Editorial pages on both sides of the Atlantic have been calling more and more aggressively for the expulsion of a former superpower from the G8 group of leading industrial democracies. For once, we here at the eXile couldn’t agree with them more! Only problem is, they’re fixated on the wrong former superpower. Which former-superpower do we mean? Britain, of course!

Yes, long before there was Russia in the G8, the serious power players like the US, France and Germany decided to throw a bone to poor, decrepit, has-been Britain, a dying ex-superpower plunged into irrelevance, by giving them a seat at the G8. That was a bad idea, because it made Britain feel like it was “Great” again, as if its opinion should count.

The strange thing is that some in West are clamoring for Russia to be kicked out of the G8 just as it’s actually becoming a serious player on the world stage. But when was the last time England led anything besides the cheerleading section behind the US of A’s bench? Fuck if we know!

Anyhoo, as the G8 summit approaches, the eXile is offering up our 80 Reasons Why Britain Should Be Kicked Out of the G8. Ready? Cheery-0!

1. Fred Perry

The British haven’t won a Wimbledon gentlemen’s title since back when players wore long white pants and wooden rackets were considered cutting edge. 1936 was the last time pretty boy Fred Perry, or any English “man,” won the nation’s premier tennis tourney. 70 freakin’ years! Not coincidentally, 1936 is right around the time other countries started getting interested in tennis. But it was after WWII when the Brits really lost hope, once the mystique of tennis being an aristocratic game collapsed. Third-rate countries from the Czech Republic to Peru and Egypt have sipped bubbly from the silver cup, but not the Brits. Great tennis players have come from just about everywhere except England. If they came out with national tennis rankings, England would be somewhere down with Burkina Faso.

2. Techno culture

Britain has yet to officially recognize and repent for its role as an originator of the “rave scene” and the drugged out white-trash epidemic that it spawned around the civilized world. It’s like a high-tech synthetic version of the Turkish Armenian genocide. No one cares yet, but Britain’s time will come.

3. Ugly women

Sure, Japan and Russia are the only legitimate claimants in the G8 to being hot women superpowers, but the English are running an insurmountable deficit. No constructive criticism here, these women are terrible. Chinless, flabby, scone-faced, pasty, with waddles, pig noses and teeth begging to be knocked out and replaced by wooden dentures. And, they’ve got the nerve to elect these things to prominent public office! Managed democracy 1, England 0.

4. Shitty weather

After all of Britain’s colonizing, conquering and pillaging, what do they have left? A wet and miserable little island, that’s what. Talk about poor asset management. What we don’t get is why they won’t let go of Northern Ireland. The only logical answer is that’ve got a thing for wet and miserable places. It’s hard to imagine that they’ve managed to actually stay in the Old Boy’s Club as long as they have.

5. Oligarch worship

Even before Lee Iacocca made oligarch worship a popular pastime in Reagan’s America, Margaret Thatcher essentially spawned the whole horrible turn of the West towards oligarch worshipping. While declaring gems like “There’s no such thing as society” and using cops to smash every union in sight, Thatcher simultaneously jacked up taxes like VAT and instituted her famous poll tax that targeted poor folks and slashed income taxes for the rich. Her policies were richly rewarded after she resigned in 1990 to avoid a humiliating defeat, when less than two years later she signed a ‘consulting’ contract with Philip Morris for $500,000 a year.

6. Nothing works properly

Mark E Smith says it best: “You won’t find anything more ridiculous, than this new profile razor unit/ made with the highest British attention to the wrong detail”. Their cars suck so badly that they had to sell their car factories to real, white-man companies like Ford and BMW, and even to Smolenksy’s son. Let’s face it: the only thing the English are good at is narrating nature documentaries.

7. Haven’t invented anything since radar

There’s nothing like an invention of necessity. When their ass was literally on fire, they invented the radar to save them from Nazi bombing raids. But ever since WWII, nothing. High-tech, pharmaceutical, engineering, military, energy you name it and it’s guaranteed the British weren’t behind it.

8. Public schools

Frankly, it’s not so much the idea that every single British aristocrat spent his pimply youth getting buggered at elite all-boys boarding schools that bothers us. It’s the fact that they must have liked it, and sent their own sons back for more.

9. London most grotesquely overpriced city in world

Unlike Moscow, which recently supposedly passed London as the most expensive city in the world, London really does cost what they say it does. Movie tickets there go for 13 quid a pop… that’s $26, and we don’t think it’s ‘cuz of the VAT. But really twisted thing about London prices is that, while everything costs twice of what it would in the States, everyone makes half as much. Why? Because the Brits would rather struggle to get by with a single pair of pants and a shirt that they have to wash daily and gouge stupid foreign- ers willing to pay a premium for the “privilege” of buying British stuff than live in a normal, civilized way.

