So- who is to blame?
A storm has hit the Foriegn Office in London, England, and those legal chappies say that they are 'not legally liable'.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-05/u-k-papers-show-methods-used-against-kenya-rebels-times-says.html
Well, somebody ought to be, if you ask me.
the thing is, britain is such an old country that our laws and lots more besides date back to the days before the romans came her... well, maybe that is a bit of an exaggreration , but the situation does not clear up when you look at it, it just gets murkier - trust me, I live here and know what it is like.
Ok, if you live abroad , you will probably want to remind me that 'it was the Brits who colonised Kenya, and the Brits who are fully liable here'. Ok then , but which Brits, exactly?
The Government of the day was conservative, as I recall. but even with the takeover of the Wilson Government, we get a curious state of affairs becoming more readily apparent. Supposing that a Socialist government were to try to implement a cut back on Civil Servants - or do something equally drastic to shake the Status Quo?
Now, the Civil Service are supposed to take orders from Government Ministers. In actual fact, the Civil Service in Britain are the *real* opposition, not those chaps on the benches on the other side of the House of Commons.
The Consevatives see them as comrades in arms and the Labour Party have always known that they will try to stop anything from happening that is going to mean that they get ousted. White Hall, the place where many old boys from Eton and Harrrrow end up, is the place where the real power lies.
So, it is no suprise to me that when the British administration pulled out of Kenya, a load of documents and files were extracted first and sent home to be put away under lock and key.
The Establishmnet was simply looking after its own, the way it always did.
What really suprises me is the way this stuff actually surfaced, not the way that the Establishment and a pro-establishment Government has acted. There were rumours circulating that all this stuff was put into a Lancaster bomber and dropped in the Indian Ocean when I was still at school. But apparently not - well, not with these documents anyway.
Before anyone wants to go and accuse me of being an old fashioned colonialist, I would point out that I'm all in favour of 'yes to AV', and that I'm an active member of Amnesty International, as well as the Green Party- the only main political party in Britain at present opposed to cuts to public services, to nuclear power plants and to the perpetuation of privelege in our society. yet, the fact remains that I am British and therefore somehow, all this has got something to do with me.
The legacy of our colonial past is still something we are have to deal with, whether we were involved in it or not. The BNP continues as a force in British Politics, not by focussing on anti semitism , but by persecuting people who are not 'white enough'. Strangely, the Upper Class bureaucrats who actually get things done around here are settling these immigrants from abroad, not in the leafy lanes of Surrey, but in working class districts like Tower Hamlets where schools, hospitals and housing facilities are already over stretched.
Once again, it is the poor in England who are having to pick up the bill and generally carry the can for the errors of the ruling classes. On the one hand, we are a land where we have democracy and proper drains, a place where we have universal health care - and yet we are also a country that is enmired in court cases, brought not just by foreigners, but by even British born Commonwealth subjects of her Majesty the Queen.
"Oranges and Sunshine" is a film currently on release, that tells the story of someone else who waded through official documents in search of the truth. It appears that under a socialist government in England, that somebody did the maths and actually worked out that it would save lots of money to ship thousands of orphans off to another country called Australia, rather than take care of them here. so , they did.
Now, for most of these kids, the future was not all about the 'oranges and sunshine' that they were promised - it involved years of beatings and sexual abuse at the hands of their so called carers. The institutions that the Aussies ran before these kids were old enough to grow up and leave kept them alive, but that was about all they did for them , what they dodid to these children was unspeakably horrific. Ok, we might say that the worst offenders were the Catholic Church run institutions that took these kids in - but when you think that it was 'our' government that sent them there - a Labour government at that, you have to get the idea that the Establishment doesn't care about it's own people, never mind people in Kenya or India or anywhere else.
The Establishment was getting rid of these kids, and the Aussies were getting people to add to their workforce as a payoff for keeping them alive until they were old enough to work. And nobody really gave a damn about thse children until now.
"Think of what our country stands for ", said the poet John Betjemin. Ok, it was a satirical poem, but the point is raised - what does Britain stand for, and can I as a Briton support it?
Aside from a few brief moments, like when we took on the fascists at Cable Street, and when we led the fight back against Hitler, the country that the Establishment forged was not something I can feel any pride in. It's a shame, given our other cultural achievements, but our political Establishment does not deserve our support, I feel.
