Written in Britain - a country with a 1000 year old comedy writing history.

Rating: Null/10 (17 February 2010)

George Bernard Shaw (Irish) once said 'Britain and America are two countries separated by a common language'.
The differences are more than linguistic. USA now has 403 years of its own 'Anglo influence', Jamestown, Virginia preceding Plymouth Massachusetts as the first English settlement in 1607. USA also has the literary history of Netherlands, Italy, Ireland, West Africa and its own indigenous Native population (although the latter two are soaked in enough blood to fill Chesapeake Bay). Malcolm X - 'Plymouth Rock landed on US'.
The fundamentalist Christian right and the Muslim extremist right both have ONE thing in common - 9/11, the beginning of Armageddon, the looked for proof that Nostradumus was right, the start of the final Jihad?.
We find ourselves sharing a planet where increasing strife abounds. Many say 'Can we have the Cold War back, please?'. Was it only 21 years ago that the seeds of destruction were still in the comparatively safe hands of USA, USSR, China, France and UK? Yes it was! History teaches us that nations have a 100 year old childhood and then a 100 year old adolescence before they emerge into maturity. In UK, if one takes 1066 as being the start point of modern Britain, the period of childhood and adolescence was nearly 600 years - William 1 to Elizabeth 1 and the 'Golden Age'.
Then Britain dominated the planet for nearly another 400 years until Yalta in 1945. Since then Britain has been in steady decline as a political force and a world power.
USA had 2 World Wars, Korea and Vietnam in its own adolescence. Then came WWW1 - The World Wide Web and everything speeded up and telescoped into the 'global village. Every village has an idiot - whether it be Blair, Bush or Bin Laden - or maybe earth has become a singularly unlucky village and simultaneously had 3 idiots.
Ideology - demagogue - polemic - fundamentalism - fascism - jihad - Armageddon.....words to strike terror into the soul.
The sane reasonable religions of the world all preach LOVE - actually.
We need love more than an addict needs heroin. 'Love makes the world go round' 'Love is a many splendoured thing' 'All you need is love' 'Amor Vincit Omnia' 'Love one another' 'Love your enemy' So it doesn't matter whether it's the creepy Jerry Maguire (We live in a cynical world, a cynical world) saying it to the execrable Rene Zellwegger (You had me at 'hello')or the magnificent Jimmy Stewart in 'Wonderful Life'or Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy in the dust of San Francisco, or Meryl Streep finally settling for Pierce Brosnan or The Lady and The Tramp or the 8 couples in Love Actually - the message is the same and without it we are nothing.
So nit pickers - elevate your thoughts above the mundane - stop chasing a buck for 5 minutes - find some joy - find a smile - cuddle your loved one whether thats heterosexual, homosexual, multi-sexual or your pet gorilla.