Britain says it is "concerned" at Spain's Gibraltar border fee

EagleSmack

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Feb 16, 2005
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Culture? Britain?

Yeah, like what?
.

Hey they've got a bunch of rotting corpses collapsing a church. That has to amount to something.

Old legends? Like Faeries, dragons, unicorns, leprechauns, Kings, Queens and dentists?

lmao

You forgot the part about Britain being the only country to put a man on the moon.

C'mon, Alf, if you must lie, lie BIG!

Hey T-Bones... BL counts this as a rover on Mars.

 

Tecumsehsbones

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Mar 18, 2013
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Hey they've got a bunch of rotting corpses collapsing a church. That has to amount to something.



lmao



Hey T-Bones... BL counts this as a rover on Mars.

Check out "Alf Garnett" on youtube, Eagle. He's kinda the British Archie Bunker. The show, called "Til Death Us Do Part," is a comedy, but Blackloaf is living it.
 

#juan

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Aug 30, 2005
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Just because America - and for that matter Canada - doesn't have any history, tradition or old legends and has less culture than a pot of yoghurt doesn't mean that you have to take the mick out of a country which is lucky enough to have.

Blackleaf, for years now you have been desperately trying to make great beasts out of tabby cats. In Canada we actually have big cats...Bobcat, Lynx, Mountain Lions. We don't have invent them. We have them.


 

EagleSmack

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Feb 16, 2005
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Blackleaf, for years now you have been desperately trying to make great beasts out of tabby cats. In Canada we actually have big cats...Bobcat, Lynx, Mountain Lions. We don't have invent them. We have them.



What! WHAT!

Juan my Canadian friend... those are the Queen's Cats!
 

hunboldt

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Blackleaf, for years now you have been desperately trying to make great beasts out of tabby cats. In Canada we actually have big cats...Bobcat, Lynx, Mountain Lions. We don't have invent them. We have them.



And - we coddle them....too much..

back on the /Rock, lonely Brit Women find love..
 

Blackleaf

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Oct 9, 2004
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Hey they've got a bunch of rotting corpses collapsing a church. That has to amount to something.



lmao



Hey T-Bones... BL counts this as a rover on Mars.


The failure of this rover was the fault of ESA, not the team that built it.

And how many such American and Soviet missions to Mars have failed? Want to hazard a guess? It's quite a few. Some American probes lost contact with Earth - like Britain's Beagle 2.

America's Mars Climate Orbiter in 1998 crashed on the Martian surface due to metric-imperial mix-up (they should have stuck to imperial).

America's Mars Polar Lander and Deep Space 2 both crashed-landed on the surface due to improper hardware testing. That was fairly embarassing.

Japanese and Chinese craft to the Red Planet have also failed.

In fact, failures in missions to Mars are common. As of 2010, of 38 launch attempts to reach the planet, only 19 - exactly half of them - have succeeded. Failures are attributed to the Mars Curse.

Yet, for some reason, you focus on just one British craft and ignore the other 18.

We don't have invent them. We have them.



So do we.
**********************************

What hypocrisy! With Gibraltar besieged, ROBERT HARDMAN visits Spain's own Rock - the colonial outpost in Africa that, with ocean-going double standards, they refuse to surrender

17 August 2013
Daily Mail

Colonial grandeur still dominates the skyline. An old cannon points its weather-beaten barrel across the Strait of Gibraltar. Up on the huge rock above, the sleepy ancient fortress is still manned by the Armed Forces. Down below, locals and tourists seek shade in the little cafes or head for the beach.

It’s easy to forget that just a couple of miles down the road is the heavily fortified frontier that cuts this contented little peninsular off from the rest of the continent. But as far as the locals are concerned, this is their patch of soil. They say they will never be forced to hand it over to the vast, brooding nation to which they are attached by a narrow bit of land. That would be, well, completely undemocratic.

‘We are Spanish to the death!’ says retired fisherman Andre Leon, 77, sitting beneath a tree in the centre of Ceuta, the resolutely Spanish territory on the northern tip of Morocco, where he was born and bred.

'We are Spanish to the death!' says retired fisherman Andre Leon, 77, sitting beneath a tree in the centre of Ceuta, the resolutely Spanish territory on the northern tip of Morocco, where he was born and bred

It’s a nice enough spot, with ancient monuments and air-conditioned shopping plazas. And it neatly illustrates the ocean-going Spanish hypocrisy to be found on either side of the 18-mile stretch of water separating Europe and Africa.

For, just across one of the world’s busiest seaways, we find the 30,000 British citizens of Gibraltar enduring threats, siege conditions and even physical abuse from a clapped-out Spanish regime mired in a slush-fund corruption scandal. The centre-Right People’s Party hopes to divert the attentions of a disgusted Spanish electorate by shouting the oldest war cry in the book: ‘Give us back Gibraltar!’

Yet try to point out Spain’s own string of post-colonial possessions on the African coast, such as Ceuta — clearly visible on Gibraltar’s horizon — and the response is a furious outburst of sanctimonious shrieking, table-thumping and general spilling of Rioja. ‘That is completely different,’ declares Spanish officialdom, citing a 15th-century legal technicality.

