Follkiedave, you make a telling and pertinent point about the behaviour of Brit ex-pats in Spain. When in countries such as Croatia and Greece I recoil from attempts to draw me into ex-pat cliques in which people who are too lazy to learn the language cling together to whine about the food, the drink and even about local radio stations having the temerity to play the music of the region. All of which is tame stuff compared with the mayhem inflicted on overseas communities by Brit lager louts. And that in turn is dwarfed by the excesses of the British Empire in Africa and the subcontinent. (All of which was done to help those countries of course, with no regard for self interest.)

Lizzie, The Villan and others of the braindead who yearn for a rose-tinted past that never existed, might try reading the work of a Princeton professor, Bernard Lewis, of whom the (London) Sunday Times said: "No-one writes about Muslim history with greater authority or intelligence or literary charm." A good starting point would be What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response.

I realise I'm wasting my breath of course. The kind of ignorance we see in this thread can be achieved only by keeping minds securely closed.