It's all over! Yes, I know you realize it is but it's still amazing how the memory lingers on and leads some poor fools to imagine that it can, in some way, be resurrected What am I waffling on about today, well, this map should give you a clue:
Yes, by Jove, by Jingo, the British Empire in all its power and gory glory. Here's another version of it:
You must admit that back in the day the chaps, and yes, quite a few 'chapettes', did awfully well. These maps with their large splodges of red were part of my early education beginning around 1944. So, in a single lifetime - poof! - it's gone, vanished, disappeared, and we can only smile at the unintended irony of Prospero's words:
You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Sorry, all of this geography, history and literature is by way of repeating that which I have droned on about before, that is, Britain is no longer a world power. We are not even a leading European power. Oddly enough, I am beginning to think that 'Dim Dave' has actually recognised this even if the bellicose 'Brass' at the MoD have not. Also, and perhaps more important, I have the sense that the British people as a whole have realised it which is why the dead certainty of yet more defence cuts by whichever party forms the next government has barely raised a ripple on the calm - lethargic? - pool of public opinion. In fact it seems to have raised more panic in Washington than here as various 'apparatchiks' and Generals complain bitterly that we - and the other Europeans - are not pulling our weight in NATO. Sorry, Buddy, but can you spare a rocket?
The implications are indeed fairly serious and I will discuss them in more detail in my next post.
