right then
I know this is not even in the same room as the topic but fuck it it's friday and it's not everyday you get a letter from her Maj...

To the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for 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 over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Your new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, 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:
(You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

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1. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide.  You will be amazed at how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.
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2. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour', 'favour', 'labour' 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'. 
Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels.  (look up 'vocabulary').
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3. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as 'like' and 'you know' is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as U.S. English. We will let M*crosoft know on your behalf.
The M*crosoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of  -ize.
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4. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.
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5. 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 quite ready to be independent.  Guns should only be used for shooting grouse. 
If you can't sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not ready to shoot grouse.
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6. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. 
Although a permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
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7. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left side with immediate effect. 
At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables.
Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.
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8. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly $10/US gallon. Get used to it.
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9. 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 catsup but with vinegar.
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10. The cold, tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all.  Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of  known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. 
South African beer is also acceptable as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer.  They are also part of British Commonwealth - see what it did for them. 
American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.
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11. 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.
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12. 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, 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). 
Don't try Rugby - the South Africans and Kiwis will thrash you, like they regularly thrash us.
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13. Further, you will 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 2.1% of you are aware there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. 
You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out of their deliveries.
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14. You must tell us who killed JFK.  It's been driving us mad.
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15. 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).
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16. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 pm with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high  quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream)  when in season.

God Save the Queen!
( spimf ™ is whoever you want him to be, Fri 13 Jun 2008, 9:30, 10 replies)

wow
did andie macdowell really attempt english dialogue? i had no idea
(threadkiller, Fri 13 Jun 2008, 9:37, closed)

ha!
take that!
( blaireau69 , the Cumbrian Travis Bickle., Fri 13 Jun 2008, 9:44, closed)

Andie Macdowell
had to be dubbed in Greystoke: the Legend of Tarzan as her 'English' accent was so awful. Allegedly.
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Fri 13 Jun 2008, 10:04, closed)

God save the spimf!
And British Bitter and real, fat English chips FTW.

But we can't get rid of baseball - everyone in this country learns to play it in school...except that we call it "rounders." And it is a bit of a shit game actually, so I shall roundly contradict myself and now support the abolition of baseball/rounders.
(LongJohnBaldry, Fri 13 Jun 2008, 10:17, closed)

perhaps it should be renamed rounders instead
but the point about the world series is quite valid
( Reme Philips laid an epic dump on, Fri 13 Jun 2008, 11:07, closed)

They also pronounce 'buoy' as 'boo-ee'
that is unforgivable. And it's not 'strawberry jelly' it's 'jam'.

But I think the Wrold Series was named after the original sponsors, the 'Wrold' newspaper. Although most merkins probably think it's because it's a worldwide event, so screw 'em anyway.
(massively_optimistic that's terrific!, Fri 13 Jun 2008, 11:19, closed)

wow
is it glasscock spam mail Friday already?
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Fri 13 Jun 2008, 17:56, closed)

did you get this off facebook?
i agree with evrystatement on here :D
(Foulkesy123 The one and only..., Fri 13 Jun 2008, 19:20, closed)

Ahem... well if you really must;
To her Vajesty Queen Horribly Inbred the Umpteenth:

Dear Head Limey,

Your recent communiqué in re: revocation of independence has been received by our State Department, and it falls to me to respond in kind. Over the years we have consistently been forced to clean up every bloody mess your nation has made of international politics. It is often us who ends up holding the bag for your mistakes. Were it not for your constant jolly-good cheerio can-do incompetence, coupled with a rapacious greed on the part of your family for a stretch of land on which the sun never sets, our nation would actually be able to promote democracy and equality throughout the world.



In light of this, we have decided to outline our own dictates to you and yours:

1) You will cease, in all further communications with us, in referring to your people as “citizens”. There is no such thing as a British “citizen”, only subjects. Citizens live in republics, subjects live in monarchies. Calling it something nice doesn’t make it nice.
2) You will be forcibly introduced to something we call “dentistry”. It is a few steps above the bleeding and leechcraft practiced by your chirurgeons, so we will be parachuting “dentists” ( they who practice the craft of “dentistry”) in the thousands to your location. These men and women (also referred to as “hygienists” from the American colloquial term “hygiene”) stand ready for the order.
3) Health Codes will not be treated as polite suggestions in future. Violators will be hung, castrated, and drawn and quartered in good olde English style.
4) You will be required to refer to your nation as “Oceania” until conditions indicate otherwise.
5) You will no longer be permitted to use the pound, instead the Indian rupee shall be your currency. We realize that this will only make things easier for the majority of your population, and it is already inevitable, but really, we have the upper hand, and we’d like to turn the screw a bit.
6) Your three remaining naval vessels, the HMS Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, the HMS Cucumber Sandwich, and the HMS Prince-of-Buggerall shall be returned to the scrap heap from whence they came and sold to the Pakistanis. This will also apply to your remaining Main Battle Tank.
7) You shall cease the addition of unnecessary letters to words. The “U” in words like “color” is a hold-over from the constant drubbings your people used to receive at the hands of the French. You know, the French, the frogs ha-ha-ha… why you would continue this practice is unknown to our department – but we surmise that is because you have kept your people ignorant of their own history. You certainly may continue this enforced ignorance (see rule 4) but the spelling will change.
8) Ron Weasly WILL be your king, but WE will be your daddy.
9) We will cease, as of July 15th 2008, to speak English, as it is the language of fork-tongued palefaces. We will instead speak Navajo in the Southwest, Inuit or Sioux in the Northwest, Iroquois in the Northeast, and Cherokee in the Southeast. All correspondence will be addressed to us in all of these languages, every time.
10) We’re with you on the beer thing, so no problem there.
11) All of your subjects will be issued, upon our arrival, their choice of one from the following list: AK-47 or Chinese variant, Barrett® Light .50, or SVD Dragunov sniper rifle. They may also choose two handguns, of any caliber, finish or capacity. They will receive 200 rounds for each weapon. Grenade launchers and similar small artillery will require a hunting license. Hide.
12) We’ve decided we like Iran better than we like you. Therefore, all of your fissile material and reactors shall be dismantled for shipment to the Islamic Republic. We feel they can make better use of it, and seeing as how you have pumped almost all their oil out, we think it’s a fair trade.
13) Henceforth, you and your representatives (“Beadles”, “Bobbies” and the like) shall not arrest, detain, charge or imprison those of your subjects noble enough to defend themselves or others from the sub-race of feral humans known as “chavs”. Your egregiously incompetent mismanagement, of a social structure that you yourself perpetuate, has engendered and fostered the environment in which these “chavs” are immune even from a decent ass-kicking. This will cease forthwith. Furthermore, a “chav” brought in by your “bobbies” for the slightest infraction shall have his or her organs immediately harvested for sale. These proceeds shall go to putting farking air conditioning in your public places, for Christ’s sake.
14) You shall be compelled to put your signature on a Declaration of Dependence, which shall force you to admit the only reason your head still has a crown and isn’t being fought over by dogs somewhere is due primarily to our misguided attempts to maintain our relationship with you.
15) Cricket is gay – it appears to have been designed by Oscar Wilde. Furthermore, the mutants that we allow to entertain us with football would likely eat your so-called “football” players during chemically induced hallucinatory episodes. Artfully dancing around a field for an hour and a half is not sport. It is ballet. The only sport allowed in Oceania henceforth will resemble Cricket; but only in that the bats will be continue to be used in what will be delightfully referred to in the sporting world as the “English People Sneaking Up On and Beating the Shit Out of Each Other” League.

These are not suggestions, they are what will happen. Our citizens are eager to see Europe again, and their experience dealing with the Islamic parts of the world should come in handy when we pay what remains of your country a visit.

Cheers, and all that rot,
Condoleezza Rice,
Sec'y of State.


/hides
(aeon chicken Like the Millenium Falcon, only slower and noisier, Fri 13 Jun 2008, 21:53, closed)

with thanks
Dear Ms Pudding

It is indeed encouraging to see a lowly secretary leap forward to take the fall for her errant employer - almost, dare I say it, British in spirit. Well done you. I have diligently read with some degree of interest the remainder or your long winded and characteristically overblown 'communiqué' (good for you! a splendid word! now try 'chassis').

I wont 'beat around the bush' do please note this is an English a turn of phrase that would require some degree of linguistic heritage or at least the rudimentary wit not to misconstrue as an invite to a 'turkey shoot' or instigation of one of those jolly Presidential assinations you seem so fond of in the lapsed colonies, i assume this is so the 'good Christian folks' of middle 'Ermericer' have a suitable diversion from recreational sibling incest, endemic racism and radical fundamentalist dinosaur denial (do remember science is the preserve of clever people in white coats, not white suits and stetson 'hats')

In summation, I would draw your attention to the following - your proud nation of lumbering bovine simpletons did unfortunately see fit to ignore your apparently 'secret' service escorting a commensurate dullard to Head of State, apparently through some dubious arrangement with elderly people in the Jewish Nursing State of Florida. A man who was recently invited to a musical concert by the popular entertainer Stevie Wonder and saw fit to enthusiastically wave to the performer from his front row seat, in front of the world's press.

I think that should make our position quite clear.

Thanks awfully.
Liz
Ps One will be there on Monday. Please pop the keys through the Whitehouse letterbox. In the meantime try not to damage the planet any further, spit on the carpets, set fire to the curtains or declare war on some squirrels who 'looked at you funny'.
( spimf ™ is whoever you want him to be, Sat 14 Jun 2008, 3:45, closed)