10. Safaris

Depressed black servants in khakhis, retired professionals with sagging skin, Land Rovers, telephoto zooms and five-star lodging in the middle of the Sahara. That’s what Britain’s imperial glory days in Africa have led to. We’ll stick to Animal Planet, thank you.

11. America’s military lapdog

While it’s hard to blame countries like Poland and Estonia for wanting to brown-nose by sending a symbolic number of troops to join the US’s farcical Coalition of the Willing, it’s not exactly the company that a G8 member should find itself in. We’re willing to forgive Japan (who ventured into Iraq as a precursor to throwing off Article 9 in its constitution, which renounces war) and Italy (which was led into Iraq against the desires of its people by a megalomaniac with a self-admitted Napoleon complex). But what about England? The only independent military action they’ve taken since losing the empire was the invasion of the Falkland Islands (see #36). Otherwise, they’re the US’s bitch. Anyone recall the last time the US and Britain diverged during a Security Council vote? It ain’t because Britain’s guiding policy. But the really tragic bit is that while the US doesn’t mind having a yes-man on hand, it’s not like it needs them. England’s force in Iraq is not only a tiny fraction of the US’s, but they’ve been assigned to Basra, the most homogenous and peaceful section of the entire country.

12. Marmite

Putting this shit on your toast is the equivalent of stoners eating resin from their bowls. Marmite comes from a yeast extract that’s left over after brewing beer. ‘Nuff said.

13. Hugh Grant

The man known for solidifying the popularity of the romantic comedy genre through Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary and other such schlock. When he’s not getting blow jobs from LA prostitutes named Divine, that is. Of course, the first step in righting this grievous wrong is executing Mr. Grant by guillotine. Secondly, his former classmates must be tracked down and beaten within an inch of their lives. Hey, if they would have been a little harsher with Hughie back in the day, none of this would be necessary. Third, a worldwide ban of British actors aged between 25-50 years.

14. Puritanism

While people most commonly associate the most bile-filled religion in history with the US, let’s not forget that it was actually England that spawned them. Wahabbis and Mormons are spontaneous, fun-loving sex mongers compared to the Puritans. Who else could call anything more decorative than a cross idolatry and ban things as sensual as… ribbons? Then, having created a cult that would burn teenage babes for the transgression of giving the village elders wood, England was stupid enough to expel them, not realizing that this cult held the key to becoming a superpower.

15. Scottish people

Never in the history of nation-building has a group come out looking as stupid as the Scots. Their entire identity revolves around a bunch of forged epic poems written by an 18th century huckster who stole them from the Irish and two English textile magnate brothers with a ton of surplus plaid on their hands. Tartans are not a medieval Scottish fashion statement, as Mel Gibson would have it, but an invention of the Wilson brothers, who realized Scots could be sold anything, even male dresses. Tartans were arbitrarily assigned in the early 19th century, and gathered steam when Sir Walter Scott bent over backwards to create a picturesque display for the first royal visit to Scotland in 150 years. That’s right the defining icon in Scotch identity is actually something born of a desire to impress their Imperial master.

16. Warm beer

Most people who visit England assume the locals like their beer served at room temperature. That’d be bad enough, but there’s no accounting for taste. The truth is much worse. They’re just so bad with modern concepts like refrigeration that it’s tough to find a cold brew at a Pub. G8 material? We think not.

17. Securitas Depot Robbery

In this amazingly ballsy heist, a few guys in fake police uniforms took the depot manager and his family hostage at gun point and then proceeded to steal nearly $100 million. It was the only thing even remotely cool to happen in England since punk died. So what do the authorities do? They catch everyone involved in the plot’s planning and execution, lock ’em up, and are about to throw away the key.

18. Britpop

Weepy Britpop bands like Oasis and Blur, once GB’s main cultural export, have become increasingly irrelevant. A Brit hasn’t even won Eurovision since 1997. Then again, that ain’t that long ago, and it fits right in with the profile of other insignificant countries who’ve won in recent years, like Israel, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Turkey, Ukraine and Greece.

