Showing posts with label st george. Show all posts
Showing posts with label st george. Show all posts

Saturday, 23 April 2022

St George - Middle Eastern warrior

St George wouldn’t have known who the English were, basically because as such they didn’t exist. He may have vaguely heard of a distant, cold and wet land called Provincia Britannia, a godforsaken part of the Roman empire, with its barbarian natives, but that would be all.

He certainly wouldn’t have known of the ‘flag of St George’ as that was an invention by the Italians in mediaeval times.

He was born in the Middle East, most likely Turkey, was in the Roman army and is included in some Muslim texts as a prophetic figure. He has absolutely nothing to do with England, nor does his flag.

If you want to read more about him you will find this very useful.

It’s ironic that George is associated with much of what flag-shaggers would hate, but given that most of them are going to be illiterate knuckle draggers, they will never have bothered to find out. Ah, the blissful ignorance of the bigot.




I might add that I don't subscribe to the concept of saints, patron or otherwise. It's all part of the superstitious nonsense that religion is. I just like debunking the myths. There really is no such thing as the English (or British come to that). No, you shut up!

Tuesday, 23 April 2019

St George


I took this photo in the William Morris gallery in Walthamstow last month. I love the work of William and his contemporaries but this is actually a pretty ridiculous image. Whilst I'm not big on realism, this sort of impression paints a very wrong image that simpletons love to feed on.

I'm an atheist so I don't approve of religious symbols either but if you are going to feature a historic figure in a picture then it is quite offensive to change that figure's ethnic identity. The geezer that was George came from the Middle East therefore would have had a much darker complexion. The above Northern European looking person is just plain wrong.

Saturday, 23 April 2016

Shakespeare Day - A Bank Holiday?

I really would like to see today as Shakespeare Day, a bank holiday (as you can never have enough of those), a day to celebrate our cultural heritage. Not because Shakespeare needs the PR, think he’s being doing quite nicely on that front for a few hundred years, but because it deflects the jingoism and ridiculous nonsense of St George. The arts enrich our lives, they are good for our wellbeing, and they help us on the road to happiness and fulfilment. The arts celebrate diversity.

Angry, bored, depressed, perplexed, stressed, having trouble making sense of the world or just generally unhappy?
Then get some art in your life. Open your heart to the arts. You’ll feel so much better for it.


Scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing), William Blake, ca. 1825 — Source.

Thursday, 24 October 2013

The cross of St George



Flag waving and patriotism is the territory of evil manipulators, the gullible and the lazy of mind (those that can only think in black and white); all very worrying really. And, whilst I have no wish to make light of xenophobia, it never fails to amuse me when these lower life forms use the ‘English’ flag. The cross of St George is held up as something that epitomises pure ‘Englishness’; a badge of honour for patriotic Neanderthals.

Of course we know what bollocks it all is, and that it’s funny for so many reasons, but one very good reason why the joke is on the English nationalists is because St George (if he really existed) was from the far east and probably never came anywhere near to these islands. How English is that?

It would appear that St George came from around the Turkey/Lebanon/Syria/Palestine area: