Pongo

Waterloo station, Trafalgar Square?

Autonomy

Little bit of a difference - no? There were no people, except for a military garrison, on the Falklands when it was claimed by Britain. It's also been Spanish and Portuguese in its time I think.

It was also 200 years ago.

And everyone on the island (no, I've not done a survey - but the referendum will most likely show that 95% are British and 5% are Jedi) would like to remain British.

Beakersful

Numerous Argentinians have said that their current head of government is just stirring all this up as a political issue for voters internally and that their country is in such a state, financially and militarily, that they wouldn't try anything but guerilla warfare type operations anyhow. They aren't a realistic conventional military threat. But that doesn't mean they can't ruin someones day of course.

Tockalosh

No disrespect to our resident Benny but they are a god forsaken shitty windswept collection of bogs that the British should shelve. What do the Falklands offer the uk ? It may have been a handy stop in the whaling days but now it's an expense the country can do without.
Repatriate the bennys to the shetlands where they will feel at home. They can bring the penguin ale and globe
I appreciate that servicemen died there but we have cemetery's all over the world from our colonial days and others since from our skirmishes in distant lands.
I can't imagine any of the argues wanting to live there myself

mathematist

So, will Argentina be considered a rogue state and be put on the axis of evil list?

Tockalosh

Not whilst they sell us bully beef and decent wine

Beakersful

More of our soldiers that landed on the Islands in the conflict have committed suicide than were lost in the actual fighting. If only for their sake, we keep onto what has cost them so much.

Ethos83

There wasn't necessarily much wealth in most of the African countries to begin with. It's not like there was loads of gold lying around except for South Africa. The British economic rewards from most of the African colonies, especially in the interior, was primarily agricultural and attempts to foster a large-scale developed agrarian economy like huge ranching operations generally failed in the long run. Attempts at exploiting natural resources likewise met with very limited success. There were ideas of developing some local industries to stimulate economies so the natives would be able to buy imported stuff made in Britain, but that was also fruitless. By the time the British withdrew the African countries had shown themselves to be financial burdens and drain on Britain's decreasing resources in the post-war years.

Anyway, Africa's a tribal continent and like other tribal places - the Balkans, Northern Ireland, the Middle East, its problems go back hundreds of years and eighty years' occupation made minimal difference. Had there never been an Empire Africa would still be a hellhole, in just perhaps slightly different ways.

The real economic exploitation under British rule were the sugarcane plantations of the Indies and their slave workforces (who were largely supplied to British traders by Arab slavers).

scrubbedexpat141

Apart from Jim Smith, why do any of you care?

All getting so uptight and lairy about something that has nothing to do with you and has little to no relevance to you.

Also - Mentalist - shut up. For ****s sake. Were you Indian when the British left? How did it make you feel? What was it like when the Brits left? Was the country left in ruins? Is the country now a complete and total mess with no hope of ever having a well structured economy? Idiot.

The Dean

but now it's an expense the country can do without

I feel the same about Wales............

mikewot

I was involved, albeit peripherally, in Operation Corporate Also Known As the Falklands War, so I have some interest and I have had many friends serve down there (I missed out, despite having been warned for it).

scrubbedexpat141

Sorry, I've rather rudely ignored the potential for ex/current service men/women that may have fought there or been involved.

scrubbedexpat141

Sport teams shouldn't be political...but it's hard to start drawing lines and boxes around times they should go / shouldn't go and why etc.

Miss Anne Thrope

That is a complete load of toss. Colonial rule was actually just the coda to centuries of economic exploitation and state terrorism by the European powers in Africa. It started with the establishment of coastal forts (still visible all along the West African coast) in the 14th and 15th centuries (first by the Portuguese, then by the Dutch and finally by the British who had to brutally muscle their way into the opportunities they had been missing). From these they sent raiding parties to establish dominance over all trading through the use of extreme savagery (noted by all contemporary accounts of locals - there were plenty of literate scholars in Africa then, especially in Islamic areas) and superior weapons technology. The classic technique was to choose one nation or ethnicity (which you prefer to call "tribe") with whom to deal. This set in train a natural conflict between these favoured nations and their neighbours and established a state of constant war.

This trade largely started in gold and metal goods, of which there was an abundance in West Africa (this was after all, the seat of the ancient empires of Mali and Ghana - different locations to the modern countries). When these ran out, it got supplanted by slaves to supply the Americas. The favoured nations then concentrated on capturing slaves from other ethnic groups to sell to the Europeans on the coast. The enduring conflicts that this established and the forced removal of such a huge number of economically active adults were the major factors in turning Africa into such a politically messy continent.

The establishment of formal colonies only happened at the end of the 19th century when it was the only way to further extract resources. Think of the massive rubber plantations of the Congo and Liberia (the latter economically active up until the civil war in the '80s). Or the oil palm plantations that provided Europe with soap (look into the origins of Unilever). As an illustration, look at the names of the major colonies in West Africa: the Ivory Coast, the Gold Coast, the Slave coast (oh yes, the old name for what is now mainly Nigeria).

If you want to know what really happened and how Africa's polities were destroyed and its wealth was viciously plundered by Europe, with plenty of local connivance of course, a good place to start is the history of the Asante (Ashanti) people. And for the most brutal illustration of all, read about King Leopold's Congo, one of the most shameful episodes in human history (with direct connections to the ethnic conflict in Rwanda to this day) barely 100 years ago.

The Dean

I have no problem with the tour itself - but the RFU needs to put out a strongly-worded statement that Buenos Aires is fine, Rosario is fine, etc - but not Mendoza. Argentinian rugby needs the revenue from an England tour - they will comply.