Showing posts with label Argentina. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Argentina. Show all posts
Friday, 4 May 2012
Wednesday, 8 February 2012
OPINION: Just get rid of the Falklands
30 years on from the Falklands Conflict, the UK and Argentina are getting hot under the collar again about the desolate rocks in the South Atlantic.
When Margaret Thatcher sent a large task force to the Falkland Islands back in 1982, following Argentina's invasion of the islands and South Georgia, it had more to do with pulling the heart strings of Little Englanders, playing the patriotism card, in order to help her chances of reelection following a bad couple of years in the opinion polls and an economy that was struggling and the deaths of several hundred Argentine sailors, and some (*cue fake tears) British heroes achieved its goal - she was re-elected by a landslide a year later.
Today things are different. I'm sure that Cameron quite fancies the poll boost that a war PM tends to get (Tony Blair can only puzzle as to why his cynical wars backfired) and it would serve as a wonderful distraction from his flatlining economy and other political woes, but now there is a far bigger issue.
Oil and gas fields have been discovered beneath the waters around the islands. It's been long suspected that there was a large amount of oil and gas there, someone just had to find it. So now the battle for the Falklands has another purpose - the pursuit of climate destroying oil.
Because of the Falkland Islands legal status, however, the UK won't benefit from the oil and gas found there. The UK spends millions of pounds each year protecting the islands, including having two warships permanently there, for which the islanders pay nothing, but the monies generated from discovery of oil and gas are the islanders. Every single one of them, men, women and children, could, it seems, become multi-millionaires but the UK won't receive a penny, or peso, of it. We, the UK taxpayers, pay to protect the islands, build them infrastructure, etc. but won't benefit from any oil windfall. How can that be right?
It, of course, makes no sense but raises the question, why do we continue paying out huge amounts of money to protect a set of bleak, inhospitable islands with a tiny population?
In the late 1970s the UK was trying to get rid of the Falklands and, had the Argentine junta not tried to gain popularity by invading the islands, there is every chance the islands would have been given away by the mid-1980s.
I'm all for self-determination but, surely, that is to decide between independence and being ruled over. If the Falkland Islanders can choose who they want to pick up their security bill and not their independence it's like Southampton declaring that they are now a French port.
And it's not as if the Falkland Islands have always been under some sort of British flag. It was only in the 1820s that the UK stole them from Argentina! Hardly a long history.
So what will happen?
The Argentine government have accused the UK of upping the stakes and "militarising" the South Atlantic. The UK say they are simply changing ships (to a much bigger and more armed one) and that William Windsor, second in line to the British throne is there as a routine duty. They'll be lots of huffing and puffing (including, announced this week, the renaming of the Argentine football league as the "Cruiser General Belgrano Premier League") and eventually someone will do something stupid, quite probably for personal electoral gain.
I fear another conflict and the inevitable loss of life. I fear this will increase narrow-minded Little Englanders patriotism and that, if he times it right, an overall election win for David Cameron at the next general election. I fear the British taxpayer will be asked to pay more and more money for islands we don't really want and which it would make more sense to get rid of. And I fear that, with huge amounts of oil and gas being discovered, it will delay the inevitable development of alternative technologies and we'll have more decades of polluting carbon-based fuels.
My solution? Give the Falkland Islands to Argentina - it makes much more sense for them to look after the Malvinas, as they call them, and allow any Falkland Islanders who want to be "British" to settle on UK soil (though I guess they won't do that if there's a chance their snouts can be buried in the oil trough).
MILITARISATION OF THE DALKLANDS? (HUMOUR)
When Margaret Thatcher sent a large task force to the Falkland Islands back in 1982, following Argentina's invasion of the islands and South Georgia, it had more to do with pulling the heart strings of Little Englanders, playing the patriotism card, in order to help her chances of reelection following a bad couple of years in the opinion polls and an economy that was struggling and the deaths of several hundred Argentine sailors, and some (*cue fake tears) British heroes achieved its goal - she was re-elected by a landslide a year later.
Today things are different. I'm sure that Cameron quite fancies the poll boost that a war PM tends to get (Tony Blair can only puzzle as to why his cynical wars backfired) and it would serve as a wonderful distraction from his flatlining economy and other political woes, but now there is a far bigger issue.
Oil and gas fields have been discovered beneath the waters around the islands. It's been long suspected that there was a large amount of oil and gas there, someone just had to find it. So now the battle for the Falklands has another purpose - the pursuit of climate destroying oil.
Because of the Falkland Islands legal status, however, the UK won't benefit from the oil and gas found there. The UK spends millions of pounds each year protecting the islands, including having two warships permanently there, for which the islanders pay nothing, but the monies generated from discovery of oil and gas are the islanders. Every single one of them, men, women and children, could, it seems, become multi-millionaires but the UK won't receive a penny, or peso, of it. We, the UK taxpayers, pay to protect the islands, build them infrastructure, etc. but won't benefit from any oil windfall. How can that be right?
It, of course, makes no sense but raises the question, why do we continue paying out huge amounts of money to protect a set of bleak, inhospitable islands with a tiny population?
In the late 1970s the UK was trying to get rid of the Falklands and, had the Argentine junta not tried to gain popularity by invading the islands, there is every chance the islands would have been given away by the mid-1980s.
I'm all for self-determination but, surely, that is to decide between independence and being ruled over. If the Falkland Islanders can choose who they want to pick up their security bill and not their independence it's like Southampton declaring that they are now a French port.
And it's not as if the Falkland Islands have always been under some sort of British flag. It was only in the 1820s that the UK stole them from Argentina! Hardly a long history.
So what will happen?
The Argentine government have accused the UK of upping the stakes and "militarising" the South Atlantic. The UK say they are simply changing ships (to a much bigger and more armed one) and that William Windsor, second in line to the British throne is there as a routine duty. They'll be lots of huffing and puffing (including, announced this week, the renaming of the Argentine football league as the "Cruiser General Belgrano Premier League") and eventually someone will do something stupid, quite probably for personal electoral gain.
I fear another conflict and the inevitable loss of life. I fear this will increase narrow-minded Little Englanders patriotism and that, if he times it right, an overall election win for David Cameron at the next general election. I fear the British taxpayer will be asked to pay more and more money for islands we don't really want and which it would make more sense to get rid of. And I fear that, with huge amounts of oil and gas being discovered, it will delay the inevitable development of alternative technologies and we'll have more decades of polluting carbon-based fuels.
My solution? Give the Falkland Islands to Argentina - it makes much more sense for them to look after the Malvinas, as they call them, and allow any Falkland Islanders who want to be "British" to settle on UK soil (though I guess they won't do that if there's a chance their snouts can be buried in the oil trough).
MILITARISATION OF THE DALKLANDS? (HUMOUR)
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