A question of perception

In these days of self-imposed exile from news websites I have still been thinking about current affairs but have started to view things slightly differently.

Last night whilst having a smoke in the garden I started to think about why so many people still regard Britain as a nasty piece of work. I came to the conclusion that it is the unfortunate legacy of once having an empire that expanded across the globe killing, plundering, and raping as it went.

In these globalised days where we are all supposed to be much more enlightened Britain still comes in for a lot of flack for being imperialist and putting it's interests before anyone else's. To me this is the way the world is and I really don't think that we should feel all that bad about it because every man and his dog is doing the same. I also think that compared to countries like Saudi Arabia where women aren't allowed to drive or be in the company of unrelated men we are like the Walton Family.

As we try and fix the wrongs that we have done in the past we should remember that as a nation we are on the right path and take comfort in the fact that although we are still involved in conflicts in far-away lands at least we have managed to reduce the number of people we are killing by a massive amount. The number of people unfortunately killed in Iraq and Afghanistan pale into insignificance when compared to the amount of people killed by our fore-fathers in Africa, France, Germany, The Falklands, America, and countless others.