Re: How to put a Tegethoff dreadnought together?

Family.

You don't pick 'em, you don't always like them all the time (some more,
some less at any given moment) and in-house fights can really get
extreme.  But they're still family.

I see the UK/USA relationship like that.  Sort of like Mom and Dad got
divorced then remarried but found a way to be civil and cooperate with
each other so the His/Hers/ours/theirs thing is just a minor reality not
a big factor.. but let someone mess with the 'other' part of the family
and watch all the 'cousins' come up and make sure that nobody interferes
while their 'relation' scraps with someone.  It may be their fight but
you want to make sure they don't get jumped at a disadvantage.	(I used
to let my younger brother settle his own dust ups and as long as the
fight was one on one and reasonably fair I just watched.)  If he lost
(not often) I made sure that the fight stopped once he was down - not
everybody plays by the Marquis of Queensberry rules - and if it was a
gang on one or if (real life example) Tony's big brother intervened
(large age and size wise) in their spats then I intervened.  

We had a "proto-gang" (wannabes, small family based and not at all
organized hence they never became a big problem) and they tried that
"let's ambush and beat up the younger brother" thing once... but that's
another story.

An real world example:
The UK tangled with Argentina in my lifetime; we "came up" as it were,
offered some 'advice' and 'technical support' but since it was their
fight and it seemed they could handle it nicely there never was any
thought of our becoming involved in 'their' fight.  Now if a
'significant
player' had come up and looked like they were planning to intervene 
with
their "anti-capitalist socialist brothers" in the fight then they might
have had to be reminded it was not their fight either.	Amazing how
reasonable people can be if the right reasoning is applied.

On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 15:48:13 -0000 "Matt Tope" <mptope@omnihybrid.com>
writes:
>Doug wrote:
>
>>4th of July (in the Commonwealth, George III's Day of Shame...)
>
>Why shame? Giving what you ex colonial crazy cats have been upto since 
>1782
>we in Blighty are only to glad to be able to take one pace back and 
>say
>"Nowt to do with us guv!", but still be able to get you to bail us out 
>when
>our continental neighbours get a little to frisky, or we just need a 
>loan.
>Seem's like a good set up to me. Foward thinker that George III, only 
>now
>does the true scope of his genius shine through.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Matt Tope
>
>
>

________________________________________________________________
The best thing to hit the Internet in years - Juno SpeedBand!
Surf the Web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER!
Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today!