Hypocrisy

Colin Phillips said:
Public opinion seems to be that he should but so often I find myself at odds with public opinion.
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Nothing wrong with that, Colin.

Generally public opinion says decriminalsing cannabis is wrong, for example - and most of our politicans are the guardian of this view. The professors and people who have studied the issue generally say the opposite. Who is to be believed?

'Mass Belief', generated by 'mass misunderstanding', is no more profound in political terms as it is in say, everyone buying an apple mac or thinking Lady Gaga is the best thing since Marilyn Monroe. It's very worrying when in appears people can't think for themselves, especially in terms of who to vote for.

I do think he should be deported by the way, I see it more of a formailty than a massive point of debate, but each to their own.

But on the whole (despite their flaws) on Cameron, Clegg and Osbourne I'm against public opinion, because in tightening the public purse I think they're doing the smart thing. Spending too much on public services was what partly got us in the mess we are in now. People seem to want another 5 year short term of the dose of the same to somehow get us out of the mess. The economics of the situation are surely too volatile to do that now.
 
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Colin Phillips said:
The governor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, regularly intervened to prevent the perpetrators from being brought to justice.
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bloody bankers.....

Incidentally, I've read a few books on the subject of British colonialism and none of them have portrayed the activity as a "civilising mission". In fact, they all portray it as an exercise in making money, whether people like it or not. I suspect that the "civilising mission" propaganda has more to do with certain people grabbing on to what they can best beat a subject with than the "right wing press" propagating a myth.

An interesting point was put forth at the end of one of those books, which, generally speaking, and IMHO, appears to be fairly true (with an obvious exception).

The point in question was (paraphrase) "is there any other Empire in history which is looked on so fondly by former subjects than the British Empire?"
 
simmo said:
bloody bankers.....

Incidentally, I've read a few books on the subject of British colonialism and none of them have portrayed the activity as a "civilising mission". In fact, they all portray it as an exercise in making money, whether people like it or not. I suspect that the "civilising mission" propaganda has more to do with certain people grabbing on to what they can best beat a subject with than the "right wing press" propagating a myth.

An interesting point was put forth at the end of one of those books, which, generally speaking, and IMHO, appears to be fairly true (with an obvious exception).

The point in question was (paraphrase) "is there any other Empire in history which is looked on so fondly by former subjects than the British Empire?"[/QUOTE]

Ask the people of Northern Ireland how fondly they remember them.
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That'll be the obvious exception. And slightly less than half of the people you mention would say "grand so". (It was, of course, slightly more than half at the time of partition).

Ireland as a whole represents less than 1 percent of the people being referred to in the quote, which, IMO, is quite correct if viewed objectively.
 
An awful lot of people in England during those Colonial days were not treated very well by the ruling classes were they?
The Condems would like to take us back to those days.
 
"The Condems would like to take us back to those days."

In your opinion, not a fact.
One of the reasons that I would like to have seen a Government of National Unity including all three main parties was to make it more difficult for people to make anachronistic comments like that as we take a very large portion of unpalatable, but necessary, medicine.
 
An interesting point was put forth at the end of one of those books, which, generally speaking, and IMHO, appears to be fairly true (with an obvious exception).

The point in question was (paraphrase) "is there any other Empire in history which is looked on so fondly by former subjects than the British Empire?"
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The Ottoman empire is regarded with a certain degree of nostalgia by a lot of people that used to be part of it. It was a lot more tolerant of cultural difference than most of the regimes that replaced it and generally left local administrations free to get on with things once they coughed up a certain amount of revenue. But that was not the approach taken by most imperialists, especially the European empires, who carried convictions about the superiority of their race, culture and religion into the most distant part of their territories.

I don't think empires are normally remembered with any degree of fondness by their former subjects. You will of course find some minority groups and individuals who would have preferred the old order to continue because of certain advantages they held, but most people prefer independence to domination by rulers who believe themselves inherently superior, even if they are not materially as well off as they might once have been.

Once independence is achieved, however, and relationships are on a new footing, it becomes possible to take the positive parts of the colonial legacy and build on them.

The main example of fondness for a former empire that I can think of is the English regard for the Roman Empire, which continues to this day (What The Romans Did For Us, etc). But this suited the English because as imperialists themselves it gave them something they could aspire to, and it made some of them feel more civilised than their Celtic neighbours.
 
That last para is total bollocks. Almost paranoid. There may have been some English politicians who claimed to want to build a roman empire in recent times, but I buggerd if I can recall who they were

Oh and for the record, it was the British empire and "the celts" of Glasgow and Cardiff did rather well out of it. Wasn't Glasgow the empires "second city".

What the Romans did for us was out of life of Brian wasn't it? I always thought that was a film rather than a party political broadcast
 
I was basing myself on these and similar extracts from The Isles, the history of Britain and Ireland by Norman Davies:

"For fundamental reasons of geography, the area of active Roman occupation was confined to the lowland territory which would later become England. The Roman presence is missing from Irish history, and is marginal to the history of Scotland and Wales. But it is evident on all sides in the towns and countryside of England... All English children are schooled in the knowledge that they live in a land where once the Romans lived. So Roman Britain has been attached... to 'the English heritage'....

Still more important is the realisation that all those generations of British people (largely men), who were educated in the classics, were being taught to understand to sympathise with the Greeks and the Romans. When thinking of the long confrontation between Celts and Romans, therefore they instinctively sided with the Romans. They would all have read Tacitus's warning: 'Remember, they are barbarians...' For the Romans were seen as the bearers of civilisation and the ancient Britons as the uncivilised..." (page 124)

And by the way, according to Wikipedia "What the Romans Did for Us, is a 2000 BBC documentary series that examines the impact of the Romans on modern society. The name of the programme is derived from the cult movie Monty Python's Life of Brian, referencing the famous scene where the People's Front of Judea discuss 'What have the Romans done for us?'"
 
That's very tenuous, but either way, the idea that the empire was purely an English construct is utter crap. The supposedly derided celts were equally enthusiastic participants and benficiaries

There were plenty of jocks trampling around Africa gleefully chopping heads off natives as well as welsh driving the natives to suicide wi their bloody singing
 
You're quite right, and as well as Scots and Welsh there were Irish who participated too, but it's not what I said, which was that the English have a particular regard for the Roman empire.
 
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