I think I've figured out why Brits keep getting cast as baddies in all those movies.  It's cos we're a nation of nasty, evil meanies!

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Cruel Britannia
Britain is apparently to blame for just about all of the planet's problems. In its days of might and glory, our Sceptred Isle was in fact an Evil Empire that enslaved the world, and is today responsible for everything from African genocides to the Iraq War and the conflict between Palestine and Israel.

We are also to blame for global warming - because Britain launched the Industrial Revolution which produced the smoke that polluted the sky that heated the world. And as if that was not bad enough, we also burned Joan of Arc at the stake, made cocaine 'look cool' and pandered to Hitler, before dragging the whole world into global conflict.

These are just some of the accusations against Britain in an outrageous new 'history' book, The Evil Empire: 101 Ways That England Ruined The World, that looks set to blow a giant raspberry at the much-vaunted 'special relationship' between Britain and America.

It has been written by Steven Grasse, a selfstyled 'amateur historian' from Philadelphia, who believes that Britain has never been held to account for its role in some of the darkest chapters in global history...

Apparently, we are even to blame for the Vietnam War which humiliated America 35 years ago.

'There would have been no Vietnam War if there had been no French colony in Vietnam, and there would have been no French colony if England had not started with its colonies, which meant that everyone else had to have colonies too'...

'Look at World War I - you started that!' says Grasse. It was an unnecessary war, started by Britain because Germany wanted an Empire, which Britain, France and Russia had.

'You then dragged America into it. The whole bloody history of the 20th century, including the Nazi genocide, starts from that point. The average person does not know any of this.'

...he believes that many of the global problems we think of as being recent developments can be traced back to Britain's doorstep. He blames the spread of global warming on Britain's dependence on coal during the industrial revolution - a 'fact' made worse by our apparent indifference to global warming.

As for the debacle in Iraq, Grasse believes Britain is to blame for the bogus scaremongering over weapons of mass destruction which led to the ill-conceived assault on Saddam.

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So now you know. I feel quite bad about the whole thing... NOT!

The book might be a good laugh to read though!