19. Irvine Welsh

The first thing you should know about Welsh, most famous for writing Trainspotting, is that he wrote his MBA thesis on creating equal opportunities for women. We’re not sure whether the fact that he got an MBA or the theme of the thesis is more damning, but they certainly don’t fit the vein-collapsed junkie image he tries to project of himself. Of course, anyone who’s ever read one of his books should know that he’s as much of a fake as James Frey, spewing misinformation about drugs and the puerile conclusion that all drugs lead to addiction, AIDS and death. Finally, Welsh’s schtick is that he writes in the Scottish vernacular… except that, if that’s true, then there is no Scottish vernacular. Within three pages, any Midwestern American moron that’s never left his state can figure out the slang he uses. And this is what the Brits try to pass off as gritty, street culture. He’s also a House DJ.

20. No good British films

Don’t dare call Hitchcock British.

21. Sweaty E-tards

We’ve never met a live zoned out pasty English bloke with his shirt off, eyes rolled back, sweating a month’s worth of Irish beer out of his pores but still managing to hold a bottle of water, performing a sort of Stone Hedge dervish dance on the dance floor of some blue collar disco on fifteen ecstasy pills, but we know they’re out there. Collected verbal accounts and massive photographic evidence can’t be wrong. The very thought makes us want to nuke the entire island.

22. Anti-French ‘tude

America’s idiotic anti-French attitude comes from an ancient English prejudice born of getting their asses kicked by French over the centuries, even though the US would still be singing God Save the Queen if it weren’t for French help. Just think about how many military terms in English were taken from the French after the Brits got whipped: aide-decamp, bayonet, cadre, combat, Colonel, infantry, sortie, marines, melee, volley, envoy… We could keep going, but you get the point.

23. Royal family

No better argument against the Divine Right of Kings could possibly be made than the English royal family. Clearly, God didn’t select this inbred, dull-witted and horrendously ugly clan for anything. Or if He did, it was to punish their failure to hold onto power by splashing their banal affairs across the tabloids for the lower classes to gossip about. The once supremely powerful royals have been reduced to marionettes that don’t even have the right to sell their own possessions, let alone chop someone’s head off.

24. Who’s Line Is It Anyway?

American television viewers have suffered through several years of dubious improvisational comedy bracketed by the ham-fisted comments of host Drew Carey, all thanks to the original British version. But the pain doesn’t stop there. Daytime talk show “The Wayne Brady Show,” with spots so bad they spurred homicidal thoughts, soon followed. Improv’s popularity soared, especially on college campuses, and countless victims were forced to sit through horrid hours of bad comedy.

25. Class system

What’s the point of becoming a leading industrial democracy if you can still tell exactly how much every single person on the entire British Isle makes and where he was born just by listening to his accent? So that the poor can humiliate themselves bagging groceries rather than destroy their health mining?

26. No constitution

What the hell kind of democracy doesn’t even have a constitution? That doesn’t sound very democratic. Ever heard of We the People, anyone? Even Russia has a constitution. Monkeys!

27. Maintains colonies in other Western countries

How much of the Empire does Russia still have? Besides a few small patches won fair and square during WWII, just the skinny basics: mainland mother Russia. How about that Old Hag Britain? Gibraltar anyone? Northern Ireland? Talk about antagonistic regimes. And these guys give Israel flak?

28. Ethnic cleansing of the Kikuyu people

The decade was the 1950’s. The location Kenya. The stated purpose: bringing civilization to the dark-skinned natives. The method: imprisoning all 1,500,000 Kikuyu (Mau Mau) people in concentration camps. Then torturing, castrating, sodomizing, burning and whatever else came to mind between tea breaks. One particularly brutal torture was sticking scorpions up men’s asses. A jolly good way to civilize the Kikuyu, right? All in all, the Brits and their proxies left more than 250,000 Kikuyu corpses and a huge bonfire of burned documents when Britain cut out in 1963. But the British government hasn’t apologized for these atrocities, because that might mean reparations.

29. 5 TV channels

What kind of self-respecting country has 5 TV channels? Berlusconi has three of his own. The Soviet Union had 3 channels, fer Christ’s sake, and we didn’t let them in the club. And we don’t want to hear about the new digital options, which simply rebroadcast American programming. If anything, it’s more proof that England’s just an extension of America. Some tell us that the English have finally figured out satellite TV and you can now get a whopping 100 channels. Whooptie-doo! We remember in the US when we had only 100 channels to choose from. That was around the time that The Fixx first got popular in London.

30. Dr. Who

Remember, most shitty British TV shows sucked so badly they couldn’t even get on PBS. That’s right, Dr. Who was an exception, something that wasn’t so bad that the US’s least watched channel would categorically refuse it. This show represents the culmination of British know-how, where the best production values they could manage looked like a cheap Bob and Doug MacKenzie skit.

