I found this today, the day of double battle anniversaries, in a dusty old cupboard behind a false partition in a basement cellar at work. It’s an interesting piece in the widely unread unpopular science magazine for extremely well informed people, Nature. In fact it is what appears to be an uncorrected editor’s proof which didn’t make it to the printers as far as one can tell.
‘Researchers have found that not very well informed people who would have been better off overall after a change in a decisive historical event e.g. Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo or the Battle of Orgreave during the 1984 miner’s strike, are still happy to have won rather than lost the battle itself regardless of its subsequent bad effects.
After a research programme in which they noticed things for themselves and conducted interviews with carefully selected poorly informed people they found a reactionary victory was still preferred by most to a defeat leading to economic and social progress the scientists say.
They are now calling it the ‘What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us’ syndrome – or the Farage syndrome for short, because an early example was Boudicca’s (Boadicea) violent resistance to the Roman occupation of her lands.
Nota Bene: The Romans (who came from Italy) named Britain and introduced to it for the first time the alphabet, rabbits, asparagus, a national road network, blood sports, miles, pounds, shillings & pence (old money) after putting down Boudicca’s revolt but before the current bout of well-known, ignorant, bloody-minded, anti-all-things-foreign tendency of poorly informed British people set in around the spring of 1979*.
* according to radio carbon toxic tory dating
A not very well informed ancient Briton commented, ‘You wouldn’t want an invading immigrant to destroy your roundhouse even if they are promising to build you afterwards a new bigger and better square stone villa with a pan tiled roof for free. I mean, who would believe that? It’s easy to be wise after the event.’
No attempt seems to have been made to contact Terry Jones or other members of Monty Python for comment.
Herds of Gnus and Wildebeest sweeping majestically... 
The Romans were in Britain for longer than the British have been in Australia (Canada, New Zealand, …)! We sometimes overlook the profound changes from their stay, even as the Farages froth over some mis-remembered (and mostly fictional) Celtic or Saxon past. Thanks for the post.
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