"Indefinite Leave to Remain" is an immigration status in the UK. It's not citizenship, but there's no time limit on it, you have access to public services like health care, and if you stick with it long enough you can get full citizenship without other hurdles. A reasonable relationship metaphor would be getting engaged. This song sounds remarkably like a marriage proposal.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'd get pretty swoony if someone was geeky enough to propose to me framed as a citizenship application.
This is from a very political album, Fundamental, which was dedicated to two Iranian teenagers who are believed to have been executed for consensual homosexual behavior. The album also features "I'm with Stupid," which is about Tony Blair and George W. Bush. So they even managed to make the marriage proposal song political, which is topical since immigration was a big topic in the UK as of the time of the album, as was gay marriage in both the US and Ireland. (I'm not sure if the UK was dealing with gay marriage directly at the time, but it was definitely in the top international headlines.)
[I'm a little boggled. I've never been the first comment on a song before, since I never hear new songs.]
I need to clarify because I typoed are/were about the Iranian case. There was a lot of misinformation going around and the reporting was highly politicized. At the time, it was reasonable to presume from mainstream English-language coverage that the case was about consensual behavior. [The official charge was rape of a 13 year old, which may have been accurate. That doesn't change the symbolism intended by the dedication, which was based on the understanding at the time.]
I need to clarify because I typoed are/were about the Iranian case. There was a lot of misinformation going around and the reporting was highly politicized. At the time, it was reasonable to presume from mainstream English-language coverage that the case was about consensual behavior. [The official charge was rape of a 13 year old, which may have been accurate. That doesn't change the symbolism intended by the dedication, which was based on the understanding at the time.]
"Indefinite Leave to Remain" is an immigration status in the UK. It's not citizenship, but there's no time limit on it, you have access to public services like health care, and if you stick with it long enough you can get full citizenship without other hurdles. A reasonable relationship metaphor would be getting engaged. This song sounds remarkably like a marriage proposal.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'd get pretty swoony if someone was geeky enough to propose to me framed as a citizenship application.
This is from a very political album, Fundamental, which was dedicated to two Iranian teenagers who are believed to have been executed for consensual homosexual behavior. The album also features "I'm with Stupid," which is about Tony Blair and George W. Bush. So they even managed to make the marriage proposal song political, which is topical since immigration was a big topic in the UK as of the time of the album, as was gay marriage in both the US and Ireland. (I'm not sure if the UK was dealing with gay marriage directly at the time, but it was definitely in the top international headlines.)
[I'm a little boggled. I've never been the first comment on a song before, since I never hear new songs.]
I need to clarify because I typoed are/were about the Iranian case. There was a lot of misinformation going around and the reporting was highly politicized. At the time, it was reasonable to presume from mainstream English-language coverage that the case was about consensual behavior. [The official charge was rape of a 13 year old, which may have been accurate. That doesn't change the symbolism intended by the dedication, which was based on the understanding at the time.]
I need to clarify because I typoed are/were about the Iranian case. There was a lot of misinformation going around and the reporting was highly politicized. At the time, it was reasonable to presume from mainstream English-language coverage that the case was about consensual behavior. [The official charge was rape of a 13 year old, which may have been accurate. That doesn't change the symbolism intended by the dedication, which was based on the understanding at the time.]