Come Back

Well, judging by the stories and sites springing up across the internet (such as this - rather forcefully expressed - one and this one) it's pretty clear that a large number of those in the blue bits of the US of A are still feeling somewhat traumatised after the gun-totin', sister-marryin' types in "America's heartland" voted for good-ole boy(1) George "Dubya" Bush. Overall it seems that half a nation (and the profitable half at that) has been left feeling disenfranchised and oppressed.

Now Britain has a long a noble tradition of taking in the disenfranchised and oppressed (at least it did have until the successive interventions of Tory and Labour Home Secretaries eager to curry favour with Daily Mail, Express and Sun readers). What better way to express this tradition than to invite those blue states to come back into the fold and rejoin the country of Thomas Paine, the country in whose army George Washington sought a commission, the country which helped instill so much of the spirit of the Enlightenment in the breasts of the founding fathers?

Now I am fully ready to concede that there would be many adjustments necessary for blue-staters, but I am sure that with a little willing on their parts they would soon adjust to such revolutionary ideas healthcare being free for all irrespective of wealth, football having something to do with putting foot to ball, elections being fought out by persons other than the super-rich, savoury food existing without added sugar and in portions less than sufficient to feed a regiment, and democracy involving counting the votes of everyone irrespective of race, creed or colour.

So, come on home blue staters. And if the prospect of freeing yourself from the red states isn't enough, just think how much fun you can have laughing at our bad teeth and medieval plumbing. Come on home.

(1) that being "good ole boy" in the sense of being a scion of one of the oldest and most upper-class families the USA has got.