Obama was in India the other day. He saluted the bonds between the two countries as fighters against British Imperial rule.

I must admit I'm getting a bit tired of this kind of thing. OK, can't argue that there were some nasty incidents in India under 'our' (and I put our in inverted commas deliberately, after all it wasn't anything to do with me, I hadn't been born then and refuse to apologize for something for which I bear no responsibility) rule. But, it wasn't the Indian PM saying this, it was Obama, so I'll put my remarks in context to the USA.

What is Obama's beef with British Imperial rule? Let's remember that there were no recorded cases of British war crimes in the war of independence or atrocities beforehand. The beef at the time was was 'crushing' taxation and nothing more (apart from personal beefs, like certain individuals not getting the knighthoods and so on they thought they'd earned).

It ould be interesting to see a direct comparison betwee the tax burden then and now. Considering that the main aim of the brits was to recover war casts, a few tens of thousands of pounds (though that's probobly a few million now) I don't doubt that the current crushing tax burden is far higher as a percentage of GDP and to the average individual.

Hmmmm. Interesting, don't you think? Maybe he was unwise to draw attention to the reasons America became independent, as those reasons are a better fit for him than they ever were for King George III and his governement.

Reminds me of something an American said when the Iraq constitution was being thrashed out. He said “Why don't we give them ours? After all, we're not using it.” It's the kind of thing that strikes me as funny and sad at the same time.