To the Citizens of the United States of America :

In 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 over all states, commonwealths and other territories (except Kansas , which she does not fancy), as from Monday next.

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:

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. You 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 4 will no longer be celebrated as a holiday. November 19 will be a new national holiday, but to be celebrated only in England. 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 without the 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 $10/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 to 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, 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 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 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

Old, myth and wrong (in john cleese sense, not genral principle!!!).

Other than that it's quite funny...

Commanche wrote:
Old, myth and wrong (in john cleese sense, not genral principle!!!)

The trouble with always making negative posts, is that people will always treat you negatively!

So, for Mr Padantic The full story... Sigh...

Commanche wrote:
Old, myth and wrong (in john cleese sense, not genral principle!!!).

Other than that it's quite funny...

Indeed, largely thanks to a guy called Peter D. Rieden from MessyBeast (BAe SYSTEMS). A less widely distributed version of his work is here: http://www.messybeast.com/dragonqueen/ultimate-firework.html

from link above:
The Notice of Revocation of Independence was originally posted 8th November, 2000 by Alan Baxter (Rochester, U.K.) on an internal newsgroup of a company which spans the U.K., U.S. and Australia. I work for the same company and use the same newsgroups so I got to see the early versions of the Revocation and find out about its history. After a few more additions, extending a four-point item to a 10-point and then a 13-point item, Peter Rieden (Farnborough, U.K.) mailed the Revocation to the external newsgroup sci.military.naval on 15th November to entertain American subscribers during off-topic discussion of election issues.
Peter's line of work is in seaborne defense systems.

Peter expected to be flamed or email-bombed for his contribution, but the following day, the Revocation was sent out as a joke-of-the-day and appeared in email inboxes and newsgroups worldwide. Upon a few more refining comments (added by other individuals) it became the article which was emailed around the world.

Peter Rieden doesn't claim authorship of the various versions currently in circulation although he has been identified as a co-author of the original version. He claims that the version he mailed to sci.military.naval had 10 items in the "list of things you must do" and had been forwarded to him from a friend at Warton, U.K. (Warton is another company site, so the Revocation was already doing the rounds within the company). Peter subsequently posted his own revised version (to which he had added three more items in the list) elsewhere on worldwide Usenet and this second version began doing the rounds as well. As far as Peter can remember, the originator of the idea (but not the actual text) was the BBC Radio Four "Today" program (06:30 to 09:00 morning news program).

On Thursday 16th it appeared on the BBC News Website. On Sunday 19th November, the Revocation of Independence was mentioned on the 09:00 U.K. ITV News. On 20th November I received the Notice of Annexation of the U.K. by the U.S. (text) by email. It seems to originate from within the same company, but was not authored by Baxter and Rieden. On Tuesday 21st , the email version of Revocation was read out in full on BBC Radio Merseyside and appeared on the front page of the prestigious U.K. newspaper, The Times, in the article "Who Wants to Be a President?" which read: "The latest bumper sticker reads 'Screw this I'm moving to Canada' and an internet proclamation suggests that as America's 224-year experiment with independence seems to be in chaos, it may be time for Her Majesty to take over again"

On 20th November one of the credited authors, Peter Rieden wrote to the company newsgroup where the Revocation first appeared that the Revocation of Independence had proven to be something of an embarrassment. He had received some 200 emails from overseas subscribers (including Americans) to the jokes mailing list, all along the lines of "ROFLMAO." There had not been a single negative response. By this time, recipients were adding their own personal thoughts to the Notice of Revocation, leading to multiple versions in circulation. The Revocation had become email lore and references (citations) and excerpts were appearing in online and hard-copy publications. It was also being discussed on Usenet, a Yahoo site and About's Urban Legends and Folklore forum. Most versions have 10 or 12 points, though these vary between versions. The most common variant has 15 points and is a compilation of five or six different versions.

A spur-of-the-moment internal newsgroup posting inspired by an off-the-cuff comment by a Radio Four presenter has sparked one of the best political parodies on the Internet in recent times.

[KM] The Husband wrote:
Commanche wrote:
Old, myth and wrong (in john cleese sense, not genral principle!!!)

The trouble with always making negative posts, is that people will always treat you negatively!

So, for Mr Padantic The full story... Sigh...

Hubber I am sure I have told you before its Pedantic boy. One half of the crime fighting duo Literal Man* and Pedantic Boy, who are most famous for their titanic struggles with the evil villain Sweeping Statement.



*and same sex marriage

Thread closed due to pure bollocks being posted, on a thread that intended to be a laugh...

i thought it was funny