Burma: whaddya gonna do?

Corrupt dictatorships need corrupt dictatorship neighbours for mutual money laundering and, if the worst comes to the worst, as padded boltholes for overthrown leaders. China's support of hoodlum governments in North Korea, Laos, Burma and Kazakhstan is the fruit of parleys between goons who, while talking up friendship between peoples and making large scale deals in oil and lumber (and arms and opium and rubies...), respect each other for what they are: greedy slimeballs. All that's missing is the Jersey accent. As for the protesting monks, the Burmese leaders probably saw this one coming when they moved the capital 400 km northwards. To dislodge them, the marchers have a long way to walk, and they will have to get past a lot of Chinese hardware.

I read in the First Post "In a country of 55m, there are 400,000 soldiers. Add in their families and dependants and you get 2m people who live better than the rest, with their own shops, schools and hospitals, have a grip on the country's resources and see little reason to give it up." HEY! That idea was stolen from the Brits! