>> > Why 1850? Wasn't the South a British penal colony
>> waaay before that?
>>
>> I don't know, but I don't think so.
>>
>> I think you're confusing the US with OZ, but I'm
>> open to being
>> corrected.
>
>Nope, he's right. Oz became the penal colony after
>transportation to the plantations in Virginia stopped
>being a viable penal option some time around 1776, I
>forget the reason.
Yep, Daniel's judgement concerning matters rugberial may be faintly ridiculous, but he's spot on the rest of the time. Funny how history works - if the Yanks hadn't come over all ungrateful and belligerent circa 1776, I'd probably be coming at ya in French right now. Y'see, the Poms decided to settle Oz in the 1780s because they were plum outa dumping grounds for all those Irish rebels, whores, thieves and unionists. Which they would not have been if America was still available. And if Captain Phillip hadn't got here on January 26 1788, he'd have been later on the scene than one Captain La Parouse - who was on an imperialist mission himself, and arrived only a day or so later. Had La Parouse managed to get the French flag up in time, he'd've gone home at a different time, via a different route, might not have been killed, and we'd've had a French Sydney, and quite conceivably ultimately a French Australia.
I give thanks for the circumstances that did pertain, not because I've anything against being French, but because British policy at the time was, as I've said, to send us their best people.
On the other hand, had Virginia kept copping the cream of the British Isles, they might now have a better culture and a better polity than they do now - and mebbe that'd be better for all ...
Anyway, the upshot of all that is I speak English and prefer beer to wine, and the two southerners running for your presidency are moralising, protestantly anal-retentive gentry pandering to a conservative bible belt of money-hungry yeomanry - and it's all coz you had to have that war of independence exactly when you did!
Cheers, Rob.