Gordon England body badges...

[Ruairidh Dunford]

[img]Untitled by Peter Johnson, on Flickr[/img]

Very nice Peter, what was the process you used?

[Peter Johnson]

I used some “press n peel” pcb iron on resist from maplins. Print the inverse of the image using a laser printer and then etched into brass sheet using ferric chloride. I then filled in the etched areas with enamel paint and cut back with wet and dry.

In principle, I could nickel plate the result but I haven’t got around to it.

Peter

[Ruairidh Dunford]

Brilliant! Nice work Peter!

[AllAlloyCup]

Hi Peter

I like your black and white GE badges.
Do you sell these ?

By the way I have a nickel playing set up here if you need yours played

Regards

Bill G
Aka AllAlloyCup

[Peter Johnson]

   

Hi Bill

I made these for my own purposes, but still have the artwork plus a few left over from that time if you are interested. PM your address and I’ll put them in the post.

Peter

[Tony Griffiths]

Looks great!  All I need is a GE car to go with one.

Interesting, though.  "England" clearly didn't make any claims on Scotland, but I wonder what the Welsh thought.

Amusingly, many years ago on a touring holiday to Scotland, a hotel we stayed in had a small museum inside the entrance. Amongst the artefacts from the local area was a large photograph, taken in 1920, that showed the inside of the village primary school. On the wall behind the teacher's desk was the obligatory map of what should have been the 'Britsh Isles' except, in this case, there was something missing - Scotland. What the teacher thought he or she was doing by putting up such a map, I've no idea.

[Ian Williams]

Martin is not true that the Wales was never a country until modern times and the seperate welsh kingdoms came under the rule of both the Romans and then William I. Scotland on the other hand was independent until finally conquered but by then was a country in it own right and had its own King something the Welsh and the rest of the Briton's have never had. I know some Welsh people today like to think that they are different but the truth of the matter is that Scotland is the only part of the island which remained free and independent of Rome and as such can be considered differently from the rest.

---

The other often overlooked fact is that William was of Viking descent so Britain actually remained under Dane rule

[AllAlloyCup]

Hi Ian

Thanks for reminding English readers that Scotland is a separate country, within a Union of course just now. But soon to be independent again :-)

Bill G

Ps the UK in NOT a country it’s a Union.
Aka AllAlloyCup

[David Stepney]

Ian, Scotland was never conquered, although Edward 1 had a go! That is how he got the nickname of 'Hammer of the Scots'. It was not until 1603 that any semblance of union came about between England and Scotland with the accession to the throne of Englandby Elizabeth's cousin, James 6th of Scotland, who became James 1st of England. However, there was no true political union until the Act of Union of 1707, which created the beginings of the United Kingdom.

Wales, on the other hand, was conquered, the southern lands having been invaded by the Normans. Edward 1st finished the job by defeating Llywellyn ap Gruffudd in 1277, after which Wales was largely forgotten by the English crown until 1536, when Henry VIII decided to annex the whole of the principality formally by the Act of Union of 1536 after which Wales became wholly subject to England and its laws, and, indeed, become part of England. It is only after the rise of Welsh nationalism during the latter part of the 19th and during the 20th centuries that, in 1999 we got a measure of our independence back.

So indeed, Scotland has always been treated differently from Wales, hence its exclusion from the map on the GE badge.

His name was England, after all.

[Ian Williams]

Yes David I agree, would it also be fair say that you are only talking about post Roman Britain and post dark ages for that matter too, before the demise of their empire the Romans had control or everywhere but Scotland. Britain is an interesting land, there have been so many invasions that most of these modern arguments about nationality and nationalism have little real grounds. You really need to go back to Pre Roman times for any of it to have any real credibility, and the fact of the matter is we don't know for certain which groups of people controlled which areas, how they came to be in control, and even with DNA tracing who actually has any credible claim today. All of us that are of modern british descent have the same history, true some of us have variable genetics and ancestry but its all part of what made us who we are as people. For any single group to think they have more rights than the rest is nonsense, our ancestors have all been pawns of individual ambitions and political power struggles for thousands of years and nothing changes. Part of my DNA goes way back, as far, or further than anyone else currently living in the UK, I also have more recent Scottish, Welsh and English blood in my veins, but is that any reason for me to feel I have more rights than anyone else. No far from it, why some factions need to become all tribal and align themselves with figures who are just a small part or the whole history of briton is beyond me. Unless of course they feel they have some personal gain to be made from it, which of course is unfair to the rest of the people who inhabit the island and at the end of the day the root of all the historical injustices.