I think we should give the Falkland Islands back

[Haziedoll]

I don't understand what our claim on the islands is. From what I have read our argument for retaining the islands is that most of the islanders are of British heritage, well they would be wouldn't they considering the islands are so remote.

We gave Hong Kong back so what's the difference with the Falklands?

David Cameron accused Argentina of colonialism, from where I'm sitting it looks as if Britain are guilty of that, holding onto islands for no legitimate reason, guilty of provocation by sending Prince William and a warship out to the area.

Have I missed the point? Why do you think
we should retain the islands?

But the British have no right to tell the Falklander islanders we are giving them to another country. The falklander islands are four hundre dmiles away from Argentinia, we have no more right to give them the falkland Islands than we do to give the Isle of man to the French. I think the falklands are self governing we just deal with foreign and military matters I believe, so it would be imperilaistic for us to march in and give them over to another country just because that country wants them or give their resources away.

Yeah, I appreciate MCB's perspective, but even giving one half to one country and one to another would be imperialistic, because it would be going over the heads of the inhabitants. And while the UK is certainly still imperialistic sometimes, this isn't one of those occasions, so I question the relevance.

It's interesting in the post above that it's demonisation of the English. Last time I looked, Falkland was in the Scottish kingdom of Fife. The British Empire wasn't exclusively (or indeed predominantly) English.

I have noticed even in Europe how British is often replaced by English. In an English TV programme I was watching once when someone described themselves as British the subtitles changed it to English.

Yes, the Scots did very well from the Empire. Most Indian bridges and roads and railways of the C19th seem to have been built and designed by Scots. They were traditionally very well-educated and hard-working and tough people, who would go off and make a success of themselves.

If you go to a cemetery in India and look at the gravestones, there are lots of Scots and Irish names. If you wanted to get on, serving the Empire was a good way to go. If you survived the climate/disease, etc.

They certainly did!

A lot of people in the world use Britain and England interchangeably. I've often had cause to speak to clients through interpreters, and more often than not they clearly translate Britain/British as England/English. So I ask the interpreter to be clear about the distinction, because its often important. Once, one of them claimed there was no word for British in his language (Dari) and they all just said English! I had to ask him to also ensure he used whatever the Dari words for Scotland, Wales and NI are in his language, because it was important to what I was saying. I found it hard to believe that no Dari speaker has ever had cause to refer to Scotland!

\link{http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2012/feb/02/who-first-owned-falkland-islands\who first owned the Falkland Islands?}

"the root of the problem can be traced to the celebrated Bulls of Donation by which the Borgia pope Alexander VI (1492-1503) exercised what medieval doctrine still told him was a God-given right to divide between Spain and Portugal all the distant lands that European navigators were starting to discover"

those darned papal bulls

Flangelina - I think my dad objected to the crowd being racist against Argentinians ie they probably hadn't even heard of argentina before that conflict.

Which is fair enough, but it really isn't ok to suggest that an indigenous people should have to leave their land in order to have self determination.