This Wikipedia article on "Blighty" might be of interest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blighty

The flag retirement thing sound really strange to me.

Believe me, I've heard this from folks all over the world This isn't to say that every single American treats the flag to this degree, but most of us do.

I don't feel especially proud to be English, or British. Seems to be regarded as rather a negative thing in the rest of the world these days.

Well I don't view you guys negatively. You're our parent country and we've been friends time out of mind, and I've always kind of viewed us as the Archenland to your Narnia . Seriously, we've had differences before but we've bled for each other in past conflicts and when the proverbial muck hits the fan we've always stood side by side ready to face it. I can think of few other countries we've ever been able to rightly call friends than the Brits. Now that's not to say we have to agree to every little thing under the sun, but I do think it's worth pointing out that if you guys were in trouble many, many of us would come running to help you at the drop of a hat. And that's coming from a committed isolationist! Be mindful of the bad stuff in a country's history, but know that you guys have done incredible good too and will be needed to continue to do so in the future.

Have to back Shadowlander on this. But I must admit to a bit of double mindedness as well. Being of a mixed family of many nations, ( I don't go for that hiphonated whatzit-American bunk ), I have a bit of British blood in me, but a wee bit more Irish. So occasionally the latter tends to pull "John Bull's tail" as my Great Grandma Murry would say. Guess that's why I'm a bit of a mess in me head

Adam hills preformed an excellent joke about the differences between Americans, Australians and the British getting on an airoplane. The American guy is standing up straight going on about being part of the worlds largest economy, the English guy is slouching complaining about how England use to be important and the Australian is looking up at the roof wondering about the airoplane design.(I wish I could find a youtube video of it but most of the ones I find don't include one of the 3 guys but the show I went to he included all 3).

Than he said the way the American ecnomy is going they will soon be like the British.

Here's a question for people in other countries. I feel like here in the USA more and more people are moving towards homeschool their kids.. for various reasons, most are political so I can't mention them here. It's definitely something I've been thinking about for my own kiddo when he reaches that age.

So I'm curious about everybody else? Do you have a lot of homeschooling? Or is it mostly public school? And do you have private schools too? Most private schools here are religion based.

I'm only speaking from a NSW perspective, since the other states differ slightly. Western Australia covers an enormous area, easily 1/3 of the entire Australian mainland, and Queensland is also fairly large, as is Northern Territory. Every child in NSW, where it is compulsory between the ages of 6 and the school leaving age of 15, is obliged to attend a school.

This school is for the majority of pupils, one of the local state schools run by the state education authority for the purpose. Some of these schools have been designated as opportunity schools, to assist bright children in a region have a more stimulating education. The local schools available can also be one of the network of schools established by the Catholic church so that children could be educated in the tenets of that faith, as well as fulfilling state education requirements, or it could be one of the independent schools, some of which are very expensive, and attendance at which can be a sought-after status symbol. There are also faith-based schools for those of Anglican, Seventh Day Adventist, Interdenominational Christian, Muslim, and Jewish beliefs.

Home schooling is not usually encouraged, but is available for people who live on boats, in isolated areas, hundreds of kilometres from the nearest school, or who are in hospital care. The School of the Air, based in Broken Hill, near the South Australian border, uses radio, Internet, television, Skype and other electronic conferencing materials to deliver lessons to children in various locations in remote NSW areas. In other situations, correspondence courses are available through OTEN in Strathfield. Curriculum materials are prepared and sent out to students who have to complete assignments and return them either by email or by snail mail. Attendance at examinations would have to be done by special arrangement, with an appointed invigilator, as in these cases the exams set would be external, and not by a supervising mother.

One of the fathers of Australian Federation was Henry Parkes who was Premier of NSW about three times, and who was a strong believer in universal, free, education, so school attendance is compulsory, even if the education is not exactly free any more. Non-attendance at a school must be accounted for to the authorities to ensure that children aren't truanting or have not met with some misadventure or other. In high school, in particular, a doctor's certificate might be necessary in cases of non-attendance due to illness. Misbehaving & disruptive students can be suspended from classes, but cannot be expelled from state schools, unlike private schools.

Western Australia is very similar to what waggawagga has said. I attended a specialist state school. I can think of a few private schools which are not religious based but not too many.

The ages here differ however. 5-15 you must attended school and 16-17 you can only leave school if you have an apprenticeship or traineeship. You can't leave for any other reasons.

If I had the money and the time I'd most definitely homeschool my child. From personal experience I think a child tends to get a better education here in the US in this manner. Public school is very hit and miss and how well your kid does depends upon several variables, the two biggest being location of the school and how good the teaching staff is. I don't have much faith in public education anymore, especially since many kids that graduate can't find neighboring countries like Mexico or Canada on a map, or have middle school reading levels, or can't perform basic math. This is not to say every student is at this level, and there's a large number that can still excel if they put their mind to it, or if their parents ride them about their schooling every day, but still I see a lot of ignorant people today that are that way courtesy of public education. It's absolutely shameful.

