Wednesday June 22nd 2016

[Cannydc]

Mine's debt is well over £50k, and will be even higher by the time he completes his doctorate, my advice is to go work in Germany or Switzerland where he worked before so speaks the language. It was a poker match, Cameron bluffed you lot, I fear.

Yeah but we got the PR ref than no-one turned up for causing UKIP to lose their shit when they got no representation despite a decent showing at the polls.

People...

True, true (shakes head sadly)

[Keyser]

Brexit hasn't happened after all this time. So its looking like there really is no democracy in the UK after all.
They let you go to the polls just like they let a classroom of 8 yr olds play pretend voting...
..But its not cute anymore when adults are involved.

Anyone who believed in this total catastrofuck had less functioning neurons than a prion with Alzheimer's.

The UK is finished as a world power.

And we once (for the time) benevolently ran the whole fucking show not so long ago.

Benevolently?

By the standards of the day - you cannot place 21st values onto 18/19th century events.

Much like you cannot judge the Romans.

It's preposterous.

If you think any other country of that time would have done better with such vast power then name them - including those we ruled.

I think you would be very hard pressed indeed.

[Rolluplostinspace]

Brexit hasn't happened after all this time. So its looking like there really is no democracy in the UK after all.
They let you go to the polls just like they let a classroom of 8 yr olds play pretend voting...
..But its not cute anymore when adults are involved.

Anyone who believed in this total catastrofuck had less functioning neurons than a prion with Alzheimer's.

The UK is finished as a world power.

And we once (for the time) benevolently ran the whole fucking show not so long ago.

Benevolently?

By the standards of the day - you cannot place 21st values onto 18/19th century events.

Much like you cannot judge the Romans.

It's preposterous.

If you think any other country of that time would have done better with such vast power then name them - including those we ruled.

I think you would be very hard pressed indeed.

I didn't mention any other country Keys but empire by its very nature is about robbing looting killing raping controlling by any means.

[Cannydc]

Brexit hasn't happened after all this time. So its looking like there really is no democracy in the UK after all.
They let you go to the polls just like they let a classroom of 8 yr olds play pretend voting...
..But its not cute anymore when adults are involved.

Anyone who believed in this total catastrofuck had less functioning neurons than a prion with Alzheimer's.

The UK is finished as a world power.

And we once (for the time) benevolently ran the whole fucking show not so long ago.

Benevolently?

By the standards of the day - you cannot place 21st values onto 18/19th century events.

Much like you cannot judge the Romans.

It's preposterous.

If you think any other country of that time would have done better with such vast power then name them - including those we ruled.

I think you would be very hard pressed indeed.

I didn't mention any other country Keys but empire by its very nature is about robbing looting killing raping controlling by any means.

I rather tend towards seeing it as modernising - two key inventions were spread throughout the world by the British. The first of these was the train, invented in 1830, and the other was the telegraph, invented around the same time.

Enriching - Seven of the world’s 10 richest countries—Qatar, Singapore, Kuwait, Brunei, UAE, Hong Kong, and the USA—were once either British colonies or British protectorates.

Democratising - The British Empire brought democracy to countries across all continents, including the US, India, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Pakistan, and many more).

Then there was peace - Pax Brittanica. We came to lands were warfare had been the way of life for millennia, India and Africa. And we stopped it. We made the world into the most peaceful place it had ever been, far more peaceful than it is today).

Rule of Law - Most places we arrived had no rule of law. Might was right. We put in the British legal system which gave the vast majority of people far more human rights than they had ever had before.

Trade - Empire was all about trade, creating markets for British goods around the world whilst creating markets for global goods in Britain. And huge trade between all the different parts of Empire. This massively advanced the economy of the whole world.

Infrastructure - We established and maintained the world’s shipping routes, road systems everywhere we went, and railways including the world’s biggest system, in India. Our plumbing was famous and on the Mediterranean islands we ran, Cyprus, Malta, Rhodes, Corfu, Menorca etc it is still safe to drink the tap water.

Education. In many nations we brought literacy for the first time and created widespread educational reform. When we found intellectual superstars we often brought them back to Britain to receive the world’s best education.

[Rolluplostinspace]

THE BRITISH EMPIRE: A MOSTLY BENIGN RULE? by John Patton
http://www.judecollins.com/2016/10/brit ... hn-patton/

[Rolluplostinspace]

BRITAIN'S EMPIRE WAS NOT BENEVOLENT.
Imperialism was no gift
Democracy was not actually a concept with which British elites were comfortable—or with which colonised peoples were familiar throughout most of the era of Britain’s imperial rule. Rather, it was something hard won, largely once the British had left.​

Those under the “benevolent” rule of empire did not necessarily experience British imperialism as a gift. For many around the world, the costs of empire were not restricted to the occasional episode of violent repression, nor even to structural injustices such as the slave trade. Rather, these were systematic, everyday costs. These costs included exclusion – from power and privilege in their own lands—coupled with humiliation at being made to pay deference to white people who assumed the right to govern them.

