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From: Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. (You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary.)
Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).
Your new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections.
Both houses of Congress will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.
To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:
1. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour,' 'favour,' 'labour,' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix '-ize' will be replaced by the suffix '-ise.' Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (Look up 'vocabulary').
2. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as 'like' and 'you know' is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as U.S. English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of '-ize.'
3. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.
4.You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not quite ready to be independent. Guns should only be used for shooting grouse. If you can't sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then you're not ready to shoot grouse...
5. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler; although a permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
6. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left side with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.
7. The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly $10/US gallon. Get used to it.
8. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.
9. The cold, tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. South African beer is also acceptable, as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth - see what it did for them. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.
10. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English dialogue in 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.
11. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancy boys).
12. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out of their deliveries.
13. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.
14. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).
15. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 p.m. with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.
God Save the Queen!
Note: I am not the author of this document and I know knot from whence it came.
Comments
So old
It has a v-e-r-y long beard. I'm pretty sure it made the rounds when Ronnie was elected. Back in those ancient times it was printed on paper though.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
Actually
I'm pretty sure it came out when the hanging chad debates for George Bush Jr and Al Gore. The election for President of the United States hung on around the vote of about a 1000 people, a dead heat. Remember the Supreme Court getting involved?
Pregnant?
Is Chad pregnant again?
hah
That was very amusing. Mind you, I'm looking at it through "foreign" eyes so hopefully no once takes offence. As Canadians, we're pretty guilty of using the -ize ending to words, too. But hey, at least we pronounce zed properly. None of this silly "zee" stuff. :P
Infatuation or respect?
Over the years, I have become quite taken by anything from those tiny islands. I have been taught that our revolution was not in fact caused by our monarch but by greedy English business men who had selfishly taken over the government. I think it is what our present economic recession is all about, and the Occupy movement attempted to address the issues but in an extremely adolescent manner.
I am fed up and quite angry with our government and fear that eventually it will take violence to clear our governmental halls of the vermin.
Some would say that I am a silly old woman, but at least they would be saying I am a woman. :)
Gwendolyn
Government Vermin
Alas, what it will take to rid the government of vermin is an increase in the average IQ of the voters.
Vat's Dat?
British sense of humour?
Revocation of our Independence
1. I agree. There is to much stupidity with our grammar
2. See Above
3. If you take one of the few Federal Holiday's than we want All of yours
4. I have not sued or spoken with any therapist. So when somebody starts to grouse than I shall start to shoot. Great Idea
5. See above. You can have my gun when you pry out of my cold dead hands. Or when you manage to get them all from the criminals. Even better when I move to Canada.
6. With the Drivers in sunny So. Florida I doubt there will be any noticable difference. The metric system does make sense so OK
7. Can Not be done as we have many more wells and are much closer to Canada, Latin, and South America. We only buy about %15 of our oil from the middle east sorry
8. Having a Canadian wife I agree
9. Equine urin UG! I do try to drink only the real stuff. Bitter no sorry Harp Ale sure. Warm no thanks.
10. I can agree however I do not watch such trivial stuff. The trivial crap I like is usually full of SiFi type stuff or War stuff
11. Do Rugby players get paid more than $10 million dollars a year and then complain because they got brain damage later in life
12. Will you outlaw NASCAR also please.
13. He was actually sent to Area 51 and left on a diplomatic mission
14. Now you are just trying to stop the British Austerity measures. Ha! Nice try
15. Does this meen that I can now work only a 7 hour day and still get paid the same?
If we give Obama enough time we will be more Socialist the England or Canada except we will still have Lawyers collecting ungodly amounts for really dumb stuff.
An English teach here was marking down an English students papers because she was not spelling words correctly. The mother, an English woman, had to go to the school and explian that the correct spelling of such word as labour and colour where correct and to stop mismarking her childs papers. I really had a great laugh at that one
Since I do have a bit of a red neck, people attempt to tell me that Recon and Yonder are not words. Please look them up. I do however feel if Shakespeare can use yonder than so may I.
James
It dates from 2000
This is a variation on a joke that made the rounds of the Internet back in late 2000/early 2001... as has been pointed out, the original theme was the month-long period when nobody knew who had won the election, and the revocation of independence was due to the "failure to elect a President." I actually have a number of variations saved on my disk... the earliest version I managed to find was very short, listing only four items. As you can imagine, it quickly snowballed, with one long version even being (falsely) attributed to John Cleese.
You can find more here:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/government/a/revocation_a.htm
and here:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/revocation.asp