31. Harry Potter

Why does every single famous novel coming out of mainland Britain tap the Rated G Fantasy genre? We’re talking CS Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and now J.K. Rowling. It’s gotta be the sex. They’re afraid of it. Their inbred Victorian sensibilities won’t let them touch it with a pole. Hey, sorcerers, knights and princesses want to reproduce too, don’t you forget it. And the initials…is that like a coat of arms thing?

32. The tube never works

In keeping with everything in London, you have to pay twice as much for something that’s worth half the price. Not only does the subway system drive you nuts with the endlessly repeat- ed “Mind the Gap”, but the un-air-condi-tioned trains have a habit of breaking down in the middle of the tunnels during rush hour, forcing everyone in the overcapacity train to broil as they wait for a mechanic. And it’s not unusual to wait 20 fucking minutes for your train to arrive due to perfectly normal circumstances. Uninitiated foreigners might think that there’d been another deadly terrorist attack, but the locals know better. They’re used to living in Third World-like conditions in which nothing runs properly or on time.

33. Gives asylum to terrorists

How can England be part of the G8 when it harbors wanted terrorists? They won’t give up Akhmed Zakayev to Russia or the Algerians who spent the 90s blowing shit up in France. They’ve backtracked on the Algerians after 9/11 and deported them, but made up for it by harboring fugitive Russian oligarchs.

34. Bob Geldof

Along with colonization comes responsibility. And one of those responsibilities is keeping musicians like Bob Geldof down. The Brits never should have let him out of Ireland. The template for celebs with a heart weighing in on public policy goes back to Geldof. Without him, there’d be no Bono, there’d be no Angelina Jolie, there’d be no Sean Pean. Ever since the success of Live Aid turned a one-hit wonder into a world famous crusader, other celebrities with waning careers realized a little pop compassion could keep the cameras focused on them a little longer.

35. Founded first concentration camps in Boer War

Back when Hitler was still playing with blocks and dreaming of being an architect, the Brits were busy setting up the world’s first concentration camps! This, of course, was one of those euphemisms the Brits enjoy so much… like substituting “civilizing crusade” for “genocide.” In the case of the camps, more accurate wording would’ve been “death camps,” as some 25 percent of the Boers and 12 percent of the blacks imprisoned in them died. But that didn’t keep the Brits from claiming that the camps were a humanitarian enterprise set up to provide shelter. Why’d they need shelter? Well, they were the victims of another first: the pioneering application of a scorched earth policy. 28,000 Boers, 22,000 of whom were kids, died in these savage pits of dysentery and typhoid. The camps contained mostly women and children, as the men were deported to prison camps in other corners of the British Empire. But don’t think that made the Brits have pity; the camp administrators gave the wives and kids of active fighters smaller rations than the meager amounts available to the rest.

36. The Falkland Islands

If WWII wasn’t proof enough that Britain was a military has-been, then the battle for British-controlled Falkland Islands certainly was. Argentina’s dictator thought he’d boost his ratings by reclaiming some long disputed territory from the British. So Prez Galtieri invaded the Falkland Islands. Unfortunately for him, Maggie Thatcher was at least as macho as him. She sent a fleet of two Royal Navy aircraft carriers jam-packed with Britain’s latest in military aviation, backed up by long-distance bombers, out to South America. No contest, you’d think, considering the Argentineans had a fleet of decommissioned WWII American battleships they’d bought for the price of scrap metal and some ol’ aircraft that would have trouble downing a biplane. But then the logistics got in the way of the RAF. Not only did the bombers need several refuelings during their 8,000 mile run, but their refuelers needed refueling. And, by the time they got there, they only managed to hit one target! Ultimately, the Argentineans lost, but they did manage to take a good number of Brits with them. Even with the overwhelming military advantage, the casualty ratio was a respectable 1:3. Compare that to either Gulf War, and you’ll see what we’re getting at.

37. Joan of Arc

England never apologized for forcing Joan of Arc to stay a virgin before burning her at the stake. Their total contempt for the Universal Human Right to get laid at least once left Joan with a burning seat, and no way to get release. G-8 membership should be contingent on reparations paid to the shepherds of Lorraine, who missed out on such a hot chick, with unknown consequences to the DNA.

38. Even the Welsh want out of UK

England’s clearly on the decline when even Wales has got an independence movement. You heard us: the Welsh don’t want to be associated with the English. That’s like if Tula tried to secede from Russia. The Brits thought setting up a National Assembly in the 90’s would placate them, but they wuz wrong! Plaid Cymru, the biggest single Welsh political party, wants to break free of England’s change and form a new country. If they manage, that’d leave Prince Charles without a realm to rule over. Now’s the time to do it, too. What with the British Armed Forces tied down in Iraq, it’d be up to the Territorial Army to try to stop ’em.

