Falklands Talks? There Is Nothing To Talk About.

So much for today’s Guardian. In the Independent, Philip Hensher has a grand solution for the “Falklands Problem”: we should jst sell the islands to Argentina.

[I]t might be worth raising the question with the Argentinians. We’ve got absolutely no money. I really doubt we have much stomach for another Falklands War, and then another. They are clearly passionately keen to acquire some territory with rich resources, high GDP and as much sentimental value as you can maintain for something 300 miles from your coastline. It might be worth a lot of money in the future, but actually we could quite do with some money now, this second. Perhaps we can suggest to President Kirchner that half a trillion pounds would be quite a reasonable sum for this archipelago of 778 mostly charming islands. They wouldn’t have to pay all at once.

When Aden was abandoned by the British in 1967, Philip Larkin wrote rather an imperial poem saying: “Next year we shall be living in a country/That brought its soldiers home for lack of money”.