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European language?
"Do you really think that the Netherlands has more in common with Portugal than with the UK? I don't"
Yes. Netherlands and Portugal are European countries. Britain, or at least England, isn't.
"is it really possible to claim that Britain is distinct from 'the continent',"
Yes. For a start, most Continental countries have the Napoleonic code of law, which is the code of law for dictators, whereas Britain has the much more democratic Anglo-Saxon code. Britain, like the Continentals, doesn't have an actual written constitution, which is better than having a written constitution because it is more flexible. Instead, Britain has several documents that we call put together as our constitution, such as the Magna Carta, the Domesday Book and the Bill of Rights. We've also got a much smaller Muslim population than nearly every Continental country, and we're much more global and outward looking. Britain is the only European country that trades more with countries outside of Europe than within Europe, whereas the Continentals are horribly inward looking and ignorant of the world outside of Europe.
That should have been: "Britain, UNLIKE the Continentals, doesn't have an actual written constitution...."
Adam, you speak like Jordi
http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t1657-45.htm Jordi said: "Remember I was brought up in an Anglo-Saxon culture of Catalan parents". All the nationalists are the same shit.
Anglo Saxon (British) Code
Innocent until proven guilty. Cannot be tried for the same crime twice (except, now, in certan circumstances.) Napoleonic (French) Code used in the rest of Europe. Guilty until proven innocent. Can ALWAYS be tried for the same crime twice, even re-trying you and re-trying you over and over again until you are found guilty.
=>Yes. Netherlands and Portugal are European countries. Britain, or at least England, isn't. <=
No, the UK, a country is a part of the European Union and is cultural as well as geographical part of Europe. No matter what the BNP nationalistic filth monkey (Adam) says. =>"Britain, UNLIKE the Continentals, doesn't have an actual written constitution...." <= Impossible. => Adam, you speak like Jordi <= Jordi, was a respected member of this site and he left because of all the trolls that settled here.
"No, the UK, a country is a part of the European Union and is cultural as well as geographical part of Europe.
No matter what the BNP nationalistic filth monkey (Adam) says." I'm not a member of the BNP, so get your facts straight before opening your mouth. The EU is a monstrosity, and the French only want the British in so that our taxpayers can bankroll them and make their inefficient farmers rich. I don't see why my tax money should go to subsidise a French farmer. Britain is the second-biggest net contributor to the EU budget, after Germany, but that's only because we have our rebate (something else the greedy French want to take from us). Without the rebate, we would be the EU's biggest paymaster's, paying more money into the EU than Germany, which has a larger economy, and paying a massive FOURTEEN times as much into the EU than the French, whose economy is only slightly smaller than Britain's. The EU is stagnant and decaying, and Britain's economy has been outperforming most Continental economies for the last ten to fifteen years, or so. The sooner Britain leaves this "Titanic" the better.
One MAJOR difference between Britain and the Continental countries is that Britain has the lovely Anglo-Saxon/English/Common Law which is democratic, whereas most of Continental Europe (mainly the countries invaded by Napoleon, which Britain wasn't) have the almost undemocratic and totalitarian Napoleonic (French) Law. One major reason why Britain needs to leave the EU is because the EU is trying to force Napoleonic Law onto Britain.
