- A concert at the Symphony Hall on the 26th
- An outdoor concert at Victoria Square on the 26th
- An outdoor concert at Chamberlain Square on the 26th
- Medieval Weekend at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery on the 26th & 27th
Friday, 18 April 2008
St Georges Day events in Birmingham
Birmingham St Georges Day Association has a number of St Georges Day events next week, including:
Wednesday, 16 April 2008
St. George and the Dragon
The truth behind English folklore.
There probably isn't an English, man, women, or child in the country who has not heard of the legend of St. George. His slaying of a fire breathing Dragon, and the rescuing of a maiden from a Dragon's castle are probably also known the world over, yet how many actually know the truth behind the myth.
For the truth we have to look at Wales and to how that country became and still is today a pricipality of England. For it is they the Welsh Dragons that we are concerned with here and led to the legends of England's St.George.
Dragons have been around in British folklore for centuries perhaps even in Roman times, but Britain's Dragon legends were created in the middle ages at the time when English and Welsh hostilities were coming to a head. The Welsh have always had a fascination with Dragons, and their warrior leaders were often given the name Dragon, their facination even extended to the point of giving their mythical King Arthur the name Pendragon and their nation eventually having adopted a picture of a Dragon on their national flag.
Story tellers of the time helped in creating the myth by depicting these Welsh leaders as fiery Dragons, and only the mention of a Dragon instilled fear in the peasants’ of the time. Dragons started appearing all over England as landlords used this fear to stop peasants from wandering off and not working on their land, agreeing to provide them with protection and security.
The Welsh Dragons operated in the border Marcher counties of Cheshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire which were known as the Dragon haunted lands. These Welsh Dragons would cross over the English border to rape and pillage English villages, and when they left they would set them on fire, the smoke from which could be seen for miles around and said to be the breath of the Dragon.
One such Dragon called Llewelyn, was a Prince of Wales who had desires above his station. After gaining support in part of Glamorgan he had intentions on marrying Elinor the daughter of the powerful English lord Simon de Montfort without the English Kings consent. The new English King, Edward (1st) believed the prince (Dragon) was seeking to stir up another barons’ war in England, and in 1275 he sent English forces into Wales and freed Elinor from the Prince's (Dragon's) castle to prevent the wedding.
Eventually the English King got fed up with the Welsh Dragons incursions into England and he gathered an army to bring them under English control.
When the English and their supporters joined together to fight a common cause they did so under the flag of St.George, and the army became known as that of St George. Any battles won were then said to have been won by St.George.
The two pictures most commonly seen of St. George and the Dragon represent the defeat of the Welsh ( St. George slaying fire breathing Dragon) and the rescuing of the Simon de Montfort's daughter from a Welsh castle. ( St. George in front of a castle with a maiden in the tower)
The present day British Parliament with their devolutionary policies are sending our island nations back to these Middle Ages and their actions have already begun to wake up these sleeping Dragons both in England and Wales. The heat is again being felt most in the border areas where one side of the road gets things free and cheaper than the other side, and across England, the Dragons are being stoked up with the fires of regionalism.
Before these Dragons escape and destroy England, the English must rise again to St.George, and with the help of his virtues of courage, honour and fortitude, we can again put out the fires in their bellies.
J. Stanhope
The Englishman
Thursday, 10 April 2008
St. Georges Day
St. George’s Day Wednesday 23rd April
By supplanting Britain for England and Britishness for English in the media, Gordon Brown and the British UK Parliament are trying to stifle the English voice and make it difficult for England and the English to gain any political and constitutional recognition.
The British recognise the existence of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and show contempt for the English by flaunting these nations national identities in public, even to the point of letting their British Prime Minister give his beloved Scottish nation a National Holiday on their St.Andrew’s Day.
FIGHT AGAINST BRITISH RACISM, FIGHT AGAINST ENGLISH AND ENGLAND’S DISCRIMINATION
Why not join thousands of marchers and fly the flag by attending the biggest St.George’s Day parade and fun day in the Black Country at West Bromwich on Sunday the 20th April, or be in Birmingham city centre on Saturday the 26th for theirs.
