As a love-letter to an adopted country goes, Portuguese academic João Magueijo’s missive to Britain is perhaps somewhat lacking in affection.
…
According to Magueijo, the English are “always fighting. I never met such a group of animals. English culture is pathologically violent.“The English are unrestrained wild beasts and are totally out of control.”
“It is not unusual to drink 12 pints, or two huge buckets of beer, per person,” he writes.
“Even a horse would get drunk with this but in England it is standard practice.
“In England real men have to drink like sponges, eat like skeletons and throw up everything at the end of the evening.”
That too.
This however:
“When you visit English homes, or the toilets at schools or in student lodgings, they are all so disgusting that even my grandmother’s poultry cage is cleaner,” he writes.
Portuguese restaurant and or public toilets can be pretty noisome….
I’ve met Joao a few times. His rather irritating girlfriend never stopped talking about how amazing he was. When I finally encountered him I realised neither did he.
It takes some chutzpah to write a book proclaiming yourself as the new Einstein when your contribution to the field is so forgettable.
He does have nice hair, though.
What is he doing in school toilets?
I expect he’s cross because people keep mistaking him for a waiter.
Fair enough.
But of course, the reason he wants to live here is because about 50% of English people will say, “fair enough”.
Unilke, say, Portugal, where a similar rant by an Englishman would result in lots of screaming, swearing and spitting by 90% of the population.
On a faintly related topic, can fellow commenters join me in a moment of sadness at the demise of the Knorr pork stock cube. A search through the shelves at Tesco showed no sign of any pork stock cubes from any manufacturer. What’s happened, of course, is that we have a bit of rebranding, resulting in the Knorr ham cube, which soiunds disgusting if you don’t know what it is.
So it was ok to “upset” the Jews for 150 years, but a bit of pressure from the other lot…
Do any other countries sell freshners by leading a blindfolded victim into a vile public lavatory then have them exclaim about the wonderful freshness? He’s got dirty nailed, house hunting confirms this.
Truth is, he’s right for about fifty per cent of the population.
Having said that, he’s also a dick.
/
OT, BJHST: Justin Webb on the Today prog five minutes ago.
‘Capitalism: is it time to ask whether it can ever be harnessed for good?’
His is a face I’d never get tired of punching.
WTF does ‘eat like a skeleton’ mean?
He is probably right about the feminists but the men are quite sensitive.
Interesting that he thinks that of Britain, but still prefers to live here than Portugal.
If that’s what he thinks about the English, he’ll enjoy Scotland.
The Portuguese are just shod Arabs. Who cares what he thinks?
Has anyone referred this to Alex Salmond to give him yet another reason to encourage a vote for yes on Thursday?
Reading stuff likes this makes me feel like quick bucket of beer, just to calm the nerves.
DocBud wins the thread.
12 pints a night … is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. But In a culture where a day labourer would be ashamed to go out in public without that quantity , the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty.
Soft southern (European) poof can’t hold his beer. lol
I’m intrinsically suspicious of scientists who become media personalities. Almost to a man they’re irritatingly, dogmatically Leftist AGW boosters, which betokens a lack of intellectual curiosity outside their own fields. And none of them is a truly first-rank man. In evidence I adduce Magueijo, who made a bit of a silly of himself a few years back with a wacky anti-Einstein thingumajig, prize bell-end Brian Cox*, the ubiquitous Michio Kaku, everyone’s favourite Black Science Man Neil deGrasse Tyson and so on. Yes, they’re all jolly clever, but exhibiting the besetting sin of the public intellectual, which is to think that being jolly clever and knowing a lot about one particular field bestows upon them great insight and wisdom into the world at large. Then there’s that prick Bill Nye, who frankly is an embarrassment.
* who made an absolute howler talking about the Gaia nonsense in terms of the Pauli exclusion principle, at which point I lost all respect for him
BICR
“* who made an absolute howler talking about the Gaia nonsense in terms of the Pauli exclusion principle, at which point I lost all respect for him”
Um, I’m prepared to bow to your superior knowledge on this.
Trust me, it was fucking dire. Here’s an actual physicist hauling him over the coals: Brian Cox misunderstands locality, Pauli exclusion principle (advanced stuff, but then yer actual physics is advanced stuff).
Thanks I read that – interesting.
But isn’t the main point about Brian Cox that he, and everything else is, well, just AMAZING?