Fighting Talk: This Week's Blogs
Michael Appleton - student, Cambridge
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
I haven't decided which of the following statistics is more concerning: a) 60 percent of Britons cannot name a single
living French person. b) 33 percent of Britons believe Benito Mussolini never existed. The former statistic, The
Guardian opines, "will no doubt confirm the French view, held by 56%, that we are insular". Quite right. Sixty percent?
Think of it like this: six in ten Britons failing to name a single living Frenchman or woman is a little like six in ten
New Zealanders failing to name a single Australian.
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Lyndon Hood - kept man, Lower Hutt
Monday, April 05, 2004
I've just finished reading a strangely fascinating book, which was given to me by a friend who is even more of a war
geek than is currently fashionable. The Mammoth Book of Soldiers at War (it's not really that big) is a series of
firsthand accounts of a number of actions between 1800 and 1815: the "Age of Napoleon". The time has come to talk of
cavalry and muskets (and in the case of one Russian horse division, bows and arrows), of red coats, and of battles where
the gunsmoke is so thick you can't see where you're shooting.
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Tom Goulter - student, Christchurch
Monday, April 05, 2004
Of course you remember. It's like saying "I was old enough to know we'd walked on the moon. I was old enough to know JFK
had been killed." JFK killed by person or persons unknown - the Complex and the Beast and the Commies and the Mob and
everything you were paranoid was outside just beyond your vision, all went through Jack's mind and blew his head open.
Back and to the left, back and to the left. If you're thinking what I think you're thinking, stop.
ENDS