39. Hard to understand

They might be speaking the lingua franca, but something’s amiss. We’re guessing the government’s spiking the water supply with some heavy barbiturates, because it isn’t just an accent, it’s a slur. It sounds like the shit we mumble into our Dictaphones after we mixed Tuinal with alcohol. Considering the amount Brits drink, it’s not an implausible explanation. It’d also explain their bad skin and poor muscle tone. Maybe Orwell was onto something after all!

40. Dunkirk

It says a lot about British power when their biggest success in all of WWII was… pulling off a retreat. That’s right folks, while the Russians can point to the Stalingrad, the Battle of Moscow, Kursk, Operation Bagration (to name a few) and the Americans have D-Day, Midway and Iwo Jima, the Brits high point was seizing a bunch of French fishing boats and rowing like hell. British pride also ignores the inconvenient fact that only reason they got away was because Hitler ordered his panzer divisions to rest for three days instead of pushing to the sea. Furthermore, while Dunkirk might be a moment of pride for the Brits, what it really meant was ditching their allies the French to fight the Nazis on their own. Nice.

41. “Candle in the Wind”

All the way through the late nineties, the song was impossible to escape. In the elevator, in the shopping mall, on the radio, at your girlfriend’s mom’s house. The whole world bawling its ugly face out, and for whom? A relatively good-looking broad (for a Brit) who used to be a nanny? ft/ft-lease! And let’s not exaggerate Elton John’s grief. He just jumped at the opportunity to make some easy money on a song he’d already released. He tweaked a word or two and, oila, 658,000 copies sold ON THE FIRST DAY! He was mourning all the way to the bank. The country’s mascot dies and a washed up queer cashes in. That’s England for you.

42. Useless

Name a single thing England produces or a service it provides that can’t be done better and cheaper elsewhere.

43. Russia owns it

Since Russia has already bought up all the most valuable properties in the UK, giving the UK a seat in the G8 is effectively giving Russia two votes. That just isn’t fair.

44. Tabloids

When The Sun has more than twice the readership of England’s largest broadsheet, it’s tough to take England’s lectures about free press seriously. Free press to the Brits means the right to publish endless schlock about the WAGs in Baden-Baden and satellite images of Zara Phillips topless. And, unlike the situation in Russia, where all attacks on the media are intended for a domestic audience, England’s jihad against quality news has gone global, with Rupert Murdoch applying lessons learned in the British media market to the NY Post and Fox News.

45. Stephen Hawking

Way to go Britain. Sure, the guy’s theories on Black Holes are tight. You can’t see a black hole, but you can see the duplicated ring pattern of a star that lies directly behind it because of the way the BH spin’s the light the start emits around itself with its freakish gravitational pull. But was it worth giving little children nightmares by spawning and televising this freak? Britain has created the first real life science bogeyman. Wonder why science test scores are dropping? He’s this century’s only well known scientist. Sure, it would’ve been awesome to see a grand unified theory. But because of Britain’s lack of foresight, the world will have to wait at least another generation before it’ll happen. At least they could’ve hired an actor to play him during public appearences.

46. Soccer/cricket/golf

We have the Brits to thank for this trifecta of the world’s worst “sports.” With yet another World Cup decided by penalty kicks and staged falls, soccer has once again proved that it’s a game in which talent and quality of play have no bearing on which team wins. The only reason it’s so popular among the Third World is that all it takes to play is a wadded-up ball of trash and a rock-strewn field. That’s why with deserving G8 members like France, the national team’s players all come from the Third World. Not so with the English team, which proudly features full-blooded Brits. They also invented curling.

47. Tourism’s one of the biggest industries

Who in their right mind actually goes to Britain for vacation? The place has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The weather’s shitty and since King Henry VIII destroyed all the Catholic cathedrals after establishing the Church of England, there’s nothing to see. Sure, the Stone Hedge is cool and historic, but it hardly makes up for all the fake Gothic and Tudor shit. But if there’s nothing to see, how is that people keep coming? 22 million people dish out 76 billion pounds annually into the tourism sector… that’s about 3,500 pounds per person. In other words, the average stay is less than a day.

48. No independent foreign policy

The whole point of the G8 is bringing the world’s most powerful countries together to solve the world’s problems. But since the UK is guaranteed to parrot whatever the US recommends, they’re not worth the jet fuel they’re gonna burn flying to Pulkovo. The last time the Brits did anything without the nod from the US was the Cod Wars with Iceland. Way to throw your weight around, guys! Except they lost. A volcanic rock with a population of a quarter million that’s thousands of miles from anywhere bested the Royal Navy. After that, the Brits learned not to try anything without air support from Uncle Sam.

