Our national anthem…

Mattharrier

MagicPigDetective said:

As for what should be the UK's anthem in its place......... I think it would be almost impossible to come up with one that would please the four nations. Perhaps a wordless one like Spain have would do the trick!

I'm reasonably sure that before a replacement anthem could be agreed (we would presumably outsource the job to a foreigner - are there any good Canadian composers we could ask? They are inoffensive to all nations), the UK will have split into four (or more) separate sovereign nations; Scotland look set to go first, and once they do, I imagine you lot to the west will go. Northern Ireland will be next, and then presumably the Cornish will want their independence.

Personally I don't mind the Queen (she's basically German, and her kids are all half Greek, so it's hardly England's royal family), or the anthem, but I can see why people don't.

The flag is more of a sticking point with me - despite not being Welsh (although sharing a surname with Ramsey Island in Pembrokeshire, maybe I am to some small extent), it's always struck me as unfair that you don't get any representation - technically Wales is a principality, not a Kingdom, and the union flag is 300 years younger than Welsh and English union, but that's bollocks. A dragon in one corner, or swapping the bit of white from St George's Cross to yellow.

thecolourbox

I played organ at a Belize church event once and their national anthem is quite a nice jolly affair. Obviously thrust upon it by colonialists and what not but a very happy joyful march.

Also, whoever came up with the lyrical genius of "no longer shall we be hewers of wood"

merlin

I thought of an alternative lyric to the Nation Anthem. I don't mean to undermine @thecolourbox. Your version is great too. 
Here's mine. 

We have got Brexit done
Now we're fucked up our bum, 
Right up our bum
(ascending pom pom pom}
We are so very fucked
We are completely screwed
We are so veeeery fucked
Johnson is a cunt. 

thecolourbox

Maybe we have a Fretboard composition challenge - create either a new national anthem or re-write the current one.

I personally would like to hear Good Save the Queen in a minor key, played on the piano in the style of Rachmaninov

HAL9000

^ Nah - major key, four time, in the style of Madness.

p90fool

PhilW1 said:

It really annoys me that whenever its done at events like the Euros they always seem to come in late with the vocals and have to catch  up with the music

It always makes the sports team sound like clueless chumps, which they may well be, but the delay is due to the impossibility of having the sound from the crowd, the piped music and the team in sync in a huge stadium. 

Well it's not impossible, but it would be a logistical nightmare.  

EricTheWeary

As long as we have a monarchy I guess the queen/ king will get a mention. The God bit seems more anachronistic if anything. 

But God Save the Queen isn’t the official British or English anthem, there isn’t one. The only officially sanctioned anthem seems to be Land of my Fathers as the Welsh one. So, almost anything could be chosen at sporting events. 

underdog

Mattharrier said:

MagicPigDetective said:

As for what should be the UK's anthem in its place......... I think it would be almost impossible to come up with one that would please the four nations. Perhaps a wordless one like Spain have would do the trick!

I'm reasonably sure that before a replacement anthem could be agreed (we would presumably outsource the job to a foreigner - are there any good Canadian composers we could ask? They are inoffensive to all nations), the UK will have split into four (or more) separate sovereign nations; Scotland look set to go first, and once they do, I imagine you lot to the west will go. Northern Ireland will be next, and then presumably the Cornish will want their independence.

Personally I don't mind the Queen (she's basically German, and her kids are all half Greek, so it's hardly England's royal family), or the anthem, but I can see why people don't.

The flag is more of a sticking point with me - despite not being Welsh (although sharing a surname with Ramsey Island in Pembrokeshire, maybe I am to some small extent), it's always struck me as unfair that you don't get any representation - technically Wales is a principality, not a Kingdom, and the union flag is 300 years younger than Welsh and English union, but that's bollocks. A dragon in one corner, or swapping the bit of white from St George's Cross to yellow.

Wales is not a principality, it's a country, I really don't see why this still causes confusion.