Before condemning the corruption and rudeness of others perhaps we should remember the act of imperialism itself may be seen as self-interested, arrogant rudeness on a global scale.
http://www.newsweek.com/britains-empire ... ent-459704

[Rolluplostinspace]

Cameron was right about the armbands. The creation of the British empire caused large portions of the global map to be tinted a rich vermilion, and the colour turned out to be peculiarly appropriate. Britain's empire was established, and maintained for more than two centuries, through bloodshed, violence, brutality, conquest and war. Not a year went by without large numbers of its inhabitants being obliged to suffer for their involuntary participation in the colonial experience. Slavery, famine, prison, battle, murder, extermination – these were their various fates.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/ ... erial-past

[Cannydc]

There are always two sides to the argument.

Empire is far from perfect - but taken in the context of the time, rather than trying to place our current values on it, the overall benefits to most if not all of the countries concerned could be easily considered to outweigh the negatives.

[Rolluplostinspace]

None of this has been, during the 60-year post-colonial period since 1947, the generally accepted view of the empire in Britain. The British understandably try to forget that their empire was the fruit of military conquest and of brutal wars involving physical and cultural extermination.

A self-satisfied and largely hegemonic belief survives in Britain that the empire was an imaginative, civilising enterprise, reluctantly undertaken, that brought the benefits of modern society to backward peoples. Indeed it is often suggested that the British empire was something of a model experience, unlike that of the French, the Dutch, the Germans, the Spaniards, the Portuguese – or, of course, the Americans. There is a widespread opinion that the British empire was obtained and maintained with a minimum degree of force and with maximum co-operation from a grateful local population.

This benign, biscuit-tin view of the past is not an understanding of their history that young people in the territories that once made up the empire would now recognise. A myriad revisionist historians have been at work in each individual country producing fresh evidence to suggest that the colonial experience – for those who actually "experienced" it – was just as horrific as the opponents of empire had always maintained that it was, perhaps more so. New generations have been recovering tales of rebellion, repression and resistance that make nonsense of the accepted imperial version of what went on. Focusing on resistance has been a way of challenging not just the traditional, self-satisfied view of empire, but also the customary depiction of the colonised as victims, lacking in agency or political will.

The theme of repression has often been underplayed in traditional acc ...... > https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/ ... erial-past

[Rolluplostinspace]

The railways sea ports and roads built by the British all over the world were to move troops in and around as fast as possible and to bring out the gold diamonds rubies spices animal skins hardwoods and so on as easily as possible.
When black slavery ended the British shipped hundreds of thousands of Indians and Chinese around the globe to fill the gaps in needed labour.
These people weren't applying for these jobs but being forced at gunpoint bayonet point and dragged from continent to continent against their will. Children torn from families husbands from wives etc etc etc.
Good riddance empire.

[Cannydc]

To be sure, it's outmoded, had it's time, of another age.

But the Guardian's attempts to demolish so many huge achievements simply sounds like left wing bitterness, most of which is way out of context.

I am taken by the reality of a story related by Jeremy Paxman.

"In many places we found imperial amnesia to have less of a grip than it has in Britain. One of the more astonishing conversations I had was with an elderly Kikuyu lady who had been one of the leaders of the bloody Mau Mau uprising, which the British put down brutally. We were chatting outside her hut on the side of Mount Kenya when, to my astonishment, she suddenly started talking about how the British had created schools and hospitals and Kenya should accept and appreciate her colonial past."

[Maddog]

To be sure, it's outmoded, had it's time, of another age.

But the Guardian's attempts to demolish so many huge achievements simply sounds like left wing bitterness, most of which is way out of context.

I am taken by the reality of a story related by Jeremy Paxman.

"In many places we found imperial amnesia to have less of a grip than it has in Britain. One of the more astonishing conversations I had was with an elderly Kikuyu lady who had been one of the leaders of the bloody Mau Mau uprising, which the British put down brutally. We were chatting outside her hut on the side of Mount Kenya when, to my astonishment, she suddenly started talking about how the British had created schools and hospitals and Kenya should accept and appreciate her colonial past."

Imperialism was basically the way of the world. It's not like the Brits were the only ones doing it, and in most cases, it replaced a form of government that was worse than imperialism. Like you say, by today's standards, imperialism is kind of a shitty system, but by the standards of 300 years ago, it was one of the better systems. Even the Spaniards convinced many of the natives of Texas to stop eating each other. At least until disease wiped many of them out.

