Come And Have A Go If You Think You're Hard Enough

[Mahatma Coate]

As much as the Channel Islands are French.

 

OMG!  We have a billionaire foreign owner......................

The Channel Islands are NOT and NEVER HAVE BEEN French. They are the residue of the Duchy of Normandy ( split into the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey ). They were the property of the Conqueror before 1066 ( and he would have described himself as Norman since France as we know it did not exist ). As such, that makes the rest of GB their oldest possession.

[Mahatma Coate]

You can't even remotely compare the two.

 

Blair's invasion of Iraq was a war crime - and an unequivocal one - because it was an aggressive, unprovoked, unnecessary war.

 

What unequivocally was a war crime in the case of the Falklands was the unprovoked invasion of the islands by Argentina that started the war. If that doesn't happen, no Argentine soldiers or sailors get killed.

Blair lied about Iraq, Thatcher did not lie about the Falkland invasion.

Blair oversaw the stupid sale of our country's gold at the lowest historic price ever, he plundered your pensions by removing the tax credit and that single event sent the stock market down by 8% (which messed up your pensions and helped to trigger a recession). It's fashionable to revile Thatcher ( and bloody hell she was divisive ) but she did not preside over madness economics.

[WessexPest]

Yes, Thatcher is reviled and rightly so in some respects (although I feel she is judged that much more harshly because she was a woman and to celebrate her death was a pretty inhumane attitude to hold IMO) but Blair was far, far worse.

 

The war in Iraq is fundamental for me. The economy, expenses, etc - wouldn't have made a great deal of difference who was in power, in my view, and nobody died. Blair and others in and around the government manipulated events, documents, initiated the murky Gilligan / Kelly saga, caused the deaths of tens of thousands and ensured yet more instability in the middle east. Unforgivable. Utterly unforgivable. 

[Mahatma Coate]

Yes, Thatcher is reviled and rightly so in some respects (although I feel she is judged that much more harshly because she was a woman and to celebrate her death was a pretty inhumane attitude to hold IMO) but Blair was far, far worse.

 

The war in Iraq is fundamental for me. The economy, expenses, etc - wouldn't have made a great deal of difference who was in power, in my view, and nobody died. Blair and others in and around the government manipulated events, documents, initiated the murky Gilligan / Kelly saga, caused the deaths of tens of thousands and ensured yet more instability in the middle east. Unforgivable. Utterly unforgivable. 

Realistically we'd have come out of recession 18 months earlier without the insanity of selling the gold, there would have been less QE and more firepower to support the banks ( who would have been in less trouble ) .

[Welcome To The Jungle]

Can we move this to non-football now, I keep making the mistake of coming back in case there was a reference to football made.

[Mahatma Coate]

Can we move this to non-football now, I keep making the mistake of coming back in case there was a reference to football made.

Blair was probably a better player than Thatcher but he lied about watching Newcastle as a boy.

[Pheasant plucker]

How very rude, obviously not articulate enough to have a grown up debate.

Haha, what I find very, very sad about that post is you honestly don't have a clue of the irony in it do you?

[Pheasant plucker]

Blair was probably a better player than Thatcher but he lied about watching Newcastle as a boy.

Can't we just agree that all politicians, of all party's, are utter shysters of some form or another and leave it at that?

[TRL]

I have to say, I have a few likes associated to what I type, as well as being called a dick a **** or a idiot quite a bit as well.  But, the amount of likes I have for a 3 word statement has amazed me.

 

You ignorant scrote

 

seems to be my most like post!

 

Maybe I should have it as my signature, or maybe tagged to harrys username?

[Welcome To The Jungle]

Blair was probably a better player than Thatcher but he lied about watching Newcastle as a boy.

 

Nice, made I chuckle

[Shelton’s Love Gravy]

You have to let things go sometimes, especially when the people on the islands aren't Argentine and don't want to be. The 1982 invasion was not justified and all the deaths and injuries of the Falklands War flowed directly from it.

As for being "proud" or "ashamed" of the empire: The idea of investing historical events with emotions such as pride or shame, anger or joy, is one that I have some difficulty with. History happened, usually in a far more convoluted and compromised way than we'll ever get our heads round. I had no involvement in these events, I don't know anyone who did (I'm thinking pre-20th century here), so on what basis should I feel pride or shame? It seems to me to be part and parcel of our society's need to emote and to romanticize. I read history, can be gripped by it, feel the thrill of learning things I didn't know before, but do I feel pride in something that I had no part in and probably could never fully understand? No.

