Who is your greatest living Englishman?

Discussion in 'Bulletin Board' started by Gegenpresser, Jun 4, 2021.

  1. man

    mansfield_red Well-Known Member

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    He's dead, and whilst he undoubtedly played a pivotal role in us winning WW2 his racism removes him from any "greatest ever" conversation for me.

    In terms of impact on the world it's probably Tim Berners Lee. For being ******* mint it's John Cooper Clark
     
  2. wak

    wakeyred Well-Known Member

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    Churchill should be judged on everything he did not just between 1939 and 1945 - otherwise we would be saying Stalin was the greatest Russian ever also.
     
  3. AthersleyRed

    AthersleyRed Well-Known Member

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  4. Merde Tete

    Merde Tete Well-Known Member

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    Many Russians do think that. Especially younger ones who don't remember the atrocities. In fact, when he won a public poll for a prime time TV show, it caused such controversy that the producers had to "disqualify" him, so Gagarin, who had come second, could win instead.
     
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  5. Nottinghamtyke

    Nottinghamtyke Well-Known Member

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    Churchill led this nation through it's most darkest hour to victory.
     
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  6. Redhelen

    Redhelen Well-Known Member

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    Mmm. I give a lot of credit to the people actually fighting the war and making the sacrifices they had to in order to win.
     
  7. arabian_ian

    arabian_ian Well-Known Member

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    I’d have voted for Lev Yashin.
     
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  8. Red

    RedVesp Guest

    He was also responsible for 2m people starving to death and had vile views on race, calling whites a "higher grade of race" than native Americans, aboriginal Australians and, well anyone that wasn't white! He thought it was perfectly ok for the superior white race to go and land grab from these "lower species of humans".

    Great guy.
     
  9. Merde Tete

    Merde Tete Well-Known Member

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    He was in the top ten if I remember correctly. Absolutely revered here. Still considered by most people to be the greatest footballer Russia has ever produced. My dad reckons he was even better than Gordon Banks (and Alan Rough! ;))
     
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  10. Red

    Red CB Well-Known Member

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    Currently alive then I would go along with Attenborough , greatest that ever lived with out a doubt Churchill , if it wasn"t for his leadership we would now be speaking German
     
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  11. TitusMagee

    TitusMagee Well-Known Member

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    Nope, that's the one :)
     
  12. northy1

    northy1 Active Member

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    For me its the one and only dickie bird,, true fellow yorkshireman
     
  13. Hooky feller

    Hooky feller Well-Known Member

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    Ricky Tomlinson.
     
  14. Father Benny Cake

    Father Benny Cake Well-Known Member

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    But he’s still dead. That’s one reason why he’s not the greatest living Englishman, among others.
     
  15. Hooky feller

    Hooky feller Well-Known Member

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    Except he (edit. The tnuc) was born a yank. :) shame really:rolleyes:
     
  16. man

    mansfield_red Well-Known Member

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    Just out of interest (and in no way am I suggesting this was the case) would the people who think Churchill is the greatest ever Englishman have the same opinion if he'd been convicted of possession of child pornography at some point after the war?
     
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  17. jedi one

    jedi one Well-Known Member

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    WITH THE FORCE................
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    stephen fry
     
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  18. Merde Tete

    Merde Tete Well-Known Member

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    Probably not, but I'm not sure it's directly comparable with holding views on race which are not considered acceptable today. There are arguments that Churchill was a product of his time, and certainly people then expressed such ideas which they would probably be much less likely to even hold if they had been brought up and lived in modern Britain. But as far as paedophilia goes, I'm pretty sure it was completely unacceptable even then. By the way, I'm not trying to justify Churchill's racism, I'm just putting into the context of era (which doesn't in any way make it ok).
     
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  19. man

    mansfield_red Well-Known Member

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    I might agree if they were just privately held beliefs which didn't influence policy, but it's a bit more difficult to stomach where the views were considered extreme even for the time and contributed to the deaths of 3m people in the Bengal famine, or the creation of concentration camps in Kenya following the Mau Mau uprising.
     
  20. Merde Tete

    Merde Tete Well-Known Member

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    I'll be honest the Bengal famine is not something I know about in much detail, other than that it happened. It's really something I should read up on.
     
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