A splendid diatribe ganps. Wrong' uns they are but there are probably Chinese folk who read this very board and will be at best slighted and at worst mortified by what you say.

I think Elgin had the right idea when he razed the Summer Palace. I'm with GMF's contention that he[Elgin] believed it would release the Chinese from there demagogue fixation.

We have the right idea in that we are fixated by our musicians, actors and poets, ergot our artists. Any country enthralled by its political leaders is headed for catastrophe. We stole a march on the rest of the world when we somehow became confident enough to take the rotten píss out of the powers and satirize and caricature them without fear of reprisal. It was the publication of Punch in 1841 that first signalled that our emergence from the darkness was well underway. Remember though that only forty years previous to that seminal event we would still hang, draw and quarter a human being.