Few advantages to our colonial past

THE advantages which our colonial past bestows upon us according to A Leavy (Letters, May 3) are of a very questionable nature.

Firstly a democratic government, besides the obvious difference between a monarchy and a republic, our former rulers did not care much for the democratic election results of 1918.

As for a legal system, I hope the Guilford Four and the Birmingham Six, plus countless others hung or deported, are thankful for their treatment under this system. When it comes to literature and language, which of our two countries was a beacon of learning and writing, while the other was in the clutches of the dark ages? We were not called the Island of Saints and Scholars for nothing. With regards to our infrastructure, how else could the conqueror get its spoils to the ports for export home, like the great oak forests that this land was raped of to build an English navy and to export grain, even in famine times.