The parade in West Bromwich starts from Westminster Road, Stone Cross at 10.40am, following a route along Walsall Road arriving at Dartmouth Park around 12.00 noon.
Langley Band, Morris Dancing, Pat Collins Fair, Market,
Medieval settlement, cooking demonstrations etc.
Please note! This is an alcohol free event. Anyone caught with alcohol could have drinks confiscated and face a fixed penalty.
In Birmingham city centre events start at 12 noon in Victoria and Chamberlain Squares. There will be traditional entertainment with folk and Morris dancing and on stage in Victoria Square there will be performances from the city of Birmingham Brass Band, the Fab Beatles tribute act and folk performers’ Show of Hands. Plus many other activities and puppet shows etc. around and about.
By supplanting Britain for England and Britishness for English in the media, Gordon Brown and the British UK Parliament are trying to stifle the English voice and make it difficult for England and the English to gain any political and constitutional recognition.
The British recognise the existence of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and show contempt for the English by flaunting these nations national identities in public, even to the point of letting their British Prime Minister give his beloved Scottish nation a National Holiday on their St.Andrew’s Day.
FIGHT AGAINST BRITISH RACISM, FIGHT AGAINST ENGLISH AND ENGLAND’S DISCRIMINATION
Why not join thousands of marchers and fly the flag by attending the biggest St.George’s Day parade and fun day in the Black Country at West Bromwich on Sunday the 20th April, or be in Birmingham city centre on Saturday the 26th for theirs.
The parade in West Bromwich starts from Westminster Road, Stone Cross at 10.40am, following a route along Walsall Road arriving at Dartmouth Park around 12.00 noon.
Langley Band, Morris Dancing, Pat Collins Fair, Market,
Medieval settlement, cooking demonstrations etc.
Please note! This is an alcohol free event. Anyone caught with alcohol could have drinks confiscated and face a fixed penalty.
In Birmingham city centre events start at 12 noon in Victoria and Chamberlain Squares. There will be traditional entertainment with folk and Morris dancing and on stage in Victoria Square there will be performances from the city of Birmingham Brass Band, the Fab Beatles tribute act and folk performers’ Show of Hands. Plus many other activities and puppet shows etc. around and about.
Monday, 7 April 2008
CEP stands up for English university students
Press Release: CEP stands up for English university students while the NUS lets them down
The CEP carries on with its opposition to the Government’s policy of discrimination against English university students.
The Campaign for an English Parliamen has deplored the decision of the National Union of Students last week to end its opposition to the tuition and top-up fees which are being imposed upon English university students.
‘We want every English student to know’, stated Mrs Scilla Cullen, Chairman of the CEP, ‘that the Campaign for an English Parliament will not stop campaigning against the fees New Labour has inflicted on English students while sparing Scottish and Welsh students. English students are being hit with immense debts while Scottish students are not.
In England university students have to pay £3145 each year of their university life. Students loans then have to be repaid at 4.8% interest rates after graduation.
Welsh students don’t have anything like the fee burden English students have.Their fees are only £1255 pa.’
However, in Scotland university students have no fees to pay. What’s more, the Scottish parliament has also made grants up to £2510 available to Scottish students coming from families on low incomes, which are not available in England. To make the discrimination even worse English students at Scottish have to pay their fees, while EU students do not; and Scottish students, and indeed Isle of Man students, at English unviersities pay no fees. What is quite grotesque about the whole situation is that, at the same time as the Scottish Parliament was legislatiing to relieve its students of fees, the vote in the UK Parliament to impose top-up fees on English students was carried only by the Scottish MPs in Westminister voting for them to give New Labour its majority in the vote in the House.The majority of English MPs voted against them.
