h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What spinless drivel this is, from a "student" fresh from the Union bar.
Yes Britain was an empire, India wanted to be free, and they are.
Is there order there? Are people safe, fed, housed? Can they work and develope as individuals?
South Africa has turned out a nice stable continent since Great
Britain returned their independants.
Is there order there? Are people safe, fed, housed? Can they work and develope as individuals for the greater good of their comunity and country?
And as for America, they realy showed us how to handle taxes, didn't they, well didn't they?

You've had your fun, but you really can't run a bath, it's time for the Empire to return to full power and total world domination. To bring an end to petty wars fort for religioen or land. To make the world a safer productive place, where everyone is fed, shelterd and free to develope as individuals.

I agree. It is the British Empire that allows people to have no grasp of the language of their country that they are raving about. Where else can you waffle on about how proud you are of Britain without being able to spell. Hurrah for the Empire! You doughnut!

Err, please say you were joking Martin. The British Empire brought nothing but misery to India, committed mass genocide in the Americas and created the poverty that led to Africa having a seriously bad hangover this last half-century.

Erm, so far as I can recall (and memory is a valuable commodity so Ill have to run back to my history books probably) The Colonists in the americas did more damage than the British (unless you count them AS British).
The British made alliances in Canadian territory with the Native American population - one of the reasons the RCMP wears red is for the respect those tribes had for the British army uniform.
We were no angels, we wiped out civilisations and religions. But how do we compare to the Spanish conquest of S. America?
The British Empire was not really different to the other empires, except it was bigger and possibly more devious.

Devious, the English - surely not !, maybe our Welsh cousins or Scottish 1/2 cousins. A rabid xenophobia has always stood us in good stead against Johnny Foreigner (esp the French!)

Sadly, the boys with all the nukes already own the world, and think they are doing exactly what you want.

RE: cousins and half-cousins

While there is a cultural root in the Scottish that is arguably different from English/Welsh (Pictish, and not Scottish, which is Celtic, and therefore related to Welsh), this can only apply to the eastern highlands. Most of the Scottish alive today share closer ancestry (both biological and cultural) with the Anglians -- one of the so-called "Anglo-Saxon" group, which led to the English. Though I would never dare to bring that point up with any Scot.

The Viking role is also important. Indeed, we may say that, culturally, the settlements at Jorvik (N.E. England) and Dalreada (W. Scotland) had more in common with each other than with anything in between. After the invasion and the English reconquest, many Norse traditions continued -- this can be seen in the place names, accents and dialects of the North and East (of particular note, the Yorkshire dialect, which was born from an English/Norse language for trade). There are many more examples of just how heterogenous our cultural roots are. While I would not disagree that there has been considerable rivalry between the Scots and the English over the years, the same has been true of the Welsh -- but they were the first target of English expansion, were defeated first and so were more "integrated".

We must also remember that Socts have controlled England, most famously as the Stuarts. Even today, the most powerful two people in the adminstration are either Scottish (Gordon Brown) or immediately descended from Scots (Tony Blair).

This is a statement based on political realities being projected back into some mythical family tree of nations. The historical record has a tendency of contradicting such unchanging notions.