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Saturday 26 June 2010

To see ourselves as others see us!

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!
The above paragraph contains the oft mentioned immortal line that heads this post. It is the last paragraph from a poem by Robert Burns. (Click and drag your mouse over the space to reveal the author, if you have not already guessed.)

If the language is unfathomable to you then here’s the English translation:
O would some Power the gift to give us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion:
What airs in dress and gait would leave us,
And even devotion!
To see ourselves as others see us is a gift we rarely use in our everyday lives and dealings with others. What would we find if we did listen to those outside looking in? Would we agree or argue black was white? In the instance below I was astounded at how authoritarian we are seen by outsiders, let alone a German. The first half is mainly about smoking bans in our two countries but the rest is no less intriguing.

The below recording is from Radio4 and a German newspaper journalist gives the British a lesson in libertarianism.



Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click to play

 My respect for modern Germany and the German people has risen considerably...as long as they do not beat England in the world cup tomorrow it will continue to rise.

5 comments:

jredheadgirl said...

I really enjoyed listening to this. Thanks for posting!

Unknown said...

I'm glad you found it of interst jred. It certainly opened my eyes a little more.

An excellent post over at your place on Obama's Executive Order on Health BTW.

HairyChestnuts said...

I have a German friend on facebook. She's a lovely girl but I think she's burying her head in the sand when she insists nobody in Germany defies the smoking ban.
I guess her being a non smoker, she would seldom go to places where they did. But she must be blind not to know of it. If British tourists can find these pubs, I'm sure she could if she pulled her head out of the sand.

Unknown said...

Aye Hairy, there lies the rub with non-smokers and anti-smokers they refuse to see what is in front of them. But I don't blame them entirely as the general public have been well and truely conned by Tobacco Control and Big Pharma.

BTW, if you know of any budding epidemiologists or fake scientists in the California area then there's plenty of dollars to be made ($12 million in the pot for this year) looking into that toxic substance called Third Hand Smoke oh, and:

The Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) announces a Request for Proposals (RFP)
to undertake studies on Thirdhand Smoke and Cigarette Butt Waste, under a new initiative.

Approximately $3.75 million is expected to be available for this RFP.


Not surprisingly Christopher Snowdon shoots from the hip about this.

Happy reading.

Anonymous said...

I have looked through the eyes of
many foreign folk and gazed upon
England as if I were in their minds.
What I saw was worthy and noble,
I saw character and resolve,I saw
stubborn hearts and unyielding
resistance to overpowering state
control.

Now I see a subserviant cringing
mass of slaves not worthy of those who fight and have fought in a thousand foreign fields.

Is this just a passing greyness
or can we once more stand up and reclaim
the freedom we knew when we were young


Just seen England cave in to our
German cousins,worse still the
Germans can relish their win with
a fag and a beer INSIDE THEIR BARS..

Gothen Errinerungen

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