Mattharrier

Wales is not a principality, it's a country, I really don't see why this still causes confusion.

From the point of view of the 16th century, Wales was part of the Kingdom of England. The Union Flag was created from the flag of the Kingdom of England and the flag of the Kingdom of Scotland. At this time, Wales was a principality within the Kingdom of England.

It's not a country - neither is England, Scotland or Northern Ireland - from the point of view of international political recognition. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the official sovereign state, and none of the constituent nations has any real standing outside of that, as far as any other states are concerned. It doesn't make the lack of Welsh representation on the Union Flag any less unfair, but it's the reason behind it.

Once the independence movements reach their logical conclusion, we'll be four globally insignificant nations, all financially worse off than we are together, but maybe some - even all four - of us might just be better off. Who knows?

ICBM

Mattharrier said:

It's not a country - neither is England, Scotland or Northern Ireland - from the point of view of international political recognition. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the official sovereign state, and none of the constituent nations has any real standing outside of that, as far as any other states are concerned.

I was thinking about this when the football Euros were on - is there any other internationally recognised country in the world whose constituent nations (*not* recognised internationally) take part in sporting events separately? I can't think of any, but I'm not a sports expert.

EricTheWeary

ICBM said:

Mattharrier said:

It's not a country - neither is England, Scotland or Northern Ireland - from the point of view of international political recognition. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the official sovereign state, and none of the constituent nations has any real standing outside of that, as far as any other states are concerned.

I was thinking about this when the football Euros were on - is there any other internationally recognised country in the world whose constituent nations (*not* recognised internationally) take part in sporting events separately? I can't think of any, but I'm not a sports expert.

There are dependant territories and a constituent country that take part in the Olympics in their own right although rule changes mean no new ones have been added since 1996. For example Bermuda ( who won their first ever gold this year?) and Hong Kong are territories and under current rules they would have to compete as part of Team GB and China if they applied now. Aruba competes as Aruba although is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Which is a bit like Wales sending it’s own team if Wales were 5,000 miles away from England. 

[ I vaguely knew some of this, Wikipedia filled in the rest] 

Aruba had competed as part of the Netherlands Antilles ( effectively Dutch territories in the Caribbean) and only started competing  as a single country in 1986. They have never won an Olympic medal so I suspect the Dutch aren’t desperate to include them in their main team. 

EricTheWeary

Oops, the bit I actually meant to put in - there is a refugee team at the Olympics. Athletes from Syria, South Sudan, Eritrea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Venezuela, Afghanistan and Cameroon. This is the second Olympics there has been such a team - Olympic standard athletes who are unable to return home. So, there are participants who don’t represent a specific country. 

merlin

thecolourbox said:

I played organ at a Belize church event once and their national anthem is quite a nice jolly affair. Obviously thrust upon it by colonialists and what not but a very happy joyful march.

Horrible. Not a single woman mentioned. 
At least we get a woman mentioned in ours 5 times in the first verse. However that'll change when she pops her clogs. 

I like the Welsh National Anthem. Despite in being "Land of my fathers" and not "Land of my Ancestors".
However, despite it being a rousing old thing, it's still based all around Nationalism, which I detest. 

I personally would like to hear Good Save the Queen in a minor key, played on the piano in the style of Rachmaninov

Here's "God Save the Queen" in minor. 



and a funnier version. 

Mattharrier

ICBM said:

Mattharrier said:

It's not a country - neither is England, Scotland or Northern Ireland - from the point of view of international political recognition. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the official sovereign state, and none of the constituent nations has any real standing outside of that, as far as any other states are concerned.

I was thinking about this when the football Euros were on - is there any other internationally recognised country in the world whose constituent nations (*not* recognised internationally) take part in sporting events separately? I can't think of any, but I'm not a sports expert.

I believe - although I may be wrong - that Team GB could easily field a football team drawn from all four constituent nations, but we would then not be able to compete individually. The FA, Scottish FA etc would all need to combine into a single UKFA, which nobody wants, to field a GB team at the Olympics (2012 was different as we qualified automatically as the host nation - currently there is no way to compete, let alone qualify, as a united team for any competition).

