We shall defend our island

You already know what this is; it's a London telephone box.

Likewise, you know that they drive on the opposite side of the road here, their language as written bears little relation to the way it is pronounced, and they adamantly refuse to give up their monarchy.

Or their currency. There seems little danger of the Brits dropping the pound sterling any time soon. And why would they? The exchange rates they get are phenomenal — particularly against the US dollar (I hope you took my earlier advice and sold all your dollars, because things looks bad.).

What with their fabulous currency and dirt-cheap airfares to the bulk of the Continent, the British are weekend-colonizing Europe. Each Friday evening, planeloads of drunken Brits dash across the tarmacs of Central & Eastern Europe, in a mad rush to drink, gamble, and whore at cut-rate prices. Those with more sedate tastes are gobbling up cheap real-estate, and marvelling at the infinitesimal cost of living. Even France, to its chagrin, has found itself under theat of invasion.

How has this happened? Why is the British citizen once again the richest exploiter on the planet?

This island is a case-study in the benefits of cultural and economic protectionism. Seeing what happens economically and socially to countries that fully comply with the desires of the World Bank et al to fully disarm in the face of international capital and culture (and the US is not immune; see, for example, the case of California), it's impossible not to admire the Brits for sticking up for themselves.

I've never actually seen anyone using a telephone box here — everyone naturally has cellphones. Their presence, like that of the Queen, is almost entirely decorative. But like the driving on the wrong side bit, and the confusing spelling bit, there is great power in deliberate difference. "We are British before we are European," says the telephone box, "and we are certainly not American." (Is there a single working payphone in NYC?)

The famous 4 June 1940 Churchill speech, from which I excerpted the title of this entry, is notable in that its most renowned passage — "we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender" — contains only one word not descended from Old English: surrender.

Long live the Empire of the Telephone Box.