You only need to spend a few days, as I have this week, on both sides of the strait to realise Spain isn’t just in breach of both the letter and spirit of European law with its current harassment of Gibraltar. It’s also guilty of the most brazen double standards. In short, Spain wants to have its paella, eat it, get someone else to pay for it and thump anyone who argues.

Little wonder the people of Gibraltar are preparing the warmest of welcomes for the Royal Navy frigate, HMS Westminster, when she docks on Monday as part of a routine exercise.

‘As soon as someone spots her on the horizon, we’ll have boats out to greet her,’ says Gareth Gingell from a local community action group called The Defenders of Gibraltar.

Foreign Office mandarins and high-brow British commentators may wince at the vulgar jingoism of it all. Why should a tiny tax haven be allowed to sour Britain’s relations with Spain?

As one Guardian (left-wing paper) columnist put it this week, places like Gibraltar are nothing more than ‘Churchillian theme parks of red pillar boxes, fish and chips and warm beer’.

Gibraltar yesterday unveiled designs for a new £20 silver coin featuring Churchill and the words ‘We shall never surrender’ (it had been planned for months).

This is a place so wedded to the British way of life that two juggernauts leave Britain every day just to stock the Gib branch of Morrisons. This week, the Gibraltarian government announced production of the world’s first stamp commemorating the birth of Prince George.


If you try to point out Spain's own string of post-colonial possessions on the African coast, such as Ceuta, the response is a furious outburst of sanctimonious shrieking (Robert Hardman pictured)

Yet such patriotism is scoffed at by sophisticated, Europhile bien-pensants for whom it is always ‘silly old Britain’ rather than her adversary that is clinging obsessively to the past.

This is the classic, arrogant perspective of the grand appeaser who has not had to endure hour after hour, day after day, sitting in 30c heat at the whim of a latter-day mini-Franco in the Spanish foreign ministry. Many of the people I find queuing stoically at the frontier happen to be Spanish, since Gibraltar employs 10,000 people from a part of Spain with more than 30   per cent unemployment.

Edward Macquisten of the Gibraltar Chamber of Commerce points out that the region has Gib to thank for one in six jobs. Spain is punishing its own.

In recent days, though, Madrid has ordered its commissars on the Gibraltar border to make life as miserable as possible for that pesky rock, with its full employment, its fish and chips, its low taxes, its photos of the Queen and its squeaky-clean little government.


 
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Cliffy

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Hmmm. The Limies and the Spics are acting rather infantile, HARRUMPH! I guess they need a war to get it up for a change. I get this image of two limp d!cks waving threateningly at each other, being propelled by limp wrists.
 

Cliffy

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Nov 19, 2008
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I thought Spain was broke. They can't afford to lose the British tourist trade. Reminds me of an old Monty Python skit with Eric Idle doing a monologue about "British tourists abroad" :
"and every night there's a bloody cabaret featuring some tiny emaciated dago with nine inch hips and some fat bloated tart with her hair Brylcreamed back presenting Flamenco for foreigners."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz2LaJOVAiA
 
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Blackleaf

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The war starts:

A modern-day Spanish Armada: Flotilla of Spanish fishermen in stand off over man-made reef with Royal Navy and police boats after going into British waters around Gibralta



  • 38 fishing boats and pleasure craft are 'corralled' by police and military
  • The flotilla had crossed from Spanish waters close to an artificial reef
  • Reef is at the centre of big diplomatic row between Britain and Spain
  • This has seen Madrid introduce more checks at the border in protest

By Mark Duell18 August 2013
Daily Mail

Spanish fishermen were today involved in a stand-off with the Royal Navy and Gibraltarean police boats after a flotilla made an illegal incursion into British waters around Gibraltar.

A flotilla of around 38 fishing boats and a small number of pleasure craft was ‘corralled’ by Royal Gibraltar Police and British military vessels after crossing from Spanish waters close to an artificial reef.

The reef, created by the British Overseas Territory’s government, is at the centre of a diplomatic row between Britain and Spain, which has seen Madrid introduce more checks at the border in protest.


Demonstration: Spanish fishermen gather in their boats with relatives during a protest at the site where an artificial reef was built by Gibraltar with concrete blocks, in Algeciras bay, La Linea de la Concepcion in Spain


Protest: The reef, created by the British Overseas Territory's government, is at the centre of a diplomatic row between Britain and Spain, which has seen Madrid introduce more checks at the border in protest


Confrontation: A Gibraltarean police boat (second left) and a Spanish Guardia Civil boat (second right) approach Spanish fishing boats during a protest by Spanish fishermen in the sea near the Spain/Gibraltar border

These extra checks have left workers and tourists facing queues of up to five hours to get through.

Ch Insp Castle Yates of the Royal Gibraltar Police said the boats met in Spanish waters and, despite efforts by British boats to stop them, crossed into Gibraltarean waters before being ‘pushed’ out again.

‘At around 9am about 38 Spanish fishing boats and seven or eight pleasure craft converged in the area of the western anchorage,’ he said.

