Message From the Queen

In light of your immediate failure to financially manage yourselves and also, in recent years, your tendency to elect incompetent Presidents of the United States and therefore your inability to govern yourselves, We hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. (You should look up ‘revocation’ in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Your new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections.

Congress will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated sometime next year to determine whether you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘colour’, ‘favour’, ‘labour’, 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’. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels.

2. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as ‘like’ and ‘you know’ is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as U.S. English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated letter ‘U’ and the elimination of ‘-ize’.

4. 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 are not quite ready to be independent. Guns should only be used for shooting grouse. If you can not sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then you are not ready to shoot grouse.

5. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler, although a permit will be required if you do wish to carry one.

6. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left side of the road, effective immediately. At the same time, you will also begin using the metric system immediately, no conversion tables will be allowed. Both roundabouts and the metric system will help you understand the British sense of humour.

7. The former U.S.A. will adopt the U.K. prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly $10/U.S. gallon. Get used to it.

8. 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 catsup but with malt vinegar.

9. 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. New Zealand beer is also acceptable, as New Zealand is pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and this can only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth - see what it did for them. American brands will now be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat’s Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

10. 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.

11. You will cease playing American football. There are only two kinds of proper football; one that you call soccer, and rugby (dominated by the New Zealanders). 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).

12. 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 there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable.) You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the Australians first (a neighbouring country of New Zealand) to take the sting out of their deliveries.

14. An internal revenue agent from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (retroactive to 1776).

15. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 p.m. with proper cups and saucers (never mugs), with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes, and with strawberries and cream when in season.

Lend-Lease and American help ensured the liberation of the European continent, particularly in the sense that it stopped it being dominated by the vengeful Soviets. Britain itself was safe from invasion after the Battle of Britain in 1940 (her aircraft production exceeded that of Germany at that point).

At Kasserine pass, the Germans were essentially a defeated force short of supply and on the run and their days were numbered whether the Americans or Patton was there or not. To a certain extent, the Americans were the beneficiaries of British experience fighting the Germans, but with no experiance in fighting the Japanese, the Americans succumbed to a similar blitzkrieg in the far east early in the war when they were kicked out of the Phillipines. There is no room to slag off the fighting capacity of the French when every country who faced off against the axis powers performed poorly in the initial phase of the conflict. The only difference was France didn’t have geography or time in it’s favour to recover and learn from it’s mistakes.

As for the War of 1812, we’ll have to agree to disagree. From my perspective, Britain did not seek the war, she wanted to maintain the status quo, and that’s what she did. America’s grievances were not settled by the war, but by other means.
American historians may retrospectively say that annexing Canada wasn’t a goal of theirs, but the fact is it had been since the revolution when the Canadians had refused Washington’s invitation to join the revolution. If Britain had been defeated in Canada, Canada would be part of the US right now. Based on other examples in History of the US going to war against powers in neighboring lands, there is no doubting that.

At Kasserine pass, the Germans were essentially a defeated force short of supply and on the run and their days were numbered whether the Americans or Patton was there or not.

True, but Patton was a different type of commander than Fredendall. Perhaps the first battle between the US and Germans would have been different if Patton was there from the beginning. Kesserine Pass had more to do with leadership than the actual troops.

To a certain extent, the Americans were the beneficiaries of British experience fighting the Germans, but with no experiance in fighting the Japanese, the Americans succumbed to a similar blitzkrieg in the far east early in the war when they were kicked out of the Phillipines. There is no room to slag off the fighting capacity of the French when every country who faced off against the axis powers performed poorly in the initial phase of the conflict. The only difference was France didn’t have geography or time in it’s favour to recover and learn from it’s mistakes.

I think it may have to do with how France was able to fight to stalemate with Germany in WW1, yet fall in less than a month in WW2. The Germans took the exact same path in both wars, so apparently the French didn't learn from their mistakes.

American historians may retrospectively say that annexing Canada wasn’t a goal of theirs, but the fact is it had been since the revolution when the Canadians had refused Washington’s invitation to join the revolution. If Britain had been defeated in Canada, Canada would be part of the US right now. Based on other examples in History of the US going to war against powers in neighboring lands, there is no doubting that.

Yeah, we're going to have to agree to disagree. I don't see how inviting Canada to join the revolution 36 years before the War of 1812 and annexing land during the Mexican-American War (a war that Mexico started) 34 years after the start of the War of 1812 is proof that the US was intent on seizing Canada.

From any account that I read, it was thought Canada would be sympathetic to the desire to remove the British from North American affairs. Perhaps it was thought parts of Canada would want to petition for statehood. But if you can find any Congressional debate that focusses on conquering Canada, I'm interested. If that were the case, I'm sure that the declaration of war would not have passed Congress. As it was, it is the closest vote for war in our history 19-13 in the Senate.

I think you are thinking of the Marshall Plan (of 1947) that was to help get Western Europe back on its feet. The Lend-Lease Act of 1941 supplied the UK and USSR with incredible amounts of suppiles. For example, we sent the USSR about 15,000 planes, 7000 tanks, 2000 locomotives, 400,000 trucks, plus food, boots, and tires. In Joe Stalin's own words: "Lend-Lease was one of Franklin Roosevelt's most remarkable and vital achievements in the formation of the anti-Hitler alliance" We sent the bulk of Lend-Lease equipment to the UK. This is why Germany declared war on the US in December of 1941. But yes I agree, the English Channel (and the British air superiority) was the main reason the UK did not go the way of France. No, I am thinking of lend-lease. American intervention was not what stopped the invasion of Britain, or even what would have won the war. The victory at Stalingrad was won before truly significant amounts of aid reached them. Nazi Germany would have lost the war with or without US aid. It would have taken a lot longer, and the Soviets would have been the ones who 'liberated' the entire continent. Unfortunately, with the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that US aid to Russia, especially in terms of all those trucks and locomotives that were sent to Russia, they actually helped facilitate the Soviet enslavement of Eastern Europe. However, where it not for US military involvement, the Soviets would probably have occupied France, or at least dominated it. True, but Patton was a different type of commander than Fredendall. Perhaps the first battle between the US and Germans would have been different if Patton was there from the beginning. Kesserine Pass had more to do with leadership than the actual troops. I think it may have to do with how France was able to fight to stalemate with Germany in WW1, yet fall in less than a month in WW2. The Germans took the exact same path in both wars, so apparently the French didn't learn from their mistakes. The US needed to learn from its mistakes like everyone else. World War II was different from World War One in that mechanised forces and airborne troops meant that troop advances could be made more rapidly and decisively, and with the advent of aerial interdiction, it was easier to trap whole armies in a pincer and neutralise them. You had less time to recover from mistakes and learn from them. Blitzkrieg was a new tactic that hadn't been faced before, and France did not have time to develop countermeasures to it. Britain had time to learn from experiance, and pass on some of this learned wisdom onto the Americans before Kessarine, but even then, the Americans needed to learn from personal experiance before they were any match for the Germans...

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