‘The only way forward out of this discrimination’ says Mrs Cullen, ‘is for England to have its own parliament just as Scotland has. The UK government is just seeing England, which provides 85% of its whole tax revenue, as a milch cow from which Scotland and Wales benefit at the expense of the people of England. All the MPs who have imposed these fees upon English students got their university education completely free. The injustice to England is grotesque; and it is time that of the 660 Westminster MPs the 550 who are English start to stand up for their country. England should matter as much to them as Scotland does to the Scottish MPs both at Westminster and Edinburgh. They should stand up for their constituents. I can assure English students that is what an English Parliament will do.’
All students are invited to the CEP National Conference taking place at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, Holborn London on Saturday April 26th from 10:30 to 4:30. It is free and open to everyone.
The CEP carries on with its opposition to the Government’s policy of discrimination against English university students.
The Campaign for an English Parliamen has deplored the decision of the National Union of Students last week to end its opposition to the tuition and top-up fees which are being imposed upon English university students.
‘We want every English student to know’, stated Mrs Scilla Cullen, Chairman of the CEP, ‘that the Campaign for an English Parliament will not stop campaigning against the fees New Labour has inflicted on English students while sparing Scottish and Welsh students. English students are being hit with immense debts while Scottish students are not.
In England university students have to pay £3145 each year of their university life. Students loans then have to be repaid at 4.8% interest rates after graduation.
Welsh students don’t have anything like the fee burden English students have.Their fees are only £1255 pa.’
However, in Scotland university students have no fees to pay. What’s more, the Scottish parliament has also made grants up to £2510 available to Scottish students coming from families on low incomes, which are not available in England. To make the discrimination even worse English students at Scottish have to pay their fees, while EU students do not; and Scottish students, and indeed Isle of Man students, at English unviersities pay no fees. What is quite grotesque about the whole situation is that, at the same time as the Scottish Parliament was legislatiing to relieve its students of fees, the vote in the UK Parliament to impose top-up fees on English students was carried only by the Scottish MPs in Westminister voting for them to give New Labour its majority in the vote in the House.The majority of English MPs voted against them.
‘The only way forward out of this discrimination’ says Mrs Cullen, ‘is for England to have its own parliament just as Scotland has. The UK government is just seeing England, which provides 85% of its whole tax revenue, as a milch cow from which Scotland and Wales benefit at the expense of the people of England. All the MPs who have imposed these fees upon English students got their university education completely free. The injustice to England is grotesque; and it is time that of the 660 Westminster MPs the 550 who are English start to stand up for their country. England should matter as much to them as Scotland does to the Scottish MPs both at Westminster and Edinburgh. They should stand up for their constituents. I can assure English students that is what an English Parliament will do.’
All students are invited to the CEP National Conference taking place at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, Holborn London on Saturday April 26th from 10:30 to 4:30. It is free and open to everyone.
Wednesday, 13 February 2008
Monday, 11 February 2008
Press Release: England outraged by Scottish attempt to grab English territory
http://www.politics.co.uk/press-releases/cep-england-outraged-by-scottish-attempt-grab-english-territory-$1200908.htm
CEP: England outraged by Scottish attempt to grab English territory
Monday, 11 Feb 2008 08:33
The members of the Campaign for an English Parliament will resist with might and main the attempt being made by the Scottish Nationalist Party to grab Berwick on Tweed which has been part of England since the 13th century - over 700 years- and make it part of Scotland.
Scottish Nationalist Member of the Scottish Parliament Chrstine Grahame supported by fellow SNP members is lodging a vote in the Scottish Parliament in support of this land-grab.
Already the Scottish Parliament has claimed rights over all English rivers such as the River Till in Northumberland which flow into the River Tweed, even though the Tweed is the boundary river between the two nations of England and Scotland and belongs to neither. And the Scottish Parliament has been able to move southwards the boundary between England and Scotland which till devolution has always run along the very centre of the Solway Firth. To date the United Kingdom Government with its Scottish Prime Minister and Scottish Chancellor of the Exchequer has done nothing to stop these successive land grabs.