49. Red Coats

Up until the 20th century the Brits didn’t get it that having noticeable soldiers might not be such a good thing. The Red Coats’ big red shoot-me-in-the-back-while-l-march-in-formation didn’t do too much harm when battles were about lining up formations opposite each other, muskets that couldn’t shoot straight, and smoke. But the Brits were convinced that red was their lucky color right up ’til when they marched into the Boer War. Never occurred to them that the two military-technological advances of smokeless gunpowder and high-accuracy rifles would change the battlefield. Fancy that! It’s not surprising that the most powerful empire in the world lost over 3 men for every rag-tag Boer guerilla. The Boer separatists picked the Red Backs off one by one for a comfortable distance like stacked Coke bottles on a fence.

50. England for the English

England’s probably the only place in the world that simultaneously mourns for its lost empire and has neo-Nazis and soccer hooligans running around attacking people from those very territories. Sorry, boys, you can’t have it both ways. Either you want to be a multinational empire or you’re ethnically pure nationalists. English nationalism is par- ticularly pitiful in light of the fact that just about every immigrant in the UK comes from a superior culture that was brutally suppressed by colonial British thugs with boom-sticks.

51. British Humor

Face it: deadpan humor isn’t that funny. We’re not really sure what the joke is. The silent delivery or the sunken pale faces as the go slack at the punch line? Either way we’re not laughing. Sorry, luv, we can’t let the G-8 backdrop get worse than RTR Planeta.

52. Food

Somehow, in spite of being the world’s superpower for two centuries, the Brits never developed a single edible dish. What is British food, anyway? Bangers and mash? Fish and chips? By comparison, Russian food is innovative, healthy, and light. Just about the only thing good you can say about the Brits is they had the good sense to colonize India and then giving enough of them visas to introduce decent food into London.

53. Patti Farrant

Only in the UK could you have a leading child psychologist think it’s a good idea to squeeze out a kid at the ripe old age of 62. True, she didn’t so much squeeze it out as have it cut out, but that’s irrelevant. The fact remains that Britons everywhere rely on this crazy bitch to give them advice on how to raise kids. Well, here’s some advice: home school the kid. Because most bullies couldn’t imagine a better target than a 10-year-old with a 72-year-old mom. If she even lives that long.

54. Haven’t produced a significant cultural figure in 50 years

With the exception of prolific serial killer Harold Shipman (a British doc that killed about 250 over 30 years), what cultural influences have they produced? Mr. Bean?

55. It’s sinking

What with the ice caps gradually melting, it’s not too long before England’ll be wiped off the map entirely. Soon we can look forward to a day when the last remaining bits of the UK above the Atlantic are some hills in the Scottish Highlands. Should we be letting a country that won’t exist in a handful of decades sit at a table where serious issues that will affect the world for generations are being worked out?

56. Gin & tonic

It’s medicine. In typically British manner, they overdid the whole “stiff upper lip” act and turned a vile drink meant to ward off malaria into their national drink. Basically, they were too proud to admit the drink’s foulness and turned drinking it into a sign of true Britishness. And this happened back when they ruled the world. Yes, even then they made it a point of pride to suffer. Doesn’t that sort of destroy the whole point of global conquest? It’d be like finding bars on Bleeker St. serving the Pepto-Bismol and aftershave cocktails that American Marines are forced to rely on for a buzz in Iraq.

57. Natives believe they’re not European

Few things make less sense than British insistence that it’s not Europe. Misguided self-importance has led them to resist integrating into the EU. The fallout includes keeping the gratuitous pound in circulation. The Brits don’t realize that Europe, with its beautiful cities, rich traditions, and unparalleled food, is doing England a favor by stooping to offer them a place. It’s mind-boggling that the British prefer their reputation as fat and boorish monolingual putzes to a chance to be considered Europeans.

58. co.uk

Just another pathetic example of Britain’s inability to let go of its long lost leading role in the world. While every other country in the world went for their easy two-letter national Internet extensions, Britain decided that so many people were going to open up British sites that a single domain wasn’t enough. Since the Americans needed the .coms, .edus, .govs, .orgs, and .uss, England answered with co.uk, gov.uk, ac.uk. Except real life isn’t a Field of Dreams, and the masses never came. Now, there are maybe 12 registered co.uks out there languishing in obscurity, while any respectable business has long ago followed America’s lead and got themselves a .com.

