The Turks are in denial about their role in the Armenian genocide (not to mention the Greek genocide), yet that doesn't stop your country's government from having a cozy relationship with Ankara, nor from promoting their entry into the EU at every available forum. Could that be an example of double standards?

Yes, they are in denial, which is pathetic cos it was under another government (the Ottomans) entirely and long before the Attaturk rule which changed Turkish society completely. Equally, anybody who was involved is dead and their children are dead as well. There is nobody who carries guilt to apologise to anybody who was directly affected.

However, the reason why it's a problem that Turkey can't bring themselves to admit their crime is because it causes them to commit injustice today. Not because of what was done long ago.

The recent indulgences of politicians in apolgising for atrocities committed by ancestors to people who barely remember except for history books annoys me in the extreme, so your litany of crimes of the British Empire doesn't really bother me. I'm far more interested in protesting the crimes of today (such as Iraq) or those where the living are still suffering from the injustice (Diego Garcia, Kenya etc). Apologising for 250 years ago is pointless and cheap, apologising for 25 years ago, let alone 250 days seems a lot more difficult.

So we go back to the mess of the Balkans. Everybody in the Balkans seems to have committed some sort of atrocity on somebody else in the last 20 years, and those who suffered seem to have exacted gruesome reprisal at some stage. I thought the serbians alone were in denial, Sargon assures me that is not so. I apologise.

So two wrongs make a right ? Not really. Can confession make things right ? No, of course not. But if two sides in a conflict refuse to accept responsibility for the suffering they caused others then we end up where we are; with the (probably) unnecessary partition of a country and further future suffering as the now minority KSs are, if not forcibly displaced, then likely to flee certain future penal discrimination.

That cannot be a good thing. I don't knock the serbs cos I want them in the EU or NATO (despite my diary I don't actually care that much), nor do I suspect do our elites have the imperial ambitions you ascribe to them. No, I do it because I trhink peace would be good and in a situation such as the serbs and the other states find themselves, a little humility and a lot less nationalist chauvanism just to get on with the neighbours would be better than the alternative.

keep to the Fen Causeway