"The Scots are stirring up a hornets' nest of real trouble within the United Kingdom with these policies. And we will take them on," stated Scilla Cullen, Chairman of the Campaign. "The people of England will not put up with any more of it. Already Wales has been given the English county of Monmouthshire and even a part of the city of Chester in what is the county of Cheshire. It is already intolerable that devolution for Scotland has granted it huge benefits denied to England such as free university education, free personal care for the elderly, free prescriptions, as much as £1500 more spent on each Scot per annum than on any person in England and access to cancer drugs not obtainable in England. What the Scots are doing is sowing the seeds of real anger and dissension within the Union. They are sowing the wind. If they try to grab Berwick, it will be the Union that will reap the whirwind'
End of press release.
CEP: England outraged by Scottish attempt to grab English territory
Monday, 11 Feb 2008 08:33
The members of the Campaign for an English Parliament will resist with might and main the attempt being made by the Scottish Nationalist Party to grab Berwick on Tweed which has been part of England since the 13th century - over 700 years- and make it part of Scotland.
Scottish Nationalist Member of the Scottish Parliament Chrstine Grahame supported by fellow SNP members is lodging a vote in the Scottish Parliament in support of this land-grab.
Already the Scottish Parliament has claimed rights over all English rivers such as the River Till in Northumberland which flow into the River Tweed, even though the Tweed is the boundary river between the two nations of England and Scotland and belongs to neither. And the Scottish Parliament has been able to move southwards the boundary between England and Scotland which till devolution has always run along the very centre of the Solway Firth. To date the United Kingdom Government with its Scottish Prime Minister and Scottish Chancellor of the Exchequer has done nothing to stop these successive land grabs.
"The Scots are stirring up a hornets' nest of real trouble within the United Kingdom with these policies. And we will take them on," stated Scilla Cullen, Chairman of the Campaign. "The people of England will not put up with any more of it. Already Wales has been given the English county of Monmouthshire and even a part of the city of Chester in what is the county of Cheshire. It is already intolerable that devolution for Scotland has granted it huge benefits denied to England such as free university education, free personal care for the elderly, free prescriptions, as much as £1500 more spent on each Scot per annum than on any person in England and access to cancer drugs not obtainable in England. What the Scots are doing is sowing the seeds of real anger and dissension within the Union. They are sowing the wind. If they try to grab Berwick, it will be the Union that will reap the whirwind'
End of press release.
Monday, 28 January 2008
CEP: England victimised yet again by United Kingdom government
CEP: England victimised yet again by United Kingdom government
The Council tax in England will be going up in April by just under 5%, more
than twice the limit on pay increases being imposed by the Union Government. The
average Council Tax bill in England will go up by £115 per month. Meanwhile in
Scotland the proposal of the Scottish Parliament under its Scottish National
Party leadership is to freeze council tax, and for that the overwhelming
majority of Scottish councils are fully in support.
The injustice to England since devolution just goes on and on. In
addition to having itself acknowledged under the Union Government as a distinct
nation enjoying Home Rule Scotland now enjoys free eye care, free dental
check-ups, free access to cancer drugs, and free personal care free travel
countryside for the elderly. With a Scottish Prime Minister and a Scottish
Chancellor of the Exechequer Scotland is getting benefits denied to
England,while it is the English taxpayer who is paying for them.
The injustice does not stop there. Despite the council tax increase
local services are being cut back. The Union Government under Brown and Darling,
while making more and more demands up local councils even as the cost of
existing services and the council’s wage bill increase, is not increasing
central government subsidy in line with increased costs.
‘Little wonder a recent Yougov poll found that the Council tax is the
most unpopular tax of all. ‘67% of people in England resent it more than any
other’.', says Veronica Newman, secretary of the Campaign for an English
Parliament. ‘The way England is being victimised just has to stop. The people of
England cannot just be expected to pay for the benefits of devolution which
Scotland is getting while getting none of them themselves and no parliament of
their own either. The people of England should be able to decide for themselves
how their money is to be spent. It’s time England had a patriotic government
with patriotic MPs just as Scotland has.’
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