I'm having a week off. So far I've been catching up on my laundry, which has been extremely neglected since I went to Amsterdam last week and Mseno at the weekend. I've also been going to aikido and tango—I took over the one on Tuesday as the usual host is in Shanghai, I'm now making the playlist for tonight.
I took the above picture on my phone at Máchovo jezero at the weekend. It's a big lake with a few beaches. We also visited a castle, went horse riding and swam in river. All in all it was a pretty nice weekend.
If you hadn't noticed, Iran is increasingly detaining journalists and academics from foreign think-tanks/NGOs. See here, here and here (and also here). The detentions have been linked by some media to the arrests of five Iranians in the USA in January; that strikes me as unlikely given the time delay. More likely are fears in Tehran of US efforts towards a 'soft revolution' (see here) or a desire to set a few examples to Iranians working for foreign organisations abroad.
Right—time to make that playlist.
This is another story I've picked up late concerning the abandonment of an inquiry into a BAE slush fund used to secure contracts from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. The slush fund was uncovered in May 2004 following rumours and allegations going back to February 2001. On December 14th 2006, the Serious Fraud Office dropped the investigation, with the Prime Minister's Office justifying the move on grounds of "national interest". All very 19th-century. Basically the Saudis were getting upset and were threatening to drop a big impending purchase of Eurofighters from BAE in favour of Mirage planes from France (BBC timeline here). Of course, there's lots of jobs and money at stake.
Following the halting of the UK's investigation, the UK tried to kill at birth the OECD's own investigation into the case by trying to oust the head of that body's anti-corruption watchdog on April 24th.
If you're still wondering what caused me to dredge this up now, it was a report drawn up by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee stating that this may have caused "severe damage" to the UK's reputation in the fight against corruption, and asking to know what the government has been doing about it, and what their arguments put to the OECD were.
My take on this is simple: it's disgusting, and completely lacking in integrity. Modern Britain has formerly taken pride in its honesty, and although corruption has at times lain under the surface, it has not been publicly acceptable in this way for centuries. Of course Britain's wealth, employment rates and political clout is important, but for me its edge over much of the developed world (and most of the developing world) is in its political culture of transparency, fairness and integrity, and those have taken a headbutt from the government's capitulation in the face of losing BAE's Eurofighter deal.
Knowing I wouldn't be the only one who felt this way, I went to 10 Downing Street's petitions website. I'm not the only one. There are currently three others. Sign here.
(It won't make the blindest bit of difference, but you'll think you did something worthwhile.)
I'm having a week off. So far I've been catching up on my laundry, which has been extremely neglected since I went to Amsterdam last week and Mseno at the weekend. I've also been going to aikido and tango—I took over the one on Tuesday as the usual host is in Shanghai, I'm now making the playlist for tonight.