59. Deindustrialization

The fact that most British cities are blackened with soot belies the truth that they haven’t produced a thing in decades. The soot comes from coal power used to keep the lights on in Trafalgar Square, not industrial production. Just about the only industry that’s still afloat on the British Isles comes from government subsidies for aerospace concerns (see the billion plus dollars Airbus just asked for) and in the form of purchasing military hardware. The Brits don’t produce a single weapons system that could compete with US arms’ technology or Russian arms’ price, yet they claim it’s in the national interest to keep making them. Yeah, sure! As if the British army is an independent force and not a branch of the US military used to free up American troops to go where a functioning army is required.

60. Richard Branson

England’s first flashy self-made billionaire totally disproved British claims that their rich have more taste than Americans. The only reason Brits were able to claim that for as long as they did was because they didn’t have any cash billionaires, as the ruling establishment’s wealth was non-convertible assets like ancestral estates and antique urns their forefathers had plundered. Problem is, not only is Branson not as rich as his American role models, he’s not as interesting, either. His attempt at copying Trump’s reality TV show, The Apprentice, bombed miserably. His desperate antics meant to grab attention, like ballooning around the world and admitting to smoking pot, are lame when compared with using home-made porn videos to rocket yourself to stardom a la Paris Hilton. Even the British tabloids have forgotten about Branson, now that Russian billionaires have burst on the scene with much more entertaining fodder.

61. BBC News monopoly

When camped out in a hotel in some obscure Russian province, just about the only way to get English-language news is BBC News. Why? Because it’s cheaper for cable providers than CNN’s feed. They manage that because of government subsidies. British largess is also what lets the BBC run painfully long static transition segments featuring a list of next hour’s programming and a clock counting down the minutes to the next show. On a decent channel, those long minutes would be filled with revenue-producing ads, but since only Dubai-based companies see value in advertising on the BBC, the BBC fills them with dead air. Give us Russia Today any day!

62. Most famous living Brit is Austin Powers

There are several things ominous about this statement. First of all, when it comes down to it, Austin Powers is a not a Brit, but rather a Canadian pretending to be British. Second, Austin Powers is a fictional character. As a rule, G8-worthy countries should have notable citizens who actually exist in the real world. Third, while the first movie in the series is watchable, after that the quality nosedives like Russian women post-35.

63. They can’t spell properly

The spelling bug is at near pandemic proportions in the United Kingdom. Labour? Banque? Connexion? Specialise? Gaol? Honour? The result of all of these persistent spelling “errours” is incredibly harmful, but rarely discussed by the press. All those extra u’s add up the average book written in British orthography is four pages longer than its American equivalent. For all of their stated interest in the environment and “minimising” excessive waste, the epidemic of misspellings clearly contradicts their high-flown rhetoric.

64. Charles Dickens

All our readers who were shackled to their desks in grade school and forced to read Oliver Twist or A Tale of Two Cities realize that someone needs to take the fall for the scourge that is Dickens’ popular prose styling. That time is now, and the punishment is the UK’s expulsion from the G8.

65. Examination system

Universities in England are structured so that absolutely nothing matters except the final exam. What this means, in effect, is that while bookish Indians who dream of being the first in their family to get an education are trying to study in their dorms, British slackers are blasting techno and dropping E all semester long.

66. British tourists

Entire idyllic swaths of the Mediterranean, from the Iberian Peninsula to Turkey, have been overrun by roving British packs of barbarians. The Soviet occupation of Konigsberg was compassionate compared to the devastation these beer-guzzling philistines have wrought. Tavernas that used to be shaded by grapevines have transformed into sports bars that broadcast English Premier League and serve exclusively fried food. Meanwhile, the occupants spend their drunken days mooning each other, writing gay jokes in Sharpies on their passed out friends, and belting soccer chants.

67. The other type of British tourists

They think themselves to be cultured but the facts say otherwise. For example, an eXile staffer had to suffer through some dumbass Londoner proclaim loudly to his wife “Oh my, this is simply FANTASTIC!” every 15 seconds in Brussels’ Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts. Where’s the famed English restraint? Or, say, if you’re an Englishman in the lobby of a hotel in Prague and you’re ordering a prostitute by phone. Refrain from making a scene by demanding 50% off the hourly rate because you’ll “only need her for a half-hour.” Imagine a Russian trying that! G8ers should revel in their economic prosperity and be willing to pay extra to prove it.

68. Bad teeth

Modern orthodontic dentistry technology’s been around for at least 50 years. So, why hasn’t Britain’s teeth situation gotten any better? Per capita, Russia’s GDP is three times less than that of Britain, but it sure seems like more Russians dish out for that healthy-looking smile. Americans, Canadians, the French, German and Italians have straight teeth. Even British immigrants have straight-toothed smiles. What gives? Who’s civilized now?