‘We had our own police cordon along with Royal Navy and other assets and we corralled them in the area of the south mole. They tried to breach the cordon several times but they were not successful.’


Row: The boat of the president of the local Fishermen's Union, Leoncio Fernadez (centre), sails during a protest by Spanish fishermen in the sea near the Spain/Gibraltar border while a plane is landing


In the shadows: Spanish fishermen protest in the bay of Algeciras. British naval and Gibraltar police patrols blocked the Spanish boats from entering disputed waters around the concrete reef


Misty scene: A Gibraltar police boat patrols the water as Spanish fishermen return from their protest in the sea near the Spain/Gibraltar border

He said the boats left Gibraltan waters at around 11am, adding that police had been aware of the planned protest since Friday and it had passed peacefully, with no arrests.

'Big thank you also to Royal Navy, Gib Defence Police, HM Customs and Port Authority for their deployment too. Cool, professional and calm'

Fabian Picardo, Gibraltar's chief minister

The floating protest was also met by Spanish Guardia Civil boats, which warned them not to sail too close to the British territory's reef. The Spaniards, who set out from the Campo de Gibraltar in the country's south, claim - wrongly - the reef restricts their right to fish.


Read more: A modern-day Spanish Armada: Flotilla of fishermen in stand off with Royal Navy and police boats in Gibraltar | Mail Online
 
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Blackleaf

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HMS Westminster arrives in Gibraltar a day after Spanish fishermen’s stand-off with Royal Navy after going into British waters

Warship seen approaching port of Gibraltar at around 7.15am GMT
Day after Spanish fishermen protested over artificial reef at British outpost
They say the concrete blocks ruin traditional fishing grounds

By Kerry Mcdermott
19th August 2013
Daily Mail

Royal Navy warships arrived in Gibraltar this morning amid a diplomatic row with Spain over fishing around the British outpost.

The frigate HMS Westminster was seen approaching the port of Gibraltar at around 7.15am this morning (Spain and Gibraltar are currently an hour ahead of the UK), flanked by two smaller ships.

It sailed towards the Mediterranean enclave the day after Spanish fishermen in a fleet of almost 40 boats sailed into British waters to demand an artificial reef made of concrete blocks - which they say ruins traditional fishing grounds - be removed.

Although British, Spanish, and Gibraltarian authorities have said the Royal Navy's arrival at the British overseas territory is for long-scheduled exercises, some in Spain regard it as provocative.


The HMS Westminster arrived in the harbour at Gibraltar this morning for what authorities insist are long-planned exercises


Long-scheduled exercises: The Royal Navy warship is seen sailing into the harbour with the Rock of Gibraltar visible in the background

Gibraltar's creation of the artificial reef with concrete blocks, which Spanish fishermen say blocks their access to certain waters, has prompted Spain to toughen its border checks, leading to long queues for workers and tourists entering Gibraltar.

Spain claims the territory, which has a population of just 30,000, which it ceded to Britain by treaty 300 years ago.


Warm greeting: Gibraltarians waved Union flags this morning as HMS Westminister sailed into the harbour

In today's German Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Gibraltar Chief Minister Fabian Picardo accused the Spanish government of creating conflict to distract attention from corruption allegations against the ruling People's Party.

'In the 19th century, gunboats were used to do politics,' he said.

'Today our aim is to improve the living conditions of our citizens by means of cooperation.

'Unfortunately, Spanish politicians are currently bringing the situation to a head and therefore making things worse for their own citizens in the surrounding regions.'


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz2cPb5FZch
 
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EagleSmack

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Feb 16, 2005
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The failure of this rover was the fault of ESA, not the team that built it.

And how many such American and Soviet missions to Mars have failed? Want to hazard a guess? It's quite a few. Some American probes lost contact with Earth - like Britain's Beagle 2.

America's Mars Climate Orbiter in 1998 crashed on the Martian surface due to metric-imperial mix-up (they should have stuck to imperial).

America's Mars Polar Lander and Deep Space 2 both crashed-landed on the surface due to improper hardware testing. That was fairly embarassing.

Japanese and Chinese craft to the Red Planet have also failed.

In fact, failures in missions to Mars are common. As of 2010, of 38 launch attempts to reach the planet, only 19 - exactly half of them - have succeeded. Failures are attributed to the Mars Curse.

Yet, for some reason, you focus on just one British craft and ignore the other 18.

Because of this foolish post you made awhile back...

"Only three countries have sent rovers to Mars - the USSR, the USA and Britain.

The USSR was the first, way back in 1971.

Britain's Beagle 2 of 2003 actually went to Mars before every American rover bar one."


It wasn't even a rover and it crashed and you count it as a success. It was a Brit probe and the fault lies with the Brits.
 

hunboldt

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Reportedly, on HMS Royal Oak, a victory drum roll from a drum was heard when the German navy surrendered in 1918. The ship was then searched twice by the officers and then again by the captain and neither a drum nor a drummer was found on board and eventually the phenomenon was put down to the legendary drum.


One of the problems with being dead, Alf, is you tend to show up a little late for the battles...