What does the UK, France and the Netherlands have in common?

[Pannonian]

Such a payment would come from taxes, nobody alive today who pays taxes is responsible for slavery, ergo this is stupid.

Stupid though the claim is, I still wouldn't mind the claimants paying us for the cost of maintaining the Royal Navy for a century, scaled to 2013 levels.

[Pannonian]

This "reparations" isn't something that could actually happen could it? Holding modern people responsible for their ignorant and conquering ancestors is the height of stupid.

If they're prepared to pursue that logic, I'd be happy to follow it as long as they follow the subsequent course of that logic as well. The UK pays for each slave that we'd been involved in transporting, paying their descendants wages for their work and compensation for work-related injuries and deaths. They in turn, since their logic is based on the immorality of slavery, pay for the upkeep of the Royal Navy that enforced the stoppage of slavery on the high seas, paying for the building and maintenance of the warships that made it feasible, and the training and wages of crews that did the enforcement, including compensation for work-related injuries and deaths. I'd wager the second lot of costs is many times that of the first.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Stupid though the claim is, I still wouldn't mind the claimants paying us for the cost of maintaining the Royal Navy for a century, scaled to 2013 levels.

I thought the RN was being downsized into oblivion as an anachronism?

[Sp4]

This "reparations" isn't something that could actually happen could it? Holding modern people responsible for their ignorant and conquering ancestors is the height of stupid.

Ah aehm.. yes.. I agree but what do I know :D