--------------------------- "CORPUS JURIS" AND THE THREAT TO BRITISH COMMON LAW RIGHTS THE EU WILL NOW GET POWERS TO ARREST AND DETAIN BRITISH CITIZENS ON BRITISH SOIL, UNDER THEIR INQUISTIONAL SYSTEM OF LAWS TAMPERE, FINLAND, 15-16th October 1999 Many people see Britain as being the home of FREEDOM as we created our unique system of parliamentary democracy backed by our COMMON LAW. The latter has been adopted, in various forms, by the other English speaking nations, notably the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland and Malta. Our legal system is unique in that it embodies our concept of the individual’s freedom (Power of the People as embodied in our Common Law) and makes our laws quite different to those of our friends in Continental Europe. These ancient rights are now under imminent threat from Brussels under a proposal known as ‘Corpus Juris’ ("CJ"). How our law differs from that of Continental Europe Our Common Law, as far back as 1215 with Magna Carta, states that a citizen can only be judged by his peers (Section 39). These rights protect the individual against arbitrary conviction and imprisonment. Our Common Law recognises several vital rights to the citizen: *The right of Habeas Corpus (that the accused must be taken to a public court within a very short period of time, usually 24 hours, and the accusers must produce their evidence then and there) *The right to Trial by Jury at which jurors can in fact even disregard the law if they think it would give an unjust conviction. The jurors are thus ‘sovereign’ *If found innocent, the accused cannot be tried again on the same charge (‘double jeopardy’) In other words our process is 1) suspicion,2) investigation, 3) arrest, 4) charge. Under the Continental system, know as the Inquisitorial System (often loosely referred to as the Napoleonic system) things are quite different: In Europe the sequence of events is 1) suspicion, 2) arrest, 3) investigation and 4) charge. In other words the citizen can be arrested and imprisoned without anyone having to produce any evidence against him. There is therefore: *No Habeas Corpus so one can be imprisoned for very long periods (weeks, months, occasionally years) without any evidence being produced against you *No right to Trial by Jury as their system involves judgements being made by a career judiciary who are the judges and prosecutors and who are, to all intents and purposes, ‘colleagues’ (a quite separate body of lawyers makes the defence and are often treated as inferiors) *In most instances the accused can be tried a second time for the same offence, since the prosecution has the right of appeal against acquittal. http://www.silentmajority.co.uk/eurorealist/corpus_juris.html So, basically - Anglo-Saxon code of law - 1) suspicion,2) investigation, 3) arrest, 4) charge. Napoleonic law - 1) suspicion, 2) arrest, 3) investigation and 4) charge. In other words the citizen can be arrested and imprisoned without anyone having to produce any evidence against him. I'm glad I live in England which has, for a thousand years, been the freest country in the world. God help us if the subsidy-dependent French and their lackies (all the Continental countries) make Britain adopt the French/Inquisatorial/Napoleonic code of law.
=> I'm not a member of the BNP, so get your facts straight before opening your mouth. <=
You are the last person on earth to say such a thing you BNP pig.
Adam — you go on about differences in the legal system as though it trumps everything, whilst you ignore practically everything else. My view is that factors such as this don't necessarily influence people's values, attitudes and lifestyle very much. Nigeria uses Common Law, for heaven's sake; surely you don't believe that Britain is more like Nigeria than, say, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands etc.?
You seem to have a very empirical mindset. Although that it isn't necessarily a bad thing, it can can lead to problems when discussing culture, for the reason that culture is non-empirical. My views on the matter come from experience, rather than a table of data. I'm actually much more familiar with Belgium than I am with the Netherlands — the only reason I chose instead to use the Netherlands in my example was to prevent people from using the Roman Catholic argument, which I've heard before. But it'll probably be safer if I stick with Belgium from now on. From my experience in Belgium, I find that it 'feels' much more like Britain than Portugal. The lifestyle of the Belgians on the whole seems much more like that of the British than that of the Portuguese to me. Whether or not I'm unfairly biased towards Belgium over Portugal from being able to speak French, whilst only being able to understand limited Portuguese through my less detailed knowledge of Spanish, I don't know. If you have honestly reached the opposite conclusion from your experiences with communicating with other Europeans and visiting other European countries, I'd be interested to know how.
Don't even try to discuss with the BNP pig Adam benjamin, it's pointless.
____________________ http://www.langcafe.org/
Okay, maybe that's the best. Although I've only come here recently, I've seen that many of his views seem rather 'extreme', at least from my perspective (but maybe they're not in the particular part of England in which they live, I don't know).
I don't know where some people get that sort of far-right attitude from, but I know that there are similar groups in other European countries. So Sander, have I interpreted correctly that you are a Dutch person who lives in the UK? Maybe I'm wrong, but I think you said something to that effect somewhere.
I'm a Dutchman living in my natural habitat, the Netherlands ;-)
Adam, the BNP pig, actually is from 'Bolton' (wherever that is ) and his real name is 'adam battersby' . ______________________ http://www.langcafe.net/
Bolton... in Lancashire (Northwest), I assume. As an over-generalisation, there is rather more racism and xenophobia in Northern England than in Southern England, so I can't say I'm surprised.
I've just seen your avatar on that LangCafé forum — it's almost exactly the same as one I use on many forums! I made mine using blends in Photoshop -- did you find yours somewhere or did you make it? Here's mine: http://www.sylvanian-families.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/eu.gif |