{"id":934,"date":"2005-10-07T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-07T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/?p=934"},"modified":"2005-10-07T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-10-07T12:00:00","slug":"another-apology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2005\/10\/07\/another-apology\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Apology"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve received several emails pointing out Don Burleson’s apology for calling me British instead of Scottish that was on his website (but has been removed now). I asked Don to take it down for a few reasons :-<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I was born and remain British. <\/li>\n

    <\/p>\n

  2. I was born and remain Scottish.<\/li>\n

    <\/p>\n

  3. The two are compatible.<\/li>\n

    <\/p>\n

  4. I hadn’t asked Don to apologise for accidentally calling me British at any time.<\/li>\n

    <\/p>\n

  5. Some of my best friends are British! (Well, they were still my friends, last time I checked.)<\/li>\n

    <\/p>\n

  6. Now, calling me *English* is another matter, because I’m not. It’s a common mistake for Americans to think that English and British are the same thing and it is mildly irritating. Not something that would keep me awake at night, though!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So thanks for taking it down, Don.<\/p>\n

    I’m still waiting to work out which comment I made that Don picked up on, but I think I was poking fun at his inability to nail me down to one nationality. The fact I can only vaguely remember it should be an indication of its importance to me.<\/p>\n

    Here’s a true story. When we were kids my dad was in the Royal Air Force. In those days, the national anthem would be played at the end of the television schedule. At which point, if we were awake, we would all get out of our chairs and stand to attention. (Sadly, the anthem would also appear before sporting events earlier in the day when there were far more likely to be witnesses.) Now, this might be normal behaviour in some countries, but rarely round here (particularly with all that stuff about crushing rebellious Scots<\/a>) but it shows that you can be a fiercely patriotic Scot (he loved his country and despised many English things – football players, mainly) but be prepared to stand together with other Brits to defend our shared values. (Oh, and for those of you who might be interested, I don’t do it any more! I’ve had time to develop my own opinions on that sort of thing …)<\/p>\n

    So, I apologise unreservedly. If you’re British, you have no reason to feel ashamed of it (well, apart from the worst excesses of British imperialism; being miserable; Tabloid newspapers; – actually I’d better not get started).<\/p>\n

    I promise that I won’t demean your nationality in future.<\/p>\n

    Thanks,<\/p>\n

    Doug<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I’ve received several emails pointing out Don Burleson’s apology for calling me British instead of Scottish that was on his website (but has been removed now). I asked Don to take it down for a few reasons :- I was born and remain British. I was born and remain Scottish. The two are compatible. I… Continue reading Another Apology<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":950,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2005\/08\/20\/jonathan-debunks-another-don-article\/","url_meta":{"origin":934,"position":0},"title":"Jonathan debunks another Don article","date":"August 20, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"I see that Jonathan Lewis has examined one of Don Burleson\ufffds recent articles in more detail When I saw this article via a posting on Radoslav Rusinov\ufffds blog, I figured it wouldn\ufffdt be too long before it was questioned and Jonathan\ufffds the very man to do so. Of course, Jonathan\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1303,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/02\/why-you-cant-just-say-stop-feeding-the-troll\/","url_meta":{"origin":934,"position":1},"title":"Why you can’t just say ‘Stop feeding the troll’ …","date":"August 2, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"... and walk away.In the course of the past year, I've heard more than one person suggest that Jonathan Lewis should stop debunking Don Burleson's arguments. Their opinion is that it makes Jonathan look narrow-minded and spiteful and that he should simply ignore Don, stop giving him extra publicity and\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":937,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2005\/09\/29\/an-apology\/","url_meta":{"origin":934,"position":2},"title":"An Apology","date":"September 29, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the reasons I moved over to Blogger was because Jeff had problems posting a comment. When I started work at a new site recently, I bumped into an old colleague who had mentioned that he'd posted a comment on the old blog. I was surprised because I would\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 4 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2005,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/29\/an-apology-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":934,"position":3},"title":"An Apology","date":"September 29, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the reasons I moved over to Blogger was because Jeff had problems posting a comment. When I started work at a new site recently, I bumped into an old colleague who had mentioned that he'd posted a comment on the old blog. I was surprised because I would\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":920,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2005\/11\/02\/my-latest-apology\/","url_meta":{"origin":934,"position":4},"title":"My Latest Apology","date":"November 2, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Like Frankenstein and his monster, I've let the Dane out of the bag. Yes, I admit it, I helped Mogens Norgaard set up his new blog today. Although I've made sure he knows that there are other blogging options out there, he was happy to go for the most straightforward\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1182,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/18\/werewolves-beware\/","url_meta":{"origin":934,"position":5},"title":"Werewolves, beware!","date":"January 18, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"A friend pointed out a link to one of my blog postings over at Burleson Consulting's website that I wasn't aware of.Whilst I appreciate Don Burleson's fulsome praise of my communication skills, I think it's only fair to make a few points of clarification.1) I was concerned that readers might\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 13 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}