeply insulting, and to compound insult by calling us 'Cricket loving' English is beyond the boundaries of decency. It would give me the greatest pleasure to give you a damned good thrashing

Posted by: Commulus  | October 19, 2006 12:10 PM

Luke wrote...

Do you remember the Jocks and Geordies from the Beano - or was it Dandy? Anyway I always wanted the Geordies to win because they were English so how does your theory work Commulus?

Mind you, if the Geordie nation ever became a reality I reckon you'd lose to the Faroe Islands and Andorra at football -and cricket come to think of it.

Posted by: Luke  | October 19, 2006 1:19 PM

Commulus wrote...

It was the Dandy, anyhow,
Some points to ponder on Geordie Nationalism.

1. The Northumbrian area was occupied before the Romans. The proof is farming evidence; the Roman wall undulated over the furrows of ploughed field systems.
2. You cannot use the identity of rulers, overlords, or clergy as an indicator to the ethnic identity of its marginalised people.
3. Bede’s account of history is biased and is used as propaganda by historians to this day!
4. Southern English Historians have been sterilising and homogenising English history to fit into a politicised version of History. Bede was not Michael Palin, he hardly travelled!
5. The Saxons did not settle to the North of the Tees… however the Angles did!
6. The Northern region was later occupied by the Norse (Danelaw) who presumable settled here….except for a strange peculiarity: that is, wherever you see Norse settlements they gave them the ‘-by’ suffix (see also -thorp, -trop, or -thorpe, -toft, -tofts) which is strangely missing from the area’ to the north of the North York moors/ Tees and east of the Pennines…..why is the suffix missing…perhaps they did not want this fertile stretch of prime real estate?, but that is most unlike the Viking character. Could it be that the place was occupied by those Romano Celts who were pushed to the North & not the West and in sufficient numbers to deter large scale settlement? Could it be that we are the Anglo/Romano Celts who the Romans left behind? (find a Map on the net such as http://www.viking.no/e/england/danelaw/ekart-danelaw.htm) The explanation given to explain the lack of the ‘-by, -thorp, -trop, or -thorpe, -toft, -tofts’ suffix is ‘geography’ which is absolute nonsense, to say the terrain was an obstacle to the Norse is an example of fraudulent history making.
7. The place names especially north of the Tyne show much Celtic influence, the word ‘Tyne’ is itself Celtic for ‘river’.
8. Segedunum Roman fort (ancient Welsh Celtic name….not Latin as Nexus would have us believe from the Metro station sign at Wallsend) and others place names retained their Celtic names, Angles and Saxons would have renamed everything as they always have! The new names would have stuck had they been a majority population! This could be evidence against theories of wholesale migrations of indigenous peoples.
9. This area was more then a region historically, we were never fully part of England but absorbed gradually, and this was very late in an historical sense, most old maps show the word ‘MARCH’ signifying new territories moving on to the English Crown. I.e. becoming English or Scottish territory.
10. For the term ‘Celtic’ now Historians are seeking to divorce British Celts from their Continental cousins, this is another act of the ‘Englandish’ homogenising process.
11. Subsequent migrations especially Scottish (long term) and Irish (short term famine and 19th Century industrialisation migration) accounted for up to 40 percent of Tyneside’s population and hardly contribute to the Anglo-saxon-ification process. Most migration has been from the Celtic fringes of Britain to the South with very little reverse migration.
12. Your contributors for your articles were from this area and from outside of this area, one contributor from Cumbria and another from Hartlepool is really to the limits of our area, however Cumbria does share a Rievers history but they fit easier into the English box name
13. A significant proportion of people of our area are from later migrations, so the sense of Englishness is really only crutch for most of the disaffected in the modern age, the (football cricket rugby) flag waving fraternity whose capitalistic vendors, TV pundits and Journalists will embrace come the World Cup. …..and even the people themselves looking for an Identity to cling to. No matter how ludicrous that may be.

I don’t Mind British it is much more of a correct label, if a label must be attached! however ‘English’ denotes some shared history with the South, the only links I can think of is our people were exploited by them for industry (Coal Steel, Ships and land), and cannon fodder for war, (25% of the army is still made up from the five Northern counties, (expendable people you see!).

It is only far right wing loonies, such as adherents to the extremist Freedom association (names you may know such as Zoe Hughes, Gillian Swanson, Neil Herron and flat cap flat head), the Tory party and other pseudo nationalists: people with a limited definition of England and English who really get off on the whole English pride trip thing.

It is much easier to say ‘English’ than Anglo/Romano Celtic/Dano/Norse. But to a Northumbrian, ‘British’ is a much more satisfactory title, which can be worn with confidence and exactitude.

Let’s be proud to celebrate our heritage, our history and not some modern facsimile where we in the North must be proud of all the things Londoners or the far right take to mean English.

Let’s bring back the Lindisfarne Gospels & Stephenson’s Rocket and Locomotion, and the Vindolanda Tablets We have been denied our physical History as well as our real history, events seem to conclude to efficiency and expediency by the ‘English’ establishment….whatever that is! and Cricket is part of the binding process of our Newly found nationhood.

p.s. I was allways a 'Topper and Beezer' (sad) sort of guy myself.

Posted by: Commulus  | October 19, 2006 1:36 PM

Little Lord Fauntleroy wrote...

Luke, for that comment I am going to propose that we ride you out of town on a sheep and throw rotten veg at you when you reach the City Walls... How very dare you!!!

Posted by: Little Lord Fauntleroy  | October 19, 2006 2:07 PM

Luke wrote...

I am, for the first time in my life, lost for words!

Some people just have far too much time on their hands!

Posted by: Luke  | October 19, 2006 3:51 PM