Up yours!

It actually began when the French lost a war with the English some 600 odd years back. The French believed that their soldiers who rode on horses and fought at arms distance were far superior (at least morally) to the English archers who preferred to stay on a high rise and use their longbow. But moral superiority doesn’t always win battles and hence the French were irritated beyond grasp. They took out this frustration by chopping off the fingers every time they captured an English longbow man.

But every time the English won the battle they would retaliate by showing their first two fingers (the fingers used to draw an arrow) in a ‘V’ shape to the French army – to show that they still had them. The ‘V’ didn’t represent a victory symbol (till Churchill came along), but it basically meant - up yours, I still have ‘em’.

Frankly I believe that is what our politicians tell us when they show us the ‘V’ sign.