Sunday, August 29, 2004

Brit wit

If I have to read about devious and outrageous politics, I'd just as soon read it dry wit British style...

To lift your depression, perhaps I may report a happier event. Baroness Thatcher's son, Mark, has been arrested in South Africa in connection with a plot to overthrow the dictatorship in Equatorial Guinea for the entirely noble purpose of clearing the way for Western oil companies to exploit the deposits of oil off the coast.

Since March, plotters have been arrested, and some found guilty, in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Guinea, among other places. It was a really high-class plot, organised by old Etonians, one of whom is the heir to the Watney Mann English beer fortune. Mark Thatcher apparently tried to buy a helicopter as part of the plot. He was arrested in his pyjamas as he was getting ready to leave his palatial home in South Africa (where else?) to take up residence in Texas (where else?)

Thatcher, who is a baronet (a hereditary knight, courtesy of his mother) is commonly regarded in Britain as being 'as thick as two short planks', but like George W Bush, he made a lot of money when no one expected him to.

John O'Farrell in Friday's Guardian was grateful that Sir Mark hadn't followed his mother into politics, as Bush followed Bush into the White House; he remarked:
"In fact, episodes like this remind us of the type of morality that prevailed during the greedy Thatcher years. Thank heavens things have moved on. Can you imagine our current prime minister being associated with the sort of people who'd embark on some ill-thought-out military adventure because they hoped to install a regime that would allow them to get their hands on the country's oil reserves? It's completely unthinkable."


More of this week's news at the Jamaica Observer.

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