The sun never sets on the British Empire this statement proves Britains dominance over the world

and

The Commonwealth of Nations is an organisation of 54 sovereign states, linking together countries which were once part of the British Empire founded in 1949.

The Common Wealth of Nations, promote an inappropriate colonial legacy.

The British Empire was founded upon colonial aggression and exploitation and should be repudiated, rather than celebrated in diluted form through the continuity the Commonwealth symbolises. International organisations should be truly global and progressive, rather than culturally anglo-centric and backward looking. The commonwealth of nations are restrained to those whose main language is English and those countries with political and legal systems modelled upon the British precedent. This means the benefits of such an organisation if they do exist are constrained by a direct constitutional link to Britain and is this not rather prejudiced? Even Mozambique who is not a former British colony was in fact only admitted as it had supported the Commonwealths stand against rule in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Regardless this was held to be only a unique situation and cannot be applied in the future.

The Commonwealth lacks a valuable and useful mission in the world.

It confers no trade privileges upon its members, does not coordinate their defence or foreign policy, and lacks both the budget and the executive authority to make a practical difference in the world. Periodic meetings of Commonwealth Heads of Government are at best a talking-shop and at worst an expensive junket. It would be far better for its members to commit their attention and goodwill to more meaningful international organisations, such as the UN, NATO, regional free-trade areas, etc.

The Commonwealth is an out-dated legacy of the British Empire that serves no real purpose but to honour Britain: The common wealth serves only to bolster Britains sense of importance in the world and to make it appear that its monarch still has a role in the modern world.

The commonwealth does not foster diversity but it is in fact merely a smaller less powerful version of the United Nations and World Trade Organisation that causes duplication of work that is defunct. Developing countries benefits can be viewed as mere tokenism, as the UN with its more powerful members like USA and China can offer the nations more benefits than the commonwealth can.

Failing mission: The Commonwealth is failing to execute the mission it has set forth for itself, particularly in the Harare Declaration.
The Commonwealth professes high ideas but fails to live up to them: Despite the pious words of the Harare Declaration, many Commonwealth countries are dictatorships or have poor human rights records, and the Commonwealth provides their leaders with a figleaf of international respectability. The Commonwealth is a sham as its members always pursue their own self-interest when it conflicts with Commonwealth solidarity: Britains involvement in the European Union has resulted in the removal of preferential trading terms from many Commonwealth members and its support a fortress of European tariffs which help to restrict economic development in much of the third world. On important issues naked self-interest always wins out over Commonwealth solidarity. An example is Britains refusal to place sanctions on South Africa in the 1980s.

The Commonwealth is ineffectual: It is indecisive, dithering for years about imposing even symbolic sanctions upon Nigeria in the 1990s when it was under a corrupt and brutal military dictatorship. It also has no real means of ensuring that member states live up to the principles it preaches, for example, flagrant human rights abuses in Zimbabwe have gone unpunished, as did those of Idi Amin in Uganda in the 1970s. The commonwealth is supposed to help establish democracy and respect for human rights by sanctions and expulsion, however

46 of the commonwealth countries criminalise same sex relations in

all circumstances, this is a breach of the European Union convention on Human Rights of article 14, so how members of the opposition do the commonwealth principles conform to the human right treaties? Members of the house is this not a mere faade? The common wealth states that it is not intended to be an active enforcement body proceeding by modern consensus; however this is pretence as it pressurises its members through suspension, which is why Zimbabwe left this organization.

Conclusion:
The British Commonwealth encourages members to look back to when they were once part of an empire which contained a large fraction of the worlds citizens and now probably doesnt have more than 2000000 people living outside the UK. It is time however to look forward. The UK should give independence to all of its territories in or near the Caribbean and encourage them to form a federal union. The existence of the British Commonwealth encourages developing nations to be dependent. Instead of developing their own education systems, and instead of empowering their citizens with their own money, governments of developing nations in the British Commonwealth depend on the British Commonwealth to do for their citizens what they as responsible governments should be doing. The British Commonwealth is a waste of UK money, which should be used to ease the effects of the recession and encourage independence among countries together with creating links with the rest of the world and countries in their own region rather than based on some colonial legacy