I am rather tired of the posts of all those silly people who feel obliged to complain about the past history of this country. Especially when all they know of it is a rather garbled and heavily biased anti-colonial version. Whatever do they teach in History lessons nowadays? I was born into a world dominated by the British Empire and the belief that the British Empire was a Good Thing, of which we should be proud. We were, as our boys’ magazines told us, “Sons of the British Empire, upon which the sun never sets”. And so we were. And so Gilbert and Sullivan will tell you: “he is an Englishman”. We were a nation that had created so much, and done so much. Our Industrial Revolution led the world; and it used our own units of weight and measure; our currency was strong and well-loved by the population. Those units, and that currency, were part of the nation’s soul and identity. Nothing is perfect, and our Empire had many faults; but it wasn’t all as wicked and self-seeking as some people would have you believe. And now, bit by bit, the - what are they called? - have started to complain about and apologise for the actions of people they have never known; Social Justice Warriors, is it? Idiotic self-seeking ——; ah well, you can perhaps understand how after 80 years on this planet, with so many mouths constantly denigrating the achievements of the past, I am so irritated by the modern desire to be (holier than thou) better than our forbears and to distance themselves from all that those forbears did and said. Deep down within me is a feeling that we have all been cheated and our achievements (“our” - i.e. of those who went before) are now not appreciated at all. A cold anger, you might call it; not just the desecration of the currency, but of everything important, call it British, or English, or whatever - labels that described a way of life which was the envy of the world. Look at us now; no, perhaps that is unwise. They didn’t just take our half-crowns away; they stole our souls and our history. Yes, I am a dinosaur. And I don’t care. The Empire was never perfect - we know that, and acknowledge that, - but it did a lot of good and introduced some of its erstwhile colonies to its ideals and ideas. You try telling the modern lot that, if you can persuade them to stop staring into their iphones and drag them away from their iPads first, of course. But the wind is blowing my words to all the points of the compass, and I don’t expect anyone to listen to them. I have, as I may have mentioned once or twice before, had better days. I will refrain from further comment. Tell me what you think. Silly old sod, did you say? Cheers! Map from web Grandad John, WW1