By contrast home schoolers tend to be very literate, very articulate, well spoken, and are interested in the Classics (Dickens, Hugo, Dumas, etc.) more than the antics of Justin Bieber or Miley Cyrus. I want to home school, like I said, but it's expensive and it requires that one parent work to bring in the dollars...not easy in today's economy.

As you say, Shadowlander, I am sure that homeschooling would require that one parent be home all the time, not easy when a family needs two incomes to survive financially. It would also need an equal commitment of both parents to ensure that lessons are not skipped, that the children's education is prioritised over, for example, Dad's interests in, say, football, or even tiredness of both hardworking parents. And a lot depends on what sort of relationship the parents have with the children. Unfortunately there is a real risk some parents might just see homeschooling as an excuse to disobey the law, to get their children to do the housework, or to run around the neighbourhood unsupervised.

Your criticism of the level of public school education might also be explained because of the level of education of the parents of the pupils with poor outcomes, their own socio-economic problems in providing school materials and especially the lack of parental interest in how well students do at school, and their attitude to how necessary education is generally. In the 1920's in NSW school attendance became absolutely compulsory mainly because of parents who couldn't wait to send their children out to work.

But public schools, especially if they are also selective or opportunity schools tend to do quite well, here, even if the area is otherwise working class. I've been to a private school which didn't have anything like the geographic charts or globes of the world available to the public schools I attended next, for example. But at this next school, which I attended for about a year, and which educated no less a person than John Howard, a former prime minister, I learned of girls who were constantly kept home to look after younger siblings and to help their mothers. These sorts of girls I'd see later as older women in Adult Basic Education classes, trying to catch up on a lifetime of disadvantage.

A lot also depends on how these public schools are funded or not by the taxpayers of the state you live in and what sort of resources they can get with what they have. By the way, just how are US public schools funded? Through state governments? Local councils? Or the Federal Government?

I agree with wagga. It does depend on the child and the parents and sometimes choosing the right public school. I had little choice because my highschool was the only public school I could get to easily and quickly by bus(there is one just down the road now but it opened the year I started highschool and didn't go up to year 12 to the year after I left). It was a very science based school(The teachers won countless awards in science and one even came third in the world and best in Australia. At least 1 teacher has placed in the top 3 science teachers around Australia for the 5 years I was there). Though the other learning areas were average(not terrible but all the schools money was spent on science(many of the art/English favouring students complained). The school was very mixed as far as students go(some ere terrible and others good but isn't that every school?).

Both my parents dropped out of school after year 10(it was very common in the late 70's/early 80's and they had to travel some distance which was too much money for mums parents(not as much government help for studying as there is now) and dad wanted to follow his dad into the building industry. In short it is much easier to finish highschool and go to uni now in Australia than it was when my parents were at that age.

But despite these things, Dan Brown's novel is still a novel which should be taken with no more than a grain of salt and a free ticket to the Louvre in Paris. You will see there the Mona Lisa, perhaps the Last Supper, if you can navigate through the crowds. And you will find that even a free ticket will not be so free if the pickpockets there help themselves to your wallet, as happened to my husband. Pullman's trilogy, directed at children was an even worse worry to me since it was confusing, distorted, took potshots at the Church, accusing it of warping people's judgement, and seemed to insist that there was no usefully good Supreme Being who would assist people in trouble.

waggawerewolf(from another friend but my reply suits this thread more). I went to the louvre with my sister(I don't have a huge interest in art). I saw the mona lisa(to me it was just a painting but to others no). There was a huge crowd around it and hardly anyone looking at the other paintings(many of which were much more interesting imo).

The amount of scammers in paris is just annoying. One man gave me a and my sister a rose and made dad pay for it and wouldn't let us return them. He basically throw the rose at me. Another women dropped a ring on the ground pretended she had found it and gave it to my sister and said she could keep it. Than she asked for money. We couldn't sit down without some scammer coming up to us. My anger management was tested.

waggawerewolf(from another friend but my reply suits this thread more). I went to the louvre with my sister(I don't have a huge interest in art). I saw the mona lisa(to me it was just a painting but to others no). There was a huge crowd around it and hardly anyone looking at the other paintings(many of which were much more interesting imo).

Yes, you are right. People are so obsessed with the Mona Lisa they fail to see what the other pictures are all about. And Art isn't all you see there, anyway. The Louvre is about so much more than paintings, and I'm not sorry I went, only that the visit turned out to be a bit of a disaster. You need at least 3 days there to see everything, and the Mona Lisa is just one of a crowd of statues, ancient artifacts, furnishings, and much else.

