The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

9 responses to “Breaking News”

1. 

   MickC

   March 4, 2014

   Your pessimism is unjustified.
   No country, let alone one like Russia, would be happy with a neighbouring country being subject to mob rule-for that is what has happened.
   No-one yet knows the nature of that mob, or what will emerge from it. Certainly it is unlikely to be a liberal democracy subject to the rule of law.
   Russia has taken steps to protect its military assets. Quelle surprise!
   The hypocritical bleatings of our own rulers are nauseating. Hague in particular is odious- a pompous nonentity trying to be big. Any actions he takes can only damage us.

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2. 

   Oswald Thake

   March 5, 2014

   What you said, Mick!

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3. 

   Tom

   March 5, 2014

   I entirely agree with your final paragraph. I know from living in Russia for seven years just how amused people there are by our government’s inflated sense of its own importance.
   On the other hand my sources in Poland are expressing disgust at the glimpsed Cabinet briefing paper that advised the government not to damage the City of London’s interests by sanctions affecting Russian access to capital markets. Westminster is not the only bit of the world under the delusion that Britain can project military and economic force as it once could and we should let those well-wishers down gently while supporting our allies in the world intelligently to the extent of our actual abilities.
   Personally I am disgusted that the government or its advisors thought they had the right ever to contemplate damaging the private interests of businesses in the City far more important to the well-being of British citizens than any government agency.
   I have friends living in Kiev/Kyiv (like Londonderry you can’t even name it without adopting a political stance). They are not reporting mob rule or anything like it. Yes Yanukovich was elected, but not with a mandate to steal, oppress and sell out. Godwin alert, but Hitler was elected too. Yet if he had been overthrown by his own people when they realised what he was up to, who would have complained?
   The instability is yet to come, as the Ukrainian state has been bled white by corruption and is massively in debt. A bail-out is required and Putin’s paranoia on the subject is in the way of that. He wants Ukraine in debt to Russia (a) because he sees that as putting it in his power and (b) because he imagines an IMF or EU bail-out (not that the latter, having cocked things up with its usual ineptitude is in any position to afford one) would put it in the power of the hated “West”.
   There is little useful the British Government can contribute here (except via the IMF and maybe the UN) and anything that justifies Putin’s paranoid illusion that he is countering, not Ukrainian political forces, but foreign puppet-masters as amoral as himself is to be avoided.
   When I was negotiating business contracts for a living I often commented to my clients that the bad behaviours your counterpart wants contractual protection against are precisely the ones he’s most likely to engage in himself. Putin is demonstrating that here on a geo-political scale.
   I only wish ordinary Ukrainians had as many guns as ordinary Americans, because ultimately this is their fight. If they had had them from the beginning, their corrupt leaders would never have brought them to this stage. Any state with a disarmed population tends to corruption and oppression over time, because its citizens fear it, rather than vice versa.

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4. 

   MickC

   March 5, 2014

   Your first paragraph certainly confirms that Russians are, above all, realists. And realists with a sense of humour-even better!
   It is interesting that some of your Polish colleagues still consider the UK to have considerable economic and military strength. I think this is evidence of just how far one can get with pure bluff and bluster-after all we built an empire on it, and have traded on it fairly well for a long time. But when the hand is called, we can only show low cards!
   I think any government considers it has the right to interfere with private interests, if it so chooses. In fact, if it can get the relevant legislation passed, it has-regrettably. Most think they don’t even need the legislation, especially nowadays.
   I understand that there may not be “actual” mob rule in Kiev-but deposing an elected President by force is just as much mob rule. The coup in Egypt was a coup, even if the “west” was happy with the outcome. If Scargill had brought “down this Tory government” as was his declared aim, that also would have been mob rule, no matter how much sympathy the miners had.
   Democracy cannot be a pick n mix. You buy the whole box-or it isn’t democracy, and like Forrest Gump you never really know what you’re gonna get! Its still the best form of government (i’ll omit the Churchillism!)-and I wish we had it!
   Actually I think Putin is right-it is the intention of the “west” (mainly the USA) to make the Ukraine indebted to it, or certainly the western banks. Their intention is no more benign than Putins. That being the case, Putin did the only thing he realistically could- take it before the West did. In the contractual context you use, he did what he feared the West would do, but did it first.
   Which brings us nicely back to Russians being realists-with a sense of humour!
   Incidentally, the Russian “test” of an ICBM seems to have ameliorated Kerry’s tone somewhat. Talks rather than threats are just fine now. Merkel not having backed up Kerry without question must also have given pause for thought!
   The centuries old Russian/German love/hate relationship is currently in the love phase-thank God!

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5. 

   Tom

   March 5, 2014

   If a huge percentage of your GDP and a huge share of your jobs are dependant on having the world’s financial sector headquartered in your capital city you had better be careful about confiscating assets.
   To put it less negatively, the reason why the City of London hosts the largest international financial market (New York is bigger, but mainly serves only the States) is precisely because English Common Law respects property rights more than other systems. That’s because it does not believe that the rights derive from the law. They are there and the law exists to protect them.
   When The Economist ranked the world’s economies by stock market capitalisation as a percentage of GDP it was surprised to have lawyers point out that it had also accidentally ranked them by their legal system – with English Common Law at the top, followed by Germanic Civil Law, French style Civil Law and then Islamic Law.
   Whatever the howls for some kind of action, nothing should be done to touch the assets of individual citizens of another nation unless and until Britain is actually at war with that nation. To me, the leaked Cabinet paper states the bleeding obvious and I am more worried that the Cabinet needed to be told than anything else.

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6. 

   MickC

   March 5, 2014

   I entirely agree with you.
   However, the English Common Law is dying. It is being replaced by the EU’s Civil Law system whereby a law gives a general prohibition of an activity, with a licence granting exceptions being allowed according to the whim of the Executive.
   This is, of course, effectively a return to the Divine Right of Kings, whereby power is at the centre. It suits our Rulers because it gives them more power- and it also suits our judges who just apply the rule by rote without any regard to the concept of justice (the key consideration in the Common Law).
   You may have seen that Lord Chief Justice Thomas has said we should move to an inquisitorial system in civil and family cases (to save cost to the state-naturally, sod the right of the citizen to justice). He is obviously a man of little intellect but great political perception-as are most current judges!
   I therefore fear the reason for the City being so important will soon evaporate.

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7. 

   james higham

   March 7, 2014

   It’s complex in the Ukraine. I’m also hearing former colleagues and the story is not that our MSM are pumping out.

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8. 

   Tom

   March 7, 2014

   I long ago worked out that every story in the MSM must be as poorly reported as the ones in my business life that I knew about directly were! Journalists, like politicians, are unqualified generalists who move from one complex area to another entirely unencumbered by morals, relevant knowledge or skill.

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9. 

   Andrew Duffin

   March 11, 2014

   The most important thing to realise about the preposterous Mr. Hague is that is simply doesn’t matter in the least what he thinks, nor does it matter what the “government” of which he claims to be a member thinks either.
   Foreign policy is an EU competence and the person with the actual responsility in this (and every other) case is the ghastly Catherine Ashton.
   Hague is – at best – a bag-carrier for the EU.

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