pumpkinstrokemarrow

Now Dumpistan really was a bit of a dump. Apart from it being a wonderful place to grow dahlias, there was not very much going for it, despite having been a country for a very long time. The population was divided into the blues and the greens (superficially at least, after the manner of ancient Constantinople). The blues only accounted for around 10% of the population but included all the decent chaps. Who believed in allowing ladies into church on Sundays. Not emptying your dustbin into your neighbour's garden. That sort of thing. The greens were the rest and their idea of fun was to go up into the mountains and shoot at each other with very old muskets with very long barrels. Shooting at blues was OK, but not such good sport. Far too easy. One effect of this fascination with muskets was that the car boot sales (held on Tuesdays rather than Sundays) in the green areas of Dumpistan were dominated by the musket dealers. Coveting muskets was what one did when one was too old to use one any more.

Now, as it happened, the blues took the side of the Big Britanners when they turned up. They thought that the BB's would help them bash the greens. So they provided servants, cleaners, drivers, scouts and such like.

Then, after a while, the BB's got fed up with this game, partly because the greens were better at it than they were. There were demonstrations in Trafalgar Square addressed by luminaries of the old left calling for withdrawal. Which brings me to a moral dilemma. Having stirred up trouble between the blues and the greens, was it decent to pull out and leave the blues to be well bashed by the greens? A stunt which the BB's had pulled at various times when pulling out of empire. One answer would be to take the greens with one on pulling out, but I am not sure that the Trafalgar Square gang have got the stomach for that. All in all, a bit of a mess. Don't see a decent way out at all.