What happened on our expedition was that we went for a guided tour, but, despite all the signs around warning against pickpockets, halfway along my husband found out his wallet was missing from his hip pocket, in the room where you see Venus De Milo and the statue of Nike. Our beautiful eldest daughter got on the mobile phone straightaway and cancelled all his credit cards in Australia, and we also went to security within the Louvre. We were told to go to the Gendarmerie, which we did. And by that time we'd completely lost track of the guide and our group, anyway.

But the Louvre management did say we could come back and so the journey wasn't completely wasted after all. We did get to see a few other things we wanted to see, which included Hammurabi's codex, and also the Moab stele, a must for the Christians on this site. I could have seen a few other archaeological exhibits, that I've seen mentioned, if I'd been less upset and more prepared. We did get to see some interesting exhibits, but not much to do with the French Crown Jewels, which we wanted to see, and thought might be on display there. But these crown jewels are scattered around France, including Rheims, unlike the British situation, where we saw heaps, not only in the Tower of London, but also in Buckingham Palace, where they had a Diamond Jubilee display of some of the Queen's tiaras we see her wearing on our Aussie coinage.

We did get the wallet back, including all credit cards, over a week later. The cleaners at the Louvre found the wallet, missing only the 200 Euros I'd allotted to my husband when we arrived in Paris, for his spending money, and the Louvre management rang us just as we were about to depart to Charles de Gaulle Airport to go to Scotland. At my request, they sent the wallet, complete with the credit cards we had cancelled, his Medicare card, Driver's Licence etc, plus a nice letter in French, to our home address in Australia, where our other two daughters collected it in the mail the following week. I wasn't surprised, a year later, that the staff at the Louvre had gone on strike because of the way pickpockets made their life a misery.

Yes I agree about the beggars and hawkers around Paris. Some hawkers of giant Eiffel towers chased me at Versailles, determined to make a sale. But I certainly didn't want to buy something like that which would have taken far too much room in our suitcases. And in the cemetary at Pere LaChaise, my husband & daughter had to fend off someone who wanted to show them, around but wanted paying anyway for his volunteered "services".

There were also a lot of beggars, some of whom were really heart-wrenching, especially when they were accompanied by children, even their pet animals. Others were intrusive and frightening. None of them looked like they were starving.

We do get people like that in Sydney occasionally, but never so aggressive or frightening. I only ever saw one beggar in UK in all three times I've been there, and she was wearing a bit of cloth over her face, which wouldn't be allowed in France. When a couple of weeks later, we went around Eastern Europe we saw plenty of street theatre, which we enjoyed, but not many beggars and hawkers as in Paris, and I am wondering if this Paris situation happens elsewhere to that extent.

I had a similar experience the last time I went to Paris about three years ago. My friend whom I was travelling with was targeted by pickpockets at the Gare du Nord. I think Paris has a particular problem that you don't often find anywhere else.

I've never been pickpocket-ed in any of the months I've spent in Paris over the years (or anywhere else come to think of it), I don't know if this is because of growing up in and around London so I'm always very aware of where my purse/camera is and keeping my bag in a position where it isn't vulnerable. Paris does have a lot of the 'scammers' that ILoveFauns mentioned, London has them too but no where near as many.

After living in Oxford I've been astounded at how a lot of tourists will stroll around with expensive cameras in full view when they aren't being used, or that will leave belongings unattended while browsing in a shop and then are bewildered when they get stolen. I guess people don't view somewhere like Oxford as having much crime but generally tourists = pickpockets where ever you go. Last week I had to persuade a tourist not to count his £50 notes in the middle of a cafe, people are far too trusting!

(This has turned into an anti-theft ramble. CONSTANT. VIGILANCE.)

Yes, you are right, Shantih. Oxford, the site of the famous university, would have a lot to see. The Great Hall of the Harry Potter books in the accompanying films, was modelled on the refectory at Christchurch College, I believe. A pub with a pinkish cement rendered exterior - The King's Arms, I think - was a feature in a police drama series my husband liked to watch, and there are a couple of mementos of Alice in Wonderland to see, including the White Rabbit in a stained glass window in one of the colleges.

There is one college but I don't know which one it is, which has a row of heads of what looks like Roman Emperors along its front fence. Would you by any chance know which one it is? And didn't C.S.Lewis, who studied there, teach at one or two of the colleges?

I can quite understand and applaud anyone ranting about pickpockets & the need for Constant.Vigilance. I've even been warned not to wear my wedding & engagement ring because of the pickpockets. Though to steal them, it could end up with my having to part with a finger as well.