Morris Dancing - Misunderestimated?

One of the most aggressive colonising and prosletising nations in modern times has been the English. For me, the epitome of their ruthless determination to conquer the markets, harvest the natural resources, and market items manufactured from those natural resources back to the 'natives' would have to be their treatment of China.

Think of England and you think of cricket, of rules and royalty, public schools and good, honest chums. You think of Victorian England with its high moral code and its democracy.

But at that time England launched a bloody war (well some 'bloody' cannons anyway) that made a very 'bloody' mess. They bombarded mainland China because the Chinese government refused to buy Opium from the English because of the dreadful impact it was having on their people, their productivity and their society. England promptly bombed them until they changed their minds.

Imagine John Key saying to Maori in Northland, "hey fellahs, you stopped buying 'Government Green'. Don't worry if it's marijuananating your minds, we need you to buy this stuff so we can pay for the earthquake repairs those nice white folks in Christchurch need. If you don't change your minds and buy our good stuff, we'll send the SWAT team in and blow your homes up."

This is in effect what the English did - it's right up there with Gadaffi ordering the bombing of the Lockerbie plane surely.

Anyway. Apparently there has been commentary coming out of England that we are leading our children - particularly our Maori children - astray by having them perform the haka, and thus learning to become savages.

If this is true, then imagine how "savage" the English would have been if they had had the haka instead of the Morris dance to fire them up.