the rich never change. there are still parts of the world where they have the opportunity to treat the poor as they were treated in the UK in the 18th, 19th and pre war 20th century, and they take that opportunity.

The relative affluence that we and our children have enjoyed is a relatively recent phenomenon historically. and it's more fragile than of middle class kids understand. i think many of them would be horrified to know how close we dance to the abyss.

though we have tried with'cradle to grave' caring policies = the consequences for people who don't have a role to play in our economy or don't fit in - leaves us with quite a few unhappy bunnies.

both my parents quite literally starved in the 1920's - suffered from deficiciency diseases from not having enough to eat.

i guess that's what many of us voted for with Brexit. i know JIm you have said 'now its payback time' the world is turning up on our doorstep and want their money back, the elgin marbles, the koh i noor diamond and Roger Casement's diaries.

the plain fact is that we can't undo everything perpetrated by the british empire, and furthermore most of our families were hardly beneficiaries of the said empire.

also few other countries opened their doors to immigrants in the way we did to commonwealth countries. remember Germany's gastarbeiter policy - and even that provoked race riots. FRance's policy to Algeria. our population was already very large for a small island.

I'm not saying we were great hosts. I remember schoolkids asking me why there no black footballers, or black people on TV in the 1970's. I tried to explain that we, Irish been through the immigrant thing in our time - and I knew it was frustrating