I wouldn't put it quite that bluntly, Dave (tam), but I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment.

The trouble with all trans-national organisations such as the UN is that they're just talking-shops (the European Union - spit, spit - is just as bad). They are all viewed by the right-on wishy-washy trendy liberals who loathe the Western culture that spawned them as God's gift to the universe. But these tranzi organisations don't differentiate between the good and the bad. Any organisation that wanted to be taken seriously wouldn't give Zimbabwe or Sudan or China equal weight with democracies such as Britain or the US; so I don't take them seriously.

And UN "peacekeepers" have been implicated in sex-for-food scandals in the Congo as well as the better-known oil-for food scandals associated with Iraq.

And Koffi Annan is father to the well known, and corrupt, Kojo.

We'd be no worse off without the UN.