Jamaica prefers brits rule them

[frankthring]

I see in a poll conducted by the "Daily Gleaner", Jamaica`a main newspaper, that 60% thought the country would be better off and was
formerly ruled better under Great Britain. Only 17% disagreed. Margin of
error 4%.
As an unashamed imperialist this brings tears to my eyes. I wonder how
many of our old imperial colonies - Zimbabwe with its crushing debt, Nigeria
with its widespread corruption, Aden and the Somaliland Protectorate with
barely any government at all, would vote similarly if permitted ?
I also seem to recall Pakistan and Sri Lanka (Ceylon) being much more
peaceful in the old days not to mention a few other places !

[Zorro]

It would be great to get the old empire back again, sadly I do not think our armed forces are large enough to police it anymore.

[The Cream Bun]

that USA with its huge public debt mountain too, they could do with our help! And as for Ireland.....

[The Cream Bun]

true, I would agree they are no banana republic.

But the economic model they are operating has a limited lifespan until something happens, some sort of global economic realignment in the next 10 years or so will occur and it wont be good for the US people.

Hence why China are wandering around Europe this week looking for other countries to lend to (e.g. Hungary) because there is only so much US debt they are willing to hold.

But yes plenty of former colonies do pretty awful things to their people, whilst we did some pretty awful things to their people when we were in charge, I tend to agree we wouldnt do so again. Probably. !happy!

[one eyed jack]

Yeah I can imagine it must be nice to live among the natives and have a nice black butler or two on a big plantation calling you massuh eh Frank?

Would sir like a glass of Pymms or a crisp cucumber sandwich to go with that?

[max_tranmere]

There were two main reasons why Britain de-colonised. The first was because of the huge numbers of deaths amongst the aristocracy during World War 1, which lit a slow-burning fuse that would eventually spell the end of the class system; and secondly because of how expensive it would be to continue to 'police' all of our colonies if trouble erupted - like when we had to send troops to Kenya during the Mau Mau uprisings in the 1950's.

Britain was never the same after World War 1, it was always said that if the call-to-arms came the first people who would step forward to defend the nation were the aristocracy. They did, and they perished like nobody's business. In 1919, one year after WW1 ended, over 1 million acres of (now former) aristocratic land was up for sale in England. After World War 2, and the austerity measures that were introduced in Britain, we simply couldn't afford the Empire any more.

I would say the biggest thing that ever happened to this country was World War 1, it changed things far more profoundly that World War 2 did. I could not imagine Britain having an empire now - we are a very differnt nation to what we were one hundred years ago and also it couldn't be afforded,

[planeterotica]

one eyed jack wrote:

> Yeah I can imagine it must be nice to live among the natives
> and have a nice black butler or two on a big plantation calling
> you massuh eh Frank?

planeterotica wrote:

I can well remember some of the old colonial types, as a boy i use to do odd job gardening work and those old bastards would treat everyone as slaves, we dont need another empire and we only lost America over a fallout about some tea, two lumps please and dont spill it !wink!