Skip to main content

...much to be modest about

Sorry to be a cracked record, but I see that Mayor Ken Livingstone is claiming that his trip to Cuba and Venezuela was a very modest one.

It cost £36,000! (€54,000 or just under $70,000 for our international readers) for a trip that did not even bring about its stated aim of the dubious deal with mad cap dictator Hugo Chavez.

Next time Mr. Livingstone wishes to take a break in the axis of evil and its allies, I wonder if he might not try North Korea- on a one way ticket, please.

Comments

Anonymous said…
what a load of old shite you talk about hugo chavez. in what sense is he a mad cap dictator? how many democratic elections does he have to win to stop being a dictator? or is it that you simply havent a clue about chavez and have swallowed the big business line put out by our liberal free press.
Cicero said…
Oh Come on!

Hugo Chavez is the usual pointless Caudillo that gets thrown up by immature political systems. I do not defend those he overthrew, but the fact is that he remains a dead end for Venezuela and for all of Latin America.
Anonymous said…
but Chavez is left wing and anti-American. He /must/ be good!

On a more serious note:
When are the LibDems in the London Assembly going to start holding Ken to account rather than harping on about Christmas lights?
Anonymous said…
If Polly Toynbee, Tony Blair, George Galloway, Helen Watters and John Reid had their way, this country would end up just like North Korea

Popular posts from this blog

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop

Media misdirection

In the small print of the UK budget we find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British Finance Minister) has allocated a further 15 billion Pounds to the funding for the UK track and trace system. This means that the cost of the UK´s track and trace system is now 37 billion Pounds.  That is approximately €43 billion or US$51 billion, which is to say that it is amount of money greater than the national GDP of over 110 countries, or if you prefer, it is roughly the same number as the combined GDP of the 34 smallest economies of the planet.  As at December 2020, 70% of the contracts for the track and trace system were awarded by the Conservative government without a competitive tender being made . The program is overseen by Dido Harding , who is not only a Conservative Life Peer, but the wife of a Conservative MP, John Penrose, and a contemporary of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford. Many of these untendered contracts have been given to companies that seem to have no notewo

One Year On

  Head vabariigi iseseisvuspäeva! Happy Estonian Independence Day! It is one year since I stood outside the Estonian Parliament for the traditional raising of the national flag from Tall Hermann tower. Looking at the young fraternities gathered with their flags, I was very sure that Estonia too would soon be facing the aggression of the criminal Russian regime. A tragic and dark day. 5 eyes intelligence had been clear: an all out invasion was going to happen, and Putin´s goals included- and still include- "restoration" of Russian imperial power across Europe, even to the Atlantic. Yet there was one Western intelligence failure: we all underestimated the guts of the Ukrainian armed forces, the ZSU, and its President and people. One year on, Estonia, and indeed all the front line states against Russia, knows that Ukraine saved us. Estonia used that time to prepare itself, should that "delayed" onslaught ever be unleashed, but equally the determination of Kaja Kallas,