69. Abramovich and Glaser

Russian biznesmen Roman Abramovich owns two-times-running Premiership winner Chelsea, while American dwarf Malcolm Glazer owns Manchester United, Chelsea’s only serious competitor. When the two top teams in your national sport and national passion are owned by foreigners, that’s a sure sign that your economy is too weak to compete with other G8 nations.

70. Jonathan Steele

Here’s a classic example of British “journalism” in which there’re no facts, only realpolitik. Except there are facts, like this one: Steele’s in the Kremlin’s pocket. He and his editors at The Guardian don’t see any conflict of interest in accepting Kremlin-sponsored junkets in exchange for writing pro-Russia pieces. See, in his mind it’s all good because being anti-NATO and anti-American is what counts! It also irks us that he made his name pretending to be a brave, intrepid antiauthoritarian reporter in the late-Soviet period (during perestroika, when it was already safe to badger chinovniki), only to make a convenient pro-Kremlin switch during a much less democratic era. It’s not defending Russia that bothers us here. It’s that weaselly way Brit journalists justify selling out.

71. PM has to appear before Parliament weekly

This kind of inefficiency in government is not tolerated in more civilized countries, where the leader can do pretty much whatever he wants without having to face awkward questions. Hello! It’s called democracy. Maybe the Brits should give it a try if they want to belong in the G8.

72. Pubs close at 11

We hear that this isn’t technically the case any more, but the scars haven’t healed yet. While this law might’ve suited working class British stiffs who started pounding ales immediately after punching out at 6, everyone else got screwed. Calling London cosmopolitan was impossible when the only place to get a drink after 11 was at skanky clubs that’d charge 20 pounds to get in the door.

73. Tea drinking rituals

Bush looked into Putin’s eyes and saw a soul. We’ll, mind you, you don’t have to be daring enough for human contact to see the soul of Britain. It exists in his daily ritual to boredom, the afternoon teatime. There’s nothing sublime about it. There’s nothing beyond it’s veneer of bored and controlled repose of drinking a mild stimulant. The Brits have been perfecting it for centuries and it shows.

74. Most Brits admit they put their lips around fags daily

And it doesn’t even bother the straight ones. While our British readers read the above statement and nod their heads in silent agreement, the civilized world isn’t ready to condone this harmful and unnatural lifestyle. Ingesting whitish substances just isn’t cool. While many bars in America, Canada, Italy, and other countries have regulations preventing “fag smoking” on their premises, England has been slower in instituting such laws.

75. Declining native-born population

The pasty white man gene that the British Empire was built upon is on the wane. Hail the new Brit: a dark shade of olive and wearing a towel on his head. That sounds more “OPEC” than G8 to us. The G8 is an all white-n-yellow club.

76. Guy Ritchie

The closest thing to a real director that Britain’s produced is a guy who tries to hide his Tarantino plagiarization by using high-tech edgy transitions and adding a British accent. Oh, wait, he’s not even close. Next!

77. No good beer

With all the beer that Brits guzzle, you’d think that they’d have a load of easily recognizable British beer labels, right? Wrong. The ones you’re thinking of are from Ireland. There’s a reason for every repression, folks. In this case, it’s beer.

78. Drive on the wrong side of the road

This just goes to show that Brits don’t belong. They’re stuck living their feudal fantasies and can’t cope with progress. Driving on the left side of the road supposedly has its origins in feudal societies that got around on horseback. See, most humans are right-handed, and anyone who could afford a horse was probably a knight. Since they held their swords with their right hand, passing on the right made it easier to bash adversaries. But we’re not talking about the Group of Leading Feudal Countries, are we?

79. Sting

Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner’s stage name derives from his fondness for yellow and black jerseys. Get it? Sting! It’s about as clever as Beeline’s commercials. But not that, nor his time in the Police or his awful 20-year solo career are what makes England need to pay. It was his attempt to transform himself into a male diva in 1999. And his re-branding wasn’t even original! He based it on Cher’s releasing a gay-targeted album Believe. Even his role as Feyd Harkonnen in David Lynch’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune isn’t enough to make up for that.

80. Spice Girls

Just proves the ol’ saying that if you take the four hottest, most marketable girls in England, you’ve got four slightly above-average Russian chicks. Even anorexia doesn’t help the Spices.

This article was first published on July 15, 2006 in The eXile.

Read more: britain, Feature Story, g8, , eXile Classic

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