This may not seem important, but it is precisely this romanticizing of history, of feeling that we are in some way psychically connected to long dead events and people, that leads to intolerance of others who are equally as unassociated with those events as we are ourselves.

Secondly, Empire. The British Empire can't be viewed in isolation. It was one Empire, the largest, in an age of empire. Therefore, to see it with anything approaching objectivity, it has to be looked at in context, and it is pointless trying to view it purely through the filter of 21st century secular morality.

Part of the motivation for empire was driven by the desire of Christians to evangelize the natives, but the churches went into Africa independently of governments. Commerce was also an important factor, but again with people like Cecil Rhodes moving north from the Cape and Frederick Lugard on the Niger, this wasn't government policy, it was driven by entrepreneurs. One of the few motivations for governments was balance-of-power politics in Europe. But probably the main driving force behind Britain's reluctant amassing of territory (most 19th century British governments were reluctant to join the scramble for Africa but were at the mercy of events) was slavery - the public outcry to abolish it.

Britain was the first nation in the world to ban the slave trade (1807) and then slavery in its territories (1834). From 1808 until 1860, the West Africa Squadron was tasked with ending the Atlantic slave trade being carried on by other governments or privateers. As a result some 150,000 would-be slaves were intercepted on their way to the Americas and taken back to Africa - usually Sierra Leone.

As Britain stifled the Atlantic slave trade, Livingstone's explorations into the Congo basin exposed the huge Arab East Coast slave trade. Livingstone, the Bono of his day, lobbied for European and American intervention in Africa to end the brutal traffic that he saw - and he did see horrific things. Britain finally enforced the end of the trade on the Sultan of Zanzibar in 1876.

This is too long for a post, but I'll just mention in passing the genocide attempted by the Germans of the Herero people in German South-West Africa - nothing the British did remotely compares; nor can Britain's colonial actions be compared to those of Belgium in the Congo and Rwanda. Britain led the decolonization process with the independence of Ghana in 1957. Britain was the only colonial power with viable transition plans, and although these mostly came to naught due to unrest, it did mean that there were more local graduates, especially in the West African colonies, able to run their own countries than in, for example, any of the French ex-colonies.

This is rather interesting actually.

[Red-Robbo]

The Falklands campaign was the only thing I ever thought Thatcher got right. And Herr Kreitein was right to send Rattin off too.

As others have written before me, Buenos Aires only ever plays this card when they're trying to distract the Argentines from some sort of domestic disaster or they're trying to whip up some sort of patriotic nonsense before the World Cup.

Actually read Max Hastings book about the Falklands campaign.

You'll see that it was Thatcher's actions prior to the invasion that gave the Argies hope that the British weren't interested in the islands and they'd just accept the invasion as a fair accompli, as Portugal did when India invaded Goa in 1962.

They were encouraged by the fact that she'd just passed legislation robbing the Falklanders of their British citizenship and had reduced the garrison and was about to decommission the only RN ship in the area as part of her defence cuts.

Also, Mrs T never read the defence intelligence briefings. If she had, she'd have read that the invasion was widely known in Buenos Aires and one newspaper even published the correct date of the start of the operation!

Jim Callaghan - an ex-mariner - DID read his intelligence briefings and when a previous junta in Argentina were mulling a similar invasion in the 70s, he sent two nuclear subs to the area and let Buenos Aires know. They stopped mulling!

Seriously, it's a fascinating book, I thoroughly recommend. As good on the military side - we had a lot of luck to retake those islands - as the political.

[Gibbs]

I am not sure we have a sufficient navy to defend them in the same manner as before, I don't think many people realise how much we have cut back on numbers of ships and personnel to sail them, although I am sure that Cameron and co are hoping the Argentinians make a move so they can play the patriot card like Thatcher did in the 80's and seal their re-election.

 

Our technology is far superior and we spend at least 10x more than the argies. Yes we have made cut backs but we are still up there and have far more then the public the public likes to believe.

