Wednesday 28 August 2019

Special Guest Blogger: Thomas Paine

If you ever go to England and mention the name Thomas Paine, they will stare blankly at you as if you had asked them to explain the LBW rule in cricket but i should be one of the most famous Englishmen ever as i was directly involved in all of the big events in the 18th Century and created some of the best fitting corsets ever designed. 
Of course i ballsed all of it up, i started out trying being a pirate with someone called Captain Death but never really had the heart for it so set up a corset making factory instead which naturally went into bankruptcy and then my wife left me.   
I met Benjamin Franklin, as you do, who told me i should go to America and as i got there the anti-English climate was reaching it's head and crates of tea were bobbing around Boston Harbour due to the tax increases and if there are three things Americans don't like it's small portions, spelling properly and paying taxes.
While all this was going on i wrote 'Common Sense' which set out why the Americans should overthrow the English King, a book that inspired George Washington to take up against the English and he even came around my house to chat about it and made me the Secretary for Foreign Affairs.
All was going well until i let slip that i supported the abolition of slavery which didn't go down well as most of the founding fathers including old wooden teeth himself kept slaves but it was when i suggested increasing taxes to pay for the military that the brown stuff hit the fan and i was sacked and thrown into a debtors prison. 
On my release i came back to England and wrote 'The Rights of Man' which supported the ongoing French Revolution and called for a revolution in England against the monarchy, oops, and i fled to France before i could be captured and executed and was made part of the National Assembly Parliament which had replaced King Louis XVI but i voted against executing the king which the assembly charged me with being a royalist and threw me in jail and sentenced me to death.
While in my cell i wrote 'The Age of Reason' which slagged off the Bible and wrote some nasty letters to George Washington saying what an awful job he was doing and he should take more baths because he stank but by a bit of luck the Assembly was overthrown by Napoleons mob and i was released.
I helped Napoleon with some inspirational speeches for his army but turned him down when he offered me a position in his military which Napoleon didn't take particularly well and fearing he would execute me, i planned my escape but i was unable to run back to England (way to hold a grudge England) so i wrote to Thomas Jefferson who said i could go to America which i did.
The subject matter of my 'Age of Reason' book had reached the ears of the American religious nutters who attacked me and i ended up sofa surfing and holding a steak to my black eyes until i died and even that went wrong as my bones which were meant to be sent back to England for burial were 'misplaced' and never arrived.
So in a name dropping competition i could mention the founding fathers and the first American President, the French Revolutionary Assembly, Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson and author of some of the best known books in history but to my own countrymen, i'm as familiar as a bar of soap to George Washington.

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