Deluded, arrogant or just plain jingoistic

Ilas Malvinas SIENPRE Argentinas

It's everywhere street signs, countless memorials, posters in hotels and restaurants, sides of street food carts and on most Argentines lips.

What we know as the Falkland Islands inhabited by about 2000-odd sheep farmers of British extraction and they have been there for well over 100 years.

The Argentines have disputed the British government's administration of the islands for about 150 years and this culminated in the military regime's pathetic attempt at a takeover in the early eighties, which most Westerners will associate with the resulting extreme support then given to the beleagered Margaret Thatcher, which then allowed her to go on to change Western government economics and welfare structures, which still resonates today.

On the Argentine side, the military lost public support and a dictatorship-free Argentina paved the way towards democracy and capitalist freedom. Though most Argentines still reckon the island should be theirs, which I find absolutely bizarre as the islands have no Argentines even living there, partly due to a law which prohibits their entry. Fair enough, I said to one travel agent who protested this fact. After all, the last time a boatload of Argentines did, they shot the place up.

Not a bad impact for a little group of Antarctic windswept islands.