[The Casual Connoisseur]

Just Nuke them and Brazil, have the World Cup here, us versus the home nations and San Marino, reckon we'd get a chance of winning it then. Well were at it nuke Africa and the Middle East too, they are ******* mental and eat kids and stuff. Plus Haiti is poor as, so we will cut them off float them too the artic circle and glue them on to Eire which is also a nuclear waste ground, the Haitians will eat the poisoned potatoes and glow green, then the polar bears will eat the Haitians and be green bears, a mix of Irish, Haitian and artic, if they can qualify out of group v the remaining penguins then they can come and have a pop in 4 years time.

[The Casual Connoisseur]

Blair was probably a better player than Thatcher but he lied about watching Newcastle as a boy.

Blair is a war criminal and should be tried for his atrocities, instead he's got a cooshti job in the Middle East playing peace maker to wars he contributed in making worse.

I hate everything and everyone, death arggghhhh.

[Monkeh]

Just Nuke them and Brazil, have the World Cup here, us versus the home nations and San Marino, reckon we'd get a chance of winning it then. Well were at it nuke Africa and the Middle East too, they are ******* mental and eat kids and stuff. Plus Haiti is poor as, so we will cut them off float them too the artic circle and glue them on to Eire which is also a nuclear waste ground, the Haitians will eat the poisoned potatoes and glow green, then the polar bears will eat the Haitians and be green bears, a mix of Irish, Haitian and artic, if they can qualify out of group v the remaining penguins then they can come and have a pop in 4 years time.

nuke scotland as well that will teach them for wanting to leave this great empire

[Davros]

Poxy Island of know worth or value, costs us more money than it's worth, if the 100 or so Falklanders want to be British so much then stick them on an Island off of Scotland somewhere so they can feel quite at home, about time we did the right thing and started giving back all the lands we stole during our shameful imperialistic past

Hi Carlos, and no you can't have your island back, also take a history lesson we kinda found it before Argentina existed, oh and the Faroe islands should Denmark give them to us?

[Davros]

Blair is a war criminal and should be tried for his atrocities, instead he's got a cooshti job in the Middle East playing peace maker to wars he contributed in making worse.

I hate everything and everyone, death arggghhhh.

That'd not his job anymore he's having another go a EU president

[Red-Robbo]

That'd not his job anymore he's having another go a EU president

Not according to the papers.

It'll be that Juncker bloke. There was a hilarious account in the Times of when Juncker was Luxembourg PM and he held a meeting pissed right up and turning the air blue as he berated his country's intelligence service heads. He sounds ideal...

On another point, who knew that Luxembourg had a spy service?

[The Casual Connoisseur]

nuke scotland as well that will teach them for wanting to leave this great empire

Yeah I like it, skirt wearing fags!

[The Casual Connoisseur]

That'd not his job anymore he's having another go a EU president

In that case nuke the funking EU apart from the Nederlands. ADA.

[The Casual Connoisseur]

Not according to the papers.

It'll be that Juncker bloke. There was a hilarious account in the Times of when Juncker was Luxembourg PM and he held a meeting pissed right up and turning the air blue as he berated his country's intelligence service heads. He sounds ideal...

On another point, who knew that Luxembourg had a spy service?

No one until now you gobby git, what will I do in my retirement now it's out in the open.

[Sir Colby-Tit]

Can't we just give them Wales and call it quits?

[Fodbarmyarmy]

This ALL smells of Blatter and corruption ...... you bunch of racers.....

[The Casual Connoisseur]

Can't we just give them Wales and call it quits?

Them too.

[CiderJar]

The thing I find strangest about the Thatcher-Blair debate, that nobody seems willing to acknowledge, is that neither of them made the decision to go to war whether to protect or act as the aggressor. Those decisions were made by their military advisors, in other words by the military.

Any Prime Minister acts on advice, advice given by subject matter experts. They are merely puppets in that respect. David Cameron would have invaded Iraq, much as Michael Foot would have protected The Falklands, had either been in power at the time.

This country is run by banks, big business and military, all of which are run by unelected individuals.

Come the revolution those individuals should be the first against the wall. Power to the People!

Regards,

The Tooting Popular Front ("Freedom for Tooting"!)

[Aizoon]

If I beep my horn, will I be "Tooting for Freedom"?