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OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 1:57:48 AM   
cyberdude611


Posts: 2596
Joined: 5/7/2006
Status: offline 		An embarrssing poll taken in Britain show the British people are losing grips with reality.

-23% claim Winston Churchill was a "myth."
-23% also claim Florence Nightingale was made up.
-A majority (57%) claim Sherlock Holmes was real.
-47% say King Richard the Lionheart was a myth.

Some also claimed Ghandi and Charles Dickens were also made up.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080204/od_afp/britainpeoplehistoryoffbeat;_ylt=AhCy_48NCJlI37CTxcEL8q6s0NUE
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RE: OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 2:02:25 AM   
mydomsabstrd


Posts: 1775
Joined: 10/5/2007
Status: offline 		wow  hate to say it but i bet us americans wouldnt fair much better.

< Message edited by mydomsabstrd -- 2/4/2008 2:03:48 AM >

_____________________________

damn right
i used to care.....now i take a pill for that
i said shush girl, shush your lips, do the hellen keller and talk with your hips!!!!

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RE: OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 2:11:02 AM   
MissMorrigan


Posts: 2309
Joined: 1/15/2005
Status: offline 		As with all polls, they're only representative of the geographic sampling they're aimed at. If you asked 50 people in Moulescomb (for example), Brighton, they would likely not even know who Florence Nightingale (editated b/c I had my fingers on the wrong keys lol) was, and claim that Richard the Lionheart was 'some geezer that ran a zoo', while Ghandi is a river in India. Polls tend not to be an accurate method of acquiring information especially when samples of information are gained from minor groups and are therefore biased.

< Message edited by MissMorrigan -- 2/4/2008 2:14:32 AM >

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RE: OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 2:24:46 AM   
seeksfemslave


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Joined: 6/16/2006
Status: offline 		I'd like to see the questions.
Most who thought Churchill was a myth wouldnt know what the word myth really meant so they might think they were saying  he was a hero.

Dangerous war monger that he was lol

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RE: OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 2:31:33 AM   
MissMorrigan


Posts: 2309
Joined: 1/15/2005
Status: offline 		His parrot far worse by all accounts, and still going strong... his foul language even stronger.

The article cites percentages... percentages of what exactly? It doesn't reference, and I agree with you, that the way in which the questions are put forward are important, specifically in relation to the target audience. It could well be that they asked a hundred school children aged six!

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RE: OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 2:38:58 AM   
meatcleaver


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quote:

ORIGINAL: cyberdude611

An embarrssing poll taken in Britain show the British people are losing grips with reality.

-23% claim Winston Churchill was a "myth."
-23% also claim Florence Nightingale was made up.
-A majority (57%) claim Sherlock Holmes was real.
-47% say King Richard the Lionheart was a myth.

Some also claimed Ghandi and Charles Dickens were also made up.



The reputation of Churchill is certainly a national myth. He was but a figure head in the war and a devisive one at that, he was hated by large sections of the labouring population. When he went to visit the East London  bombing sites, he was often heckled when he told people to stand firm, people noting he was 'all right Jack'. It was the socialists that ran the war economy and kept everything afloat on the home front. I remember adults talking about Churchhill when I was a child, probably 1958, one said when he (Churchill) was born the midwife should have put a shotgun down his throat and pulled both barrels.

Nightingale as a better administratoir than a nurse, it was her organizing abilities rather than her nursing abilities that made her successful.

Richard the Lionheart lived but is very much a myth. He was a useless king, hated England and barely spent a few months the hated country. Like Churchill, he's had a good PR job done on him. His father Henry II, who is largely ignored, he was a great king, diving the executive and the judiciary and inventing the idea of an independent judiciary.

< Message edited by meatcleaver -- 2/4/2008 3:35:06 AM >

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RE: OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 3:59:11 AM   
Foititis


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Joined: 10/31/2007
Status: offline 		A poll taken in America (by an Australian comedy troop no less) showed that exactly 0% of Americans knew the date, month, year the '911' attacks happened. Hmm, lets face it there are enough morons in every country on earth to to make us all look the fool.      

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RE: OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 4:10:30 AM   
MissMorrigan


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Status: offline 		You're right about that, Foititis. Some years ago I read a book by Robert J Stoller MD in which his theory centred on there being a direct link between practitioners of S & M and those who had experienced some kind of medical trauma/prolonged illness at a young age. So, to support his theory he interviewed and 'examined' those who fit his criteria, albeit a heavily biased criteria, then presented his theory as definitive proof.

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RE: OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 4:32:52 AM   
LadyEllen


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From: Stourport-England
Status: offline 		However, if one asked "who won Pop Idol two years ago?" - they'd be able to answer correctly.
If one asked "who plays number 6 for Spurs?" - they'd know

We had a huge event a few years back to mark the relief of Auschwitz. It was on the TV, it was covered in the schools - yet when a survey of under 30s (might have been under 20s) was conducted, the vast majority had no idea what Auschwitz was nor its place in history. What really summed things up for me on the young of today was when my sister - not a stupid girl by any stretch, and someone who had studied WWII at length in school, honestly asked "who won anyway?" - not in the sense of "who did best out of it?" way that we might discuss here, but actually whether the Allies or Axis won.

Our culture is changing. What was important to know before will not be important in the future. This is natural and healthy - our culture changes constantly, but the difference now seems to be that whereas we once brought along all that was useful to us from the past - the exemplars that stood out and gave us an idea of who we are and what to do, this approach is now redundant and only the last few years are found to have any relevance. We can talk about dumbing down, but really we are seeing the trivialisation of anything and everything that is not part of modern popular culture.