Some people may wonder why I chose Patriotism as a tag. I would remind our American freinds that there are other places in the world, and that we still love our country, even though some of us feel it was taken from us. Add whatever tags you wish, but leave mine up please.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-05/u-k-papers-show-methods-used-against-kenya-rebels-times-says.html
Well, somebody ought to be, if you ask me.
the thing is, britain is such an old country that our laws and lots more besides date back to the days before the romans came her... well, maybe that is a bit of an exaggreration , but the situation does not clear up when you look at it, it just gets murkier - trust me, I live here and know what it is like.
Ok, if you live abroad , you will probably want to remind me that 'it was the Brits who colonised Kenya, and the Brits who are fully liable here'. Ok then , but which Brits, exactly?
The Government of the day was conservative, as I recall. but even with the takeover of the Wilson Government, we get a curious state of affairs becoming more readily apparent. Supposing that a Socialist government were to try to implement a cut back on Civil Servants - or do something equally drastic to shake the Status Quo?
Now, the Civil Service are supposed to take orders from Government Ministers. In actual fact, the Civil Service in Britain are the *real* opposition, not those chaps on the benches on the other side of the House of Commons.
The Consevatives see them as comrades in arms and the Labour Party have always known that they will try to stop anything from happening that is going to mean that they get ousted. White Hall, the place where many old boys from Eton and Harrrrow end up, is the place where the real power lies.
So, it is no suprise to me that when the British administration pulled out of Kenya, a load of documents and files were extracted first and sent home to be put away under lock and key.
The Establishmnet was simply looking after its own, the way it always did.
What really suprises me is the way this stuff actually surfaced, not the way that the Establishment and a pro-establishment Government has acted. There were rumours circulating that all this stuff was put into a Lancaster bomber and dropped in the Indian Ocean when I was still at school. But apparently not - well, not with these documents anyway.
Before anyone wants to go and accuse me of being an old fashioned colonialist, I would point out that I'm all in favour of 'yes to AV', and that I'm an active member of Amnesty International, as well as the Green Party- the only main political party in Britain at present opposed to cuts to public services, to nuclear power plants and to the perpetuation of privelege in our society. yet, the fact remains that I am British and therefore somehow, all this has got something to do with me.
The legacy of our colonial past is still something we are have to deal with, whether we were involved in it or not. The BNP continues as a force in British Politics, not by focussing on anti semitism , but by persecuting people who are not 'white enough'. Strangely, the Upper Class bureaucrats who actually get things done around here are settling these immigrants from abroad, not in the leafy lanes of Surrey, but in working class districts like Tower Hamlets where schools, hospitals and housing facilities are already over stretched.
Once again, it is the poor in England who are having to pick up the bill and generally carry the can for the errors of the ruling classes. On the one hand, we are a land where we have democracy and proper drains, a place where we have universal health care - and yet we are also a country that is enmired in court cases, brought not just by foreigners, but by even British born Commonwealth subjects of her Majesty the Queen.
"Oranges and Sunshine" is a film currently on release, that tells the story of someone else who waded through official documents in search of the truth. It appears that under a socialist government in England, that somebody did the maths and actually worked out that it would save lots of money to ship thousands of orphans off to another country called Australia, rather than take care of them here. so , they did.
Now, for most of these kids, the future was not all about the 'oranges and sunshine' that they were promised - it involved years of beatings and sexual abuse at the hands of their so called carers. The institutions that the Aussies ran before these kids were old enough to grow up and leave kept them alive, but that was about all they did for them , what they dodid to these children was unspeakably horrific. Ok, we might say that the worst offenders were the Catholic Church run institutions that took these kids in - but when you think that it was 'our' government that sent them there - a Labour government at that, you have to get the idea that the Establishment doesn't care about it's own people, never mind people in Kenya or India or anywhere else.
The Establishment was getting rid of these kids, and the Aussies were getting people to add to their workforce as a payoff for keeping them alive until they were old enough to work. And nobody really gave a damn about thse children until now.
"Think of what our country stands for ", said the poet John Betjemin. Ok, it was a satirical poem, but the point is raised - what does Britain stand for, and can I as a Briton support it?
Aside from a few brief moments, like when we took on the fascists at Cable Street, and when we led the fight back against Hitler, the country that the Establishment forged was not something I can feel any pride in. It's a shame, given our other cultural achievements, but our political Establishment does not deserve our support, I feel.
Some people may wonder why I chose Patriotism as a tag. I would remind our American freinds that there are other places in the world, and that we still love our country, even though some of us feel it was taken from us. Add whatever tags you wish, but leave mine up please.