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About time an' all.....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6215847.stmQuote:
Britain will settle its World War II debts to the US and Canada when it pays two final instalments before the close of 2006, the Treasury has said.
The payments of $83.25m (£42.5m) to the US and US$22.7m (£11.6m) to Canada are the last of 50 instalments since 1950.
The amount paid back is nearly double that loaned in 1945 and 1946.
A big thanks to our allies who helped us in our hour of need but 60 years!!! Yikes! ~:eek:
Are the Americans going to start reciprocating those so-called technology exchange programmes? Which we could have sold to cover those payments, but which we idiotically gave away free in the naive belief that the Americans would keep their end of the bargain? Quite apart from those loans and their terms which Churchill and Keynes took exception to, the later McMahon Act was a spectacular act of betrayal. How big a chunk of those loans was spent on developing our own nuclear programme which should by right have had reciprocal access to American research?Quote:
Originally Posted by InsaneApache
Aside from that, an unadulterated thanks to the Commonwealth nations who helped us with scarcely a well-deserved complaint in our hour of need. The debt can never be repaid, except perhaps for Australia, who periodically extract their pound of flesh every time we play cricket. Rugby...football...tiddlywinks, etc.
Hey we beat you in WWII dont think we wont do it agian
Try beating them at cricket. It's the only thing that hurts them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Strike For The South
:idea2:
I refuse to have American sweat grace a game in which we can never understand. I mean for Gods sake where are the damn pads! Somone could bruise!Quote:
Originally Posted by Adrian II
No offense to our British friends, but maybe some American team could teach them to sweat. Their players seem to be lacking in that department lately...Quote:
Originally Posted by Strike For The South
Contary to popular belif I have no friendsQuote:
Originally Posted by Adrian II
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
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I need to sleep
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:Spoiler Alert, click show to read:Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Your welcome. ~:cheers:Quote:
Originally Posted by Pannonian
And remember after Dunkirk there was only 1 division in all of Britain fully armed. The one that had been late to the BEF party. The 1st Canadian division.
In 1919 most people estimated that Germany would have paid off it's reparation debt by 1984.Quote:
Originally Posted by InsaneApache
They also never thought Hitler would take power.....Quote:
Originally Posted by lars573
We should have forgiven that debt 30 years ago.Quote:
Originally Posted by InsaneApache
I never realized there was any unforgiven debt left from WW2. Considering the small amount, and the fact it's our closest most dependable ally, I wonder why? Could it be that maybe the Brits insisted on paying it off as a point of pride and heartfelt obligation?
If we had forgiven the debt, they might have gotten uppity. It's good we made them pay every penny, with interest. I'm just shocked we didn't jack up our late fees ...Quote:
Originally Posted by KukriKhan
Doubt the brit's would have allowed that 30 years ago. Though we didn't take much in the way of territorial claims after WWII. The least we could get was being an efficient banker for the allies. Still though the loans given to the european countries have payed for themselves time and time again, even including interest.Quote:
Originally Posted by KukriKhan
oops, double posted somehow.
Yikes indeed , still at last you get your territory back in September , damn lucky you didn't hve an Ameican citizen as a President(wellnot strictly speaking) , or you would have lost it in perpetuity(wherever that is , it might be next to downtabackofdasofa , since you always lose territories and other interesting stuff down there)Quote:
A big thanks to our allies who helped us in our hour of need but 60 years!!! Yikes!
Now BTW which September exactly would that be when you get you territory back ?:inquisitive:
Hmmmmm....STFS doesn't know about cricket and pads , though to be honest I thought you crowd would have given it up once they re-intoduced all day pub opening , I mean that was the only reason for cricket wasn't it , to get a pint when the pubs were closed .Quote:
I mean for Gods sake where are the damn pads! Somone could bruise!
According to BBC Radio 4 we still owe money from WW1!Quote:
If we had forgiven the debt, they might have gotten uppity. It's good we made them pay every penny, with interest. I'm just shocked we didn't jack up our late fees ...
About time. ;)
Yes, I read something about that. Apparently all of the debts from the First World War were put under a moratorium during the Depression which has still not been revoked. Nor have the debts been written off, however.Quote:
Originally Posted by Duke of Gloucester
It seems that, with interest, the United Kingdom owes the USA something in the region of 12,000 billion dollars. :jawdrop:
Time to send round the bailiffs and repossess Tony Blair. That should settle it.
:wink:
This article:
UK WW1 debt
suggests that the UK defaulted on the loans after a 1 year moratorium in the 30's. This backs up the aphorism: "If you owe the back £5000 it is your problem, if you owe the bank £5 000 000 it is the banks problem."
I think it was the preconditions for the loans that made Churchill, Keynes, and anyone else British who was involved in the negotiations livid. Basically it was sell off the empire at a knocked-off rate or loans would not be forthcoming and we wouldn't be able to continue fighting the Germans. I can accept that as the price Britain needed to pay to hire mercenary help.Quote:
Originally Posted by BigTex
What irks me is the various technology exchange programmes that always went on way - west across the Atlantic, with nothing coming back. If we had been as ruthless in looking after our self-interest and keeping down the opposition as FDR, we would have charged for those, whose value was estimated as being many times the loans we were actually given. Instead, we gave them away freely, in the belief that the Americans would reciprocate this as befitting the idea of "exchange". They didn't, of course. The McMahon Act was symbolic of this - our Tube Alloys project added their research to the Manhattan project, only for the Americans to block any sharing of their nuclear research with anyone else, including their allies who helped them get the bomb in the first place.
That's why assumptions that we should be forever grateful to the Americans for WW2 annoy me. We were thankful for the help, but my goodness they made sure we paid through the nose for it.
Perhaps what Churchill should have done is make peace with the Nazis after Dunkirk. By continuing the struggle he virtually ensured the destruction of the very empire he had vowed to preserve when he became PM.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pannonian
Ah, but that was not the honourable thing to do.
This debt should have been dropped long, long ago, as was the case for nearly all other countries who owed money to America, such as the Soviet Union. But no, that would have meant that America would not have had the leverage for matters such as decolonialization.
So, if this debt was not cancelled, what did the United Kingdom gain from joining America in the latest Iraq War apart from 900 casualties?
Just shows what you get when you play the lap dog.
Down boy...
I highly doubt America has ever used the WW2 debt to force Britain into anything, especially not the Iraq war with the debt being so close to being repaid.. There are far better ways of getting what the US wants.
Britain has chosen to be America's special partner, and reaped the benefits and payed the consequences of that decision. Blame your own government, and dont be so bitter about paying back a debt. Thats a good thing. :yes:
Heck, we're still waiting for reimbursement from that runaway bonfire on the White House lawn back in 1814.~;)
And where did I say I was bitter about paying back the debt? Where did I even say that the debt was wrong?Quote:
Originally Posted by PanzerJager
The older I get, the more aware I become of generations, and one generation's obligations to another. The men who imposed that debt, and the men who agreed to incur it, should have, in my opinion, not saddled the next generation with that kind of obligation.
America should have done the american-style "right thing", and cancelled the debt after 20 years, so that the sins of the father were not visited on his sons, so to speak. Bankruptcy, re-inventing oneself, starting anew,unburdened - all features of yank citizenship. We should practice what we preach.
I don't mind our repaying the financial debt we owed America. It's the debt the US owed, as allies and partners, to the British of the same generation, that annoys me the most about that particular period. If the Americans, through choice, were never going to reciprocate the exchanges of technology, they should have offered to pay for it or gone it alone. Instead, they took all that we offered them, then put a block on any technology going back the other way (and there was plenty to hand). It's as though 2 people form a partnership to create an innovative and successful product, then one of them copyrights it and shuts the other out from subsequent profits.Quote:
Originally Posted by KukriKhan
By 'tech exchange' I guess you mean, for example R.A.D.A.R., Enigma, and the like. Your assertion then is that the UK should have charged for the R&D on those, vesus giving them away to Allies, in light of the US's selling war-making equipment to Allies?
I see the point. I guess the only defense/explanation for that seeming inequity is to point to pre-7 Dec 1941 Congress preventing FDR from entering a Euro war. He had to "sell" that stuff in order to support UK at all.
There's also the post-war McMahon Act, which stopped the US from sharing its nuclear research (which we contributed to by shipping over the Tube Alloys team). There were a number of other things such as jet research, microwaves, etc. which our guys were rather miffed about late-war when they saw nothing was coming back the other way.Quote:
Originally Posted by KukriKhan