Big Brother never had it so good; a population which rewrites its own history to His advantage through its willing ignorance and its aspiration for the next bright shiny distraction He can offer.

E

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In a test against the leading brand, 9 out of 10 participants couldnt tell the difference. Dumbasses.

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RE: OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 4:34:54 AM   
Level


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quote:

ORIGINAL: MissMorrigan

Richard the Lionheart was 'some geezer that ran a zoo', while Ghandi is a river in India.




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Fake the heat and scratch the itch
Skinned up knees and salty lips
Let go it's harder holding on
One more trip and I'll be gone

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RE: OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 4:50:53 AM   
seeksfemslave


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quote:

ORIGINAL: MissMorrigan
(editated b/c I had my fingers on the wrong keys lol)
You editate I'll cogitate thats what gets results.

Like your jokes about Ghandi and Coeur de Lion.
editate to correct spelling

< Message edited by seeksfemslave -- 2/4/2008 4:58:34 AM >

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RE: OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 5:26:53 AM   
kittinSol


Posts: 16926
Status: offline 		Is this a joke :-) ? Who conducted the poll? Where was it published? What sample of the population? Etcaetera...

I'm just trying to understand the motive behind the title of your thread in the light of the content of your original post. What does a moronic poll have to do with 'us Brits'?

It would be tragic if wasn't so hilarious.

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RE: OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 5:31:57 AM   
LadyEllen


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From: Stourport-England
Status: offline 		It says in the link Kittinsol - 3000 viewers of UKTV Gold (a cable channel that shows repeats of shows from a few years back)

The theory that is established more clearly perhaps, is that watching TV does result in an addled brain. Although it could be argued that one might only watch UKTV Gold if one's brain were addled in the first place.

E

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In a test against the leading brand, 9 out of 10 participants couldnt tell the difference. Dumbasses.

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RE: OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 5:44:22 AM   
Politesub53


Posts: 14862
Joined: 5/7/2007
Status: offline 		Education has changed, they cant teach our kids to read and write, much less history. I think its a shame that todays exams are deliberately dumbed down to achieve government targets. It doesnt follow that an education system able to produce 25% of school leaver who cant do basic English and Maths, is somehow able to produce a yearly increase with exam results.

The poll would probably include a fair number of people not of british origin too. All the same it shows the education system in a very poor light.

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RE: OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 5:54:07 AM   
kittinSol


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quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyEllen

It says in the link Kittinsol - 3000 viewers of UKTV Gold (a cable channel that shows repeats of shows from a few years back)

The theory that is established more clearly perhaps, is that watching TV does result in an addled brain. Although it could be argued that one might only watch UKTV Gold if one's brain were addled in the first place.

E


Whooops, I knee-jerked.

Does cyberdude know what UKGold is, do you think? :-)

I thought your interpretation of how culture evolves was interesting.

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RE: OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 6:07:54 AM   
RealityLicks


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Joined: 10/23/2007
Status: offline 		I agree with the points made about the decline in standards of education, however the poll doesn't give any real detail of the sample so there's no reason to assume the respondents weren't spread across a variety of age-groups.  So we can't blame the kids!

Strangely, I'd imagine the average age of UKTV Gold viewers is quite high - it is aimed at retired folk.  Strikes me that no-one under 60 would consider Churchill a "myth".

Many organisations, especially small media concerns, do make these polls up quite frequently.  They're entirely spurious, the sole aim being to drive traffic to some website somewhere.  It's easy to release them and the huge demand for copy in our ever-expanding media multi-verse means they'll go out on the wires without being checked. 

An imaginative PR somewhere has made this up, in the hope that they will drive up UKTV Gold's profile with the "silver surfer" set.

Quite funny? Yes; True? Highly unlikely.

Incidentally, I have a feeling that Sherlock Holmes fell terminally out of popularity in Britain in the 1930s and that the real Holmes fanatics are Americans, Japanese etc. If you asked someone in those countries to name something British, they'd come up with Holmes.   Ask the same question here, as Northern Gent did, and no-one mentions him.

We're more into Barratts Homes.

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RE: OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 6:10:56 AM   
RealityLicks


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Status: offline 		And I solemnly promise never to make another pun on collarchat.

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RE: OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 6:17:13 AM   
Real0ne


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quote:

However, if one asked "who won Pop Idol two years ago?" - they'd be able to answer correctly.
If one asked "who plays number 6 for Spurs?" - they'd know


you are 100% bang on target!


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"We the Borg" of the us imperialists....resistance is futile

Democracy; The 'People' voted on 'which' amendment?

Yesterdays tinfoil is today's reality!

"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session

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RE: OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 6:18:42 AM   
Real0ne


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quote:

I agree with the points made about the decline in standards of education,


If I remember correctly government data came up with 25% totally illiterate and 50% literate only enough to maintain a mikey D's job


_____________________________

"We the Borg" of the us imperialists....resistance is futile

Democracy; The 'People' voted on 'which' amendment?

Yesterdays tinfoil is today's reality!

"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session

(in reply to RealityLicks)
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RE: OK Brits....explain yourselves.... - 2/4/2008 6:22:39 AM   
Real0ne


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If you have never seen jay leno walking down the street and asking people th emost simple questions and hearing what they say you would be in for a shocking treat of ignorance.


_____________________________

"We the Borg" of the us imperialists....resistance is futile

Democracy; The 'People' voted on 'which' amendment?

Yesterdays tinfoil is today's reality!

"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session

(in reply to kittinSol)
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