Separate national teams would then not be able to compete internationally, as there would no longer be any separate governing bodies recognised by FIFA, and presumably having a UK team alongside the home isn't an option.

EricTheWeary

Mattharrier said:

ICBM said:

Mattharrier said:

It's not a country - neither is England, Scotland or Northern Ireland - from the point of view of international political recognition. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the official sovereign state, and none of the constituent nations has any real standing outside of that, as far as any other states are concerned.

I was thinking about this when the football Euros were on - is there any other internationally recognised country in the world whose constituent nations (*not* recognised internationally) take part in sporting events separately? I can't think of any, but I'm not a sports expert.

I believe - although I may be wrong - that Team GB could easily field a football team drawn from all four constituent nations, but we would then not be able to compete individually. The FA, Scottish FA etc would all need to combine into a single UKFA, which nobody wants, to field a GB team at the Olympics (2012 was different as we qualified automatically as the host nation - currently there is no way to compete, let alone qualify, as a united team for any competition).

Separate national teams would then not be able to compete internationally, as there would no longer be any separate governing bodies recognised by FIFA, and presumably having a UK team alongside the home isn't an option.

The Euros and the World Cup are based around football associations, most of which happen to coincide with sovereign countries. East Germany used to have a separate FA and team. Interestingly Saarland was a French occupied region of Germany ( after WWII) and it had it’s own FA and entered competitions in it’s own right for, ooh, two years. But was not a sovereign country and could have appeared at the Euros or World Cup. 

underdog

Mattharrier said:

Wales is not a principality, it's a country, I really don't see why this still causes confusion.

From the point of view of the 16th century, Wales was part of the Kingdom of England. The Union Flag was created from the flag of the Kingdom of England and the flag of the Kingdom of Scotland. At this time, Wales was a principality within the Kingdom of England.

It's not a country - neither is England, Scotland or Northern Ireland - from the point of view of international political recognition. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the official sovereign state, and none of the constituent nations has any real standing outside of that, as far as any other states are concerned. It doesn't make the lack of Welsh representation on the Union Flag any less unfair, but it's the reason behind it.

Once the independence movements reach their logical conclusion, we'll be four globally insignificant nations, all financially worse off than we are together, but maybe some - even all four - of us might just be better off. Who knows?

I don't want to drop a bombshell here, we aren't in the 16th century

Just last week (or maybe the week before) Wales remained on the green travel list with Denmark while the other countries within the UK were put on the red list. That seems like political recognition?

The UK is an economic and political union, nothing more. Wales was officially recognised as a country by ISO a decade or so ago, and was last considered a principality some 500 plus years ago.  
 

jdgm

It is a very old melody; there have been alternative lyrics over the centuries.

It is used in other countries too.

With different lyrics.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_the_Queen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_(My_Country,_%27Tis_of_Thee)

Emp_Fab

My favourite anthem is the Russian one....  much better than all the others!

Kittyfrisk

ICBM said:

Redlester said:

The best anthem is the Marseillesie  Mayonnaise  the French one.

Always disappointing when it doesn't segue into All You Need Is Love though...



The Russian one is probably the best apart from that, maybe even the best.

ewal said:

Scotland does not have an 'official' national anthem, and to my knowledge never has. Occasionally Scotland The Brave and Highland Cathedral get mentioned, however no-one can remember the words which is one of the first criteria for any anthem - easy to remember...

On Flower of Scotland - just a bit too archaic for me and not the easiest tune to sing en masse - time to move on folks...

Dougie MacLean's Caledonia would get my vote.

My very good Scottish friend (but living in England for many years) was cremated to this tune last year.
As often is the case, it was a bit parochial, but there wasn't a dry eye in the place.

Grangousier

Probably most appropriate to nick "No one likes us, we don't care" from Millwall.