Please do. I await to find out how pakistan and Syria are better than Sweden and Japan eagerly.

If punk ever happened I'd be preaching the law, instead of listenin to Lydon lecture BBC4

And there was me hoping for statistics...

Again, it makes me wonder why people like yourself are so quick to defend the establishment for their crimes, despite only the most wafer thin historical knowledge at your disposal.

If punk ever happened I'd be preaching the law, instead of listenin to Lydon lecture BBC4

I'll wager it's better than your one eyed knowledge.

Ok, pakistan is only 80 years old and started as we left so I'll refer to our colonialism in India.

Britain laid the foundations for modern-day India. The British involvement in these foundations plays an initial positioning role in the prosperity that it enjoys today.

This is not just a British view, Dr Kartar Lalvani, the writer of the book, The Making Of India: A Story Of British Enterprise stated back in 2013, 'The indisputable fact is that India as a nation as it stands today was originally put together and created by a small, distant island country.'

He states how India had no uniform government and was a vast region of unconnected, under developed and warring areas with low life expectancy.

He detailed how Britain provided the social, civil and physical infrastructure like railways, roads, canals, mines, sewers, plantations over two centuries of colonial rule that would not have been present at anything like a comparable level from the restrictive corrupt and backward rulers at the time who were still burning widows on funeral piles after the death of their husbands...by the way those rulers were the Mughals - Muslim rulers who came from as far west as Turkey....they were hated....Delhi was razed eight times in that period and great pyramids were constructed with the skulls of its inhabitants. ..The British, on the other hand, also eradicated the thugee (violent highway robbery) organizations as an effective force....we also oulawed female infanticide, and stopped the burying of lepers alive.

Also the British banned slavery in 1843 at a time when an estimated 10 million Indians were slaves - up to 15 per cent of the population in some regions.

Within forty years of the East India company starting its first trading post India had another 22 bases. These posts continued and developed India during and after the British left.

By 1914, the Indian mining industry, which was built from nothing by the British, was producing nearly 16 million tons of coal a year. Health and life expectancy both improved dramatically, particularly because malaria was tackled and vaccination against smallpox introduced. Dr Lalvani adds: 'The 200-year window of British governance was perhaps the only period in a thousand years of Indian history to date when the minorities and people of different religions felt more secure and less discriminated against, with a notable absence of killings, conflicts and persecutions.'

As the links between the two countries were established, wealthy young Indians were packed off to Britain to study and returned home well-trained, bristling with new ideas and instilled with a British sense of fair play. The mutual respect among Indians and Britons meant the transition from colonial rule to independence was relatively peaceful compared to many other independent movements.

The French, Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish all did much less for their former foreign outposts......And without the British India would have been a French colony....As that prospect was ended by the victory of Robert Clive over French forces at Plassey, in Bengal, in 1757.

Despite these problems, India inherited political stability while another legacy of British rule is enduring good relations between the two distant nations.

He says: "Although there were wrongs committed by the British against India, as widely recognised by the British themselves, there was much more that was and remains positive. The sheer audacity and scale of such an endeavour, the courage and enterprise have no parallel in world history."

Dr Lalvani says he despairs that some Indian politicians still insist on attacking its former ruler and disparaging Britain's significant role in the country's development. Instead they should acknowledge the benefits and work to preserve and foster the special relationship between the two nations.

Or, in other words, Dr Lalvani believes that no Indian should today pose the question: 'What did the British ever do for us?'

Now this guy has a far more sensible and realistic view of this time period and the impact of the British than you do.

Edited by Stirlingsays (21 Sep 2018 7.46pm)

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

Nobody seems to have noticed the one line tucked away in the report that, after they moved the car away from the mosque car park, there was an altercation with some people on their way to the mosque, which resulted in some damage to the vehicle.

I don't say any of you would do what they did, but how many of you would sit back and tolerate your car being damaged over a few harsh words?

A stairway to Heaven and a Highway to Hell give some indication of expected traffic numbers

You insinuated doctors ext are immune from being terrorists. So what about doctors?

I think he is agreeing with you dannyboy.

always a Norwood boy, where ever I live.