Page 106 - The Circle of Life

marriage for good or worse and usually for the worse without their consent

being asked for or required. Since no consent was asked from the parties it will
always be void and the effects dealt with as a common law wife marriage. It
may even be rape and is just a mess. It must be clear then that arranged

marriages are not the same as a forced marriage which I just described and as

such I have no problem with it. From what I saw in life it frequently works out
better than non-arranged ones.

I am sure the whole arranged business is from our old friends the Royals of the
world who took delight in marrying into other Royals for political reasons. Now if

the idea was to prevent bloodshed and unnecessary wars they failed completely
as the royal houses have a deeply disturbing history of attacking each other now

and then. It led to directly to their downfall but how many lives did it cost? How
much is King's honour worth I wonder? Or an Archduke's life as we found out in

1914! Certainly not one soldier or an empire which in my opinion did much good
and was larger than anything else since Roman times!

I know that it is frowned on when I say this but the British Empire did stop wars

in the form of tribal feuds in Africa. As it stopped slavery and it brought
infrastructure with technology which is still used today even if dilapidated

because of a lack of maintenance and a general dislike in all things colonial.
Moreover it brought a legal system which is still being used today with few

differences in its essence. A parliamentary system based on common sense and
fairness all which admittedly could only work amongst Englishmen who have a

built in sense of fair play which other nations don't have naturally. We saw that
in Apartheid South Africa who used the same political system but with no known

fairness to all.

Consequently the winds of change were an ill wind indeed even if Mr Macmillan
did not know it and seemed happy to sign the colonies away to dictators and
other horrible people. I wonder how many died once the highly disciplined

colonial Armies and Police withdrew and became what they are today. A joke

and an instrument of oppression! It cannot be denied (it is obviously if you want
to see) that most Africans were better off under British Colonial Rule than what
they were under the tyrants and racists who replaced them. I ask what the so

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