Dear Argentina... now look! You've been whining about this since 1767 and it's starting to get on my nerves.
You've written to our Prime Minister demanding negotiations to 'return' the islands we call the Falklands and you call Malvinas, 180 years after we "cruelly stole them from you with our jackbooted naval officers of totalitarianism."
You say you were 'forcibly stripped' of these jewels in the South Atlantic and your people were 'expelled'.
Only, that's not quite what happened, is it Argentina? Someone obviously needs to remind you of the facts.
Allow me to start by saying there are probably things we can all agree on. War is bad, for example, and colonialism tends to be a bad thing too - that is, apart from the roads, education, health reforms, economic development, culture, food, integration and innovation we contributed.
We could probably also agree that the Falkland Islands aren't exactly pretty. There are no hanging gardens, no waterfalls, no exotic wildlife. They're a windy bunch of rocks a long way from anywhere.
They are nearer to you than to us, which begs the question as to why you never bothered to settle them.
When they were first discovered by a Dutchman in 1600 there was nothing there but seabirds. No people, no cultural heritage. Just a windy bunch of rocks.
Ninety years later, a British sailor was blown off course and sailed through a bit of water he named Falkland Sound, and 74 years after that the French turned up to form a colony.
WAIT! I hear you cry. The French colonised the Falklands?
Why yes, and
18th century mail being what it was, the British turned up two years later and built a settlement on another one of the islands and claimed the whole lot for the Crown, unaware the Frenchies were already in residence.
A year later, the French sold their bit to the Spaniards, who put the colony - containing French people - under control of a governor in Buenos Aires.
Three years later, in 1774, the Brits withdrew and left a plaque behind asserting their claim. Thirty two years later the Spaniards departed too, leaving another plaque, and in 1811 the last settlers threw in the towel and left. So in 1811, the Falklands were empty again.
We were back to windy rocks known only to whalers and seal ships, plus two memorial plaques.
In 1820 an American pirate called David Jewett took shelter there, and finding the place deserted, promptly claimed the islands for a union of South American provinces which later became Argentina.
You lot didn't realise this for a year, but still didn't settle the islands. Instead a German who pretended to be French, called Luis Vernet, came along, asked the Argentines and the Brits politely if they minded, and founded a little colony of his own.
It took him a few goes, but eventually he established a settlement. You named him governor and gave him the right to kill all the seals. This quite hacked off the Brits, who wanted some seals themselves, but Vernet placated us by asking for our military protection.
It all got a bit hairy in 1831, when Vernet found some American seal ships, arrested their crews and sparked an international incident. The Americans sent a warship, blew up the settlement, and hot-headedly sent the most senior settlers to the mainland for trial for piracy.
The Argentines sent a new governor to establish a penal settlement, but he was killed in a mutiny the day he arrived. The Brits decided the whole thing was a dog's breakfast.
And now we get to the bit you're unhappy about. Argentina, the invasion and forced expulsion.
The Brits arrived two months after this mutiny, and wrote to the chap in charge of the small Argentine garrison. The letter said: "I have to inform you that I have received directions from His Excellency and Commander-in-Chief of His Britannic Majesty's ships, South America station, in the name of His Britannic Majesty, to exercise the rights of sovereignty over these Islands.
It is my intention tomorrow to hoist the national flag of Great Britain on shore, when I request you will haul down your flag and withdraw your force, taking all stores belonging to your Government."
Now, there are many ways people can be oppressed, forced, compelled and abused -- but a polite note is not one of them. The Argentine in charge thought briefly about resisting, but he didn't have many soldiers and besides, most of them were British mercenaries who refused to fight. So, Argentina, on 3 January 1833 you left. You had never settled the islands. Never established a colony of your own. Never guarded it with a garrison of your own soldiers. They had never, ever, been yours.
The log of an Argentine ship, present at the time, records that the settlers were encouraged to stay, and those that left did so of their own free will and generally because they were fed up with living on some boring, windy rocks. Eleven people left - four Argentines, three 'foreigners', one prisoner, a Brit and two Americans. Twenty-two people remained - 12 Argentinians, four Uruguay Indians, two Brits, two Germans, a Frenchman and a Jamaican.
As the imposition of colonial power on an indigenous population goes, that takes some beating. And for the sake of clarity I should point out that a human melting pot like that makes the place about as British as you can be.
A few months later HMS Beagle, taking Charles Darwin to the Galapagos, popped in and found the settlement half-ruined and the residents lawless. There were several murders, some looting, and in 1834 the exasperated British sent Lieutenant Henry Smith to run the place.
The islands have been ours ever since, and is now home to almost 3,000 people descended from settlers who came from Britain, France, Scandinavia, Gibraltar, St Helena and Chile.
At the same time, Argentina, you went on to fight wars with most of South America and colonise provinces with indigenous populations by killing or pushing them out.
In the 1980s, when your government was broke and facing strong opposition, you invaded the Falklands to divert the attention of your voters at a cost of 907 lives, and it cannot be unrelated to your letter that, a few weeks from now, you face being ejected by the International Monetary Fund for lying over your economic figures.
At around the same time, the people who now live on these boring, windy rocks in the middle of nowhere are having a referendum about who they would like to govern them. You will ignore this, because you believe they do not have a right to make up their own minds and you have repeatedly refused to talk to the islanders about your claims.
So allow me to make a couple of things clear. Firstly, the history of these windy rocks is an utter mess but someone had to take charge, and you weren't up to the job. We did it pretty nicely.
Secondly, only jackbooted scumbags refuse to listen to the democratic voice of the people who live in a place under review, so you really ought to wind in your hypocritical warmongering necks.
And thirdly - well done with the wine, and the beef's pretty good, but if you want to negotiate, you might want to think about handing Patagonia back to its people as well.
After that, we are quite prepared to let you come and holiday on these windy rocks, where you will be invited to pitch a tent anywhere you like within the 13 square kilometres where you left
19,000 landmines the last time you visited.
We know they're a long way away. We know there's not much to the rocks, and there might be oil and it might give someone a claim to Antarctica.
But we also know something you don't - which is that a well-run, law-abiding and happy bunch of rocks is the best bunch of rocks you can have. You're no more up to achieving that now than you have ever been.
In case our position is still not clear, the above could be summed up as: No.
Yours sincerely,
Blighty
TBWG
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