[Keyser]

I rather tend towards seeing it as modernising - two key inventions were spread throughout the world by the British. The first of these was the train, invented in 1830, and the other was the telegraph, invented around the same time.

Enriching - Seven of the world’s 10 richest countries—Qatar, Singapore, Kuwait, Brunei, UAE, Hong Kong, and the USA—were once either British colonies or British protectorates.

Democratising - The British Empire brought democracy to countries across all continents, including the US, India, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Pakistan, and many more).

Then there was peace - Pax Brittanica. We came to lands were warfare had been the way of life for millennia, India and Africa. And we stopped it. We made the world into the most peaceful place it had ever been, far more peaceful than it is today).

Rule of Law - Most places we arrived had no rule of law. Might was right. We put in the British legal system which gave the vast majority of people far more human rights than they had ever had before.

Trade - Empire was all about trade, creating markets for British goods around the world whilst creating markets for global goods in Britain. And huge trade between all the different parts of Empire. This massively advanced the economy of the whole world.

Infrastructure - We established and maintained the world’s shipping routes, road systems everywhere we went, and railways including the world’s biggest system, in India. Our plumbing was famous and on the Mediterranean islands we ran, Cyprus, Malta, Rhodes, Corfu, Menorca etc it is still safe to drink the tap water.

Education. In many nations we brought literacy for the first time and created widespread educational reform. When we found intellectual superstars we often brought them back to Britain to receive the world’s best education.

Excellent post and as I say we should be judged by the standards of the time not the 21st century.

[Punk]

I rather tend towards seeing it as modernising - two key inventions were spread throughout the world by the British. The first of these was the train, invented in 1830, and the other was the telegraph, invented around the same time.

Enriching - Seven of the world’s 10 richest countries—Qatar, Singapore, Kuwait, Brunei, UAE, Hong Kong, and the USA—were once either British colonies or British protectorates.

Democratising - The British Empire brought democracy to countries across all continents, including the US, India, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Pakistan, and many more).

Then there was peace - Pax Brittanica. We came to lands were warfare had been the way of life for millennia, India and Africa. And we stopped it. We made the world into the most peaceful place it had ever been, far more peaceful than it is today).

Rule of Law - Most places we arrived had no rule of law. Might was right. We put in the British legal system which gave the vast majority of people far more human rights than they had ever had before.

Trade - Empire was all about trade, creating markets for British goods around the world whilst creating markets for global goods in Britain. And huge trade between all the different parts of Empire. This massively advanced the economy of the whole world.

Infrastructure - We established and maintained the world’s shipping routes, road systems everywhere we went, and railways including the world’s biggest system, in India. Our plumbing was famous and on the Mediterranean islands we ran, Cyprus, Malta, Rhodes, Corfu, Menorca etc it is still safe to drink the tap water.

Education. In many nations we brought literacy for the first time and created widespread educational reform. When we found intellectual superstars we often brought them back to Britain to receive the world’s best education.

Excellent post and as I say we should be judged by the standards of the time not the 21st century.

Imperialism and colonialism led to WW1.

[Keyser]

I rather tend towards seeing it as modernising - two key inventions were spread throughout the world by the British. The first of these was the train, invented in 1830, and the other was the telegraph, invented around the same time.

Enriching - Seven of the world’s 10 richest countries—Qatar, Singapore, Kuwait, Brunei, UAE, Hong Kong, and the USA—were once either British colonies or British protectorates.

Democratising - The British Empire brought democracy to countries across all continents, including the US, India, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Pakistan, and many more).

Then there was peace - Pax Brittanica. We came to lands were warfare had been the way of life for millennia, India and Africa. And we stopped it. We made the world into the most peaceful place it had ever been, far more peaceful than it is today).

Rule of Law - Most places we arrived had no rule of law. Might was right. We put in the British legal system which gave the vast majority of people far more human rights than they had ever had before.

Trade - Empire was all about trade, creating markets for British goods around the world whilst creating markets for global goods in Britain. And huge trade between all the different parts of Empire. This massively advanced the economy of the whole world.

Infrastructure - We established and maintained the world’s shipping routes, road systems everywhere we went, and railways including the world’s biggest system, in India. Our plumbing was famous and on the Mediterranean islands we ran, Cyprus, Malta, Rhodes, Corfu, Menorca etc it is still safe to drink the tap water.

Education. In many nations we brought literacy for the first time and created widespread educational reform. When we found intellectual superstars we often brought them back to Britain to receive the world’s best education.

Excellent post and as I say we should be judged by the standards of the time not the 21st century.

Imperialism and colonialism led to WW1.

The human race has always been at war and Imperialism has existed since the very first city state though and that will never change (just look at the Yanks who do it in a different way).

I just think is rather unfair for people to always hold up The British Empire as the epitome of evil when in comparison to others we certainly were not.