Thoughts from an active pensioner who is now somewhat past his Biblical "Use-by date"

"Why just be difficult, when with a little more effort you can be bloody impossible?"



Wednesday 6 April 2011

Cameron: "Britain is to blame for the world's problems"

I was incensed to read in this morning's Daily Telegraph   
"Cameron: UK caused many of the world's problems"
He may have been to University, but he clearly learned his history from some politically correct source and it clearly bears little resemblance to the history that I was taught at school, or indeed reasonably accessible facts.
He demonstrated his total lack of historical knowledge on his last visit to the US when  he was apparently totally unaware of the fact that Britain entered World War 2 against Germany in 1939, long before America. In view of his ignorance in not being aware of what happened as recently as 1940, one would have thought that he would have shown enough sense to keep his mouth firmly closed about earlier times.

This "taking the blame" culture seems to have stemmed from Blair who though it necessary to take the blame for the Irish potato famine, and in this sense Cameron has shown that he is truly the "Heir to Blair". Now apparently we caused the world's problems.
I would argue that this is totally contrary to the facts.

In general, the Colonial powers kept the peace for many years in countries which are now racked by civil war. This applied not only in the British Colonies, but also in the French, Dutch and Belgian colonies.
Yes, we went there to exploit the natural resources, but what is wrong with that? We weren't stealing them, because no-one had any interest in them. But at the same time, it was in our interest to keep the peace, we stopped the warring tribes and were totally impartial in our actions, never favouring one tribe over another. We maintained peace in large areas of the Indian sub-continent, through Burma, Malaysia, Singapore (an unoccupied swamp) as far as Borneo. And all this with probably less personel than the average County Council today! Peace reigned, the standards of living of the indigenous inhabitants improved (demonstrated by the rapidly rising birthrate) and we built many of the new facilities such as  railways and harbours.
Then came independence for these countries and so-called democratic governments, followed by dictatorships and chaos. I cannot think of any of our ex-colonies except Australia, Canada and New Zealand that any reasonable person would now consider to have a democratic government..
Does anybody think that Pakistan, where Cameron made his ridiculous remarks, has a democratic government? How can we possibly be responsible for what is happening there where political leaders are routinely assassinated, and those who survive go to live elsewhere with huge fortunes?
Look at Africa; currently there is civil war in the Ivory Coast, we have had genocide in Rwanda and in the Congo whilst Rhodesia has been reduced from one of the richest countries in Africa with probably the highest standard of living, to one where people are daily dying of starvation and their life expectancy is one of the lowest on the continent, being less than half ours in the UK.
How on earth can the actions of Britain (or any of the other ex-colonial powers) when they were in control be responsible for what has happened since?
As far as I am concerned the man's a total idiot.




 

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