St George's Day Rant
By Mad Man

I was in the pub the other day with some friends and I asked a couple of quick school style questions:

Hands up how many know who is the patron saint of England ? OK most of you. Right now hands up those that can tell me which day it falls on. Not so many of you. So who can tell me when St Patrick's Day is? All of you. And who here is Irish? None of you!

Well that sums it up really. My friends know when St Patrick's day is as it means going out pretending to be Irish and swilling the black stuff until it comes back up again. But what do my friends do for St George's Day? Nothing. Mind you neither do I. This St George's Day there is a good chance that I will be having a curry and a nice continental larger.

So why don't we celebrate St George's Day? Personally I think it is because the St George's Cross Flag has the wrong reputation. The most you ever see of it is being attached to the side of a builders van or tattooed onto some scum bag during some football match. The flag seems to have got attached to what is wrong with this country and that is violence. Mind you the St George's Cross was initially used as a call to arms so maybe the football hooligans are just doing following in the footsteps of their forefathers.

Anyway I think it should be celebrated. We should all be sitting around the table on the evening eating our fish and chips and drinking a pint of warm real ale. What better way to get the family together?! We could recount tails of just how English we are. Although if all of us traced back our family tree far enough I would think you would find that you descended from rather more obscure backgrounds. French maybe due to the Norman Conquest? Or like our royal family your background could be German. Or like half of Hartlepool you could be descended from the monkey that washed up during the Spanish Armada. But wherever you are from raise you pint of warm real ale to our Turkish patron Saint of England , St George!