and now something totaly different

[allers]

DECLARATION OF REVOCATION

By JOHN CLEESE

To the citizens of the United States of America, in
the light of your failure to elect a competent
President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we
hereby give notice of the revocation of your
independence, effective today.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume
monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and
other territories.

Except Utah, which she does not fancy.

Your new Prime Minister (The Right Honourable Tony
Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now
been unaware that there is a world outside your
borders) will appoint a Minister for America without
the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.

Accordingly, my government will invoke the Anti-Trust
laws in order to break up the monopolistic power of
the former USA. The country of the USA will therefore
be broken up into seperate state entities as follows:

* Alaska will be sold back to the Russians. If they
don't have the cash, it will be offered to Canadians
and then to the Japanese.

* Hawaii, Puerto Rico, American Samoa and other
colonies and dependencies will be returned to their
indigenous people.

* Florida will be given to Cuba. This wll achieve
several things: (1) It compensates the Cubans for the
economic blockade they have endured for years. (2) a
large percentage of Florida's population is Cuban and
they'll feel at home. (3) As the people of Florida
don't know how to vote properly, it won't matter as
they won't be able to vote in the future.

* California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and any other
bits of Mexico won through territorial wars, will be
handed back to Mexico.

* North and South Dakota and any other former
territories taken from the Native Americans will be
returned to them.

A questionnaire will be circulated in 2006 to
determine whether any of you Americans noticed the
changes.

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

1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford
English Dictionary.

2. There is no such thing as "US English." We will let
Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft
spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the
reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of "-ize."

3. You should learn to distinguish the English and
Australian accents. It really isn't that hard. English
accents are not limited to cockney, upper-class twit
or Mancunian (Daphne in Frasier).

4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast
English actors as the good guys. Hollywood will be
required to cast English actors to play English
characters.

5. You should relearn your original national anthem,
"God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying
out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and
give up half way through.

6. You should stop playing American "football." There
is only one kind of football. What you refer to as
American "football" is not a very good game.

The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world
outside your borders may have noticed that no one else
plays "American" football. You will no longer be
allowed to play it, and should instead play proper
football.

Initially, it would be best if you played with the
girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave
enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which
is similar to American "football", but does not
involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or
wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies).

We are hoping to get together at least a US Rugby
sevens side by 2005.

You should 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
2.15% of you are aware that there is a world beyond
your borders, your error is understandable. Instead of
baseball, you will be allowed to play a girls' game
called "rounders," which is baseball without fancy
team strip, oversized gloves, collector cards or
hotdogs.

7. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry guns.
You will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything
more dangerous in public than a vegetable peeler.
Because we don't believe you are sensible enough to
handle potentially dangerous items, you will require a
permit if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in
public.

8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November
2nd will be a new national holiday, but only in
England. It will be called "Indecisive Day."

9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap,
and it is for your own good. When we show you German
cars, you will understand what we mean.

10. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling
"beer" is not actually beer at all, it is lager . From
November 1st only proper British Bitter will be
referred to as "beer," and European brews of known and
accepted provenance will be referred to as "Lager."
The substances formerly known as "American Beer" will
henceforth be referred to as "Near-Frozen Gnat's
Urine," with the exception of the product of the
American Budweiser company whose product will be
referred to as "Weak Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine." This
will allow true Budweiser (as manufactured for the
last 1000 years in the Czech Republic) to be sold
without risk of confusion.

11. 3. From November 10th the UK will harmonise petrol
(or "gasoline," as you will be permitted to keep
calling it until April 1st 2005) prices with the
former USA. The UK will harmonise its prices to those
of the former USA and the Former USA will, in return,
adopt UK petrol prices (roughly $6/US gallon -- get
used to it).

12. 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're not adult enough to be independent. Guns
should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult
enough to sort things out without suing someone or
speaking to a therapist, then you're not grown up
enough to handle a gun.

13. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving
us crazy.

14. Tax collectors from Her Majesty's Government will
be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all
revenues due (backdated to 1776).

Thank you for your co-operation.

[allers]

The American Response to England's Revocation of Of Independence
Author Unknown

To the citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,

We welcome your concern about our electoral process. It must be exciting for you to see a real Republic in action, even if from a distance. As always we're amused by your quaint belief that you're actually a world power. The sun never sets on the British Empire! Right-o chum!

However, we regretfully have to decline your offer for intervention. On the other hand, it would be amusing to see you try to enforce your new policy (for the 96.3% of you that seem to have forgotten that you have little to no real power). After much deliberation, we have decided to continue our tradition as the longest running democratic republic. It seems that switching to a monarchy is in fact considered a "backwards step" by the majority of the world.

To help you rise from your current anachronistic status, we have compiled a series of helpful suggestions that we hope you adopt:

1. Realize that language is an organic structure, and that you aren't always correct in your pronunciation or spelling. Let's use your "aluminium" example. Sir Humphrey Davy (an Englishman) invented the name "aluminum" (note spelling) for the metal. However, in common usage the name evolved into "aluminium" to match the naming convention of other elements. In 1925 the United States decided to switch back to the original spelling and pronunciation of the word, at which point we dominated the aluminum industry. We'd also like to point out that the process of
actually producing aluminum was developed by an American and a Frenchman
(not an Englishman). However, we'd like to thank you for the Oxford English Dictionary. It's an interesting collection, considering that over 10,000 of the words in the original edition were submitted by a crazy American civil-war veteran called Dr. William Charles Minor.

2. Learn to distinguish the American and Canadian accents, and then we'll talk about the English and Australian accent issue.

3. Review your basic arithmetic. (Hint 100 - 98.85 = 1.15 and 100 - 97.85 = 2.15)

4. If you want English actors as good guys, then make your own movies. Don't rely on us for your modern popular culture. We liked "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels", "Trainspotting", and "The Full Monty". We've also heard good things about this "Billy Elliot". But one good movie a year doesn't exactly make a cultural powerhouse. However, you're doing pretty well with music, so keep up the good work on that front.

5. It's inefficient to have a national anthem that changes its title whenever your monarch dies. Let's not forget that your national anthem has an extremely boring tune. We suggest switching to that Rule Brittania ditty, it's toetapping. Or maybe Elton John could adapt "Candle In The Wind" again for you guys.

6. Improve at your national sport. Football? Soccer? This just in: United States gets fourth place in men's soccer at the 2000 Summer Olympics. United Kingdom? Not even close. By the way, impressive showing at Euro 2000. You almost managed to get through the tournament without having your fans start an international incident.

7. Learn how to cook. England has some top notch candy. Salt 'n' Vinegar chips are quite yummy. However, there's a reason why the best food in your country is Indian or Chinese. Your contributions to the culinary arts are soggy beans, warm beer, and spotted dick. Perhaps when you finally realize the French aren't the spawn of Satan they'll teach you how to cook.

8. You're doing a terrible job at understanding cars. The obvious error is that you drive on the wrong side of the road. A second problem is pricing, it's cheaper to buy a car in Belgium and ship it to England than to buy a car in England. On the other hand, we like Jaguars and Aston Martins. That's why we bought the companies.

9. We'll tell you who killed JFK when you apologize for "Teletubbies".

Thank you for your time. You can now return to watching bad Australian soap operas.

PS: regarding WW2: You're Welcome.