Yeah, we’re just right.
Too many rules – Germany.
Too few rules – France.

As for GB looting the Empire, well….once they threw us out, thinking they didn’t need us, they all went down the pan with only a couple of exceptions. Some of the nations are only just now beginning to prosper (India for example) but they have a country mile to catch up. Most of Africa is, shall we just say, ruined by its very own people.
Ah well, we had our Empire, the Greeks and Romans had theirs. Even the French and Dutch have stuck their fingers in a few foriegn pies. Spose it’s the yanks at the moment – based on money alone.

One small correction, learned from long experience. France has just as many rules, probably more, but no one obeys them.:)

And your remarks about the Empire are spot on. And a polite way of describing the basket case which is Africa.

Egypt have.:diablo:

Don’t see the connection between a democratic constitutional monarchy and a dictatorship. So the despot has gone the military are making promises but the people are still restless. The vacuum is still dangerous and they are a very long way from getting what they want.

One of the worst decisions made by this government was to “ring-fence” foreign aid. It is an outrage when we give millions we do not have to countries with great and growing wealth. Yes, they have millions of poor and destitute people but they should be using their own resources first and fourmost. Anyone know the percentage of its GDP that India spends on defence….??

Arthur – in amongst your ramblings there is a coherence, which makes some sense. But truth be told we were all those things but we weren’t much good at anything else, except being eccentric and weirdly creative, which didn’t help us in an increasingly competitive, challenging world.

We always forget about emigration – between 250,000 and as high as 400,000 people have left the UK every year between 1990 and 2010…….

🙁 Tweets! I’ll think I’ll stick to having a quick look at the website as before from time to time…….;)

That’s an interesting comment – here comes thread drift – I used to spend a great deal of time in the Northern Isles and came to know a chiropodist from Hemel Hempstead who moved his wife and two young children to Shetland who worked peripetetically around the islands and had never been happier, nor the family. So a life of relative tranquility, low crime rates, good quality of life, wild open spaces, wonderful wildlife suits some and not others. And this will apply equally to the Falklands, I am sure. And of course Shetland invested its oil wealth from the 70s and 80s into its infrastructure to the great benefit of its population.

I doubt that anyone seriously takes this as anything more than muscle flexing, do they? An imminent attack on us by Russia? I don’t think so………….