Mainland England/WWI

davewitley dfrankiswork at netscape.net
Mon Jan 24 13:51:40 UTC 2005


Catlady wrote:

> << So next time I was stuck in an airport with my plane delayed
> (fairly normal as I'm not from mainland England, but I'm at 
university
> on the mainland) >>
> 
> *sympathetic shudder* at delayed planes being normal. Btw, as a
> USAmerican, I'm not accustomed to the phrase 'mainland England'. 

Yeah, I was interested in that one.  My take is: not Scotland, Wales 
or Northern Ireland because one would just say 'England'; not the 
Channel Islands or Isle of Man for the same reason since although 
they are not normally regarded as countries they are not part of 
England; not Isle of Wight (probably) or a lesser inshore island, 
because one wouldn't usually fly (though perhaps to the north of 
England?); that leaves the Isles of Scilly, I think.  Fog, I bet, 
delays the planes.

>I'm not aware of WWI being mass
> insanity -- didn't I already post about this during LOTR-FOTR movie
> discussions? -- a *few* Serbian nationalists plotted to 
assassinate an
> archduke and one of them more-or-less accidentally succeeded, so 
the
> Austrian-Hungarian Empire found it necessary to militarily chastise
> Serbia (I think it's called something like "suppressing an
> insurgency"). Apparently the Russian Empire found it necessary to 
send
> an army to defend the Serbs because they were fellow Orthodox
> Christians. Then countries found it necessary to join in on one 
side
> or the other because they had treaties to ally with Austria-
Hungary or
> Russia or one of the other countries that joined in. 

I agree that to put all the blame on Germany is a little one-sided, 
but somehow your rebuttal of the charge of mass insanity is not 
working for me here.

David







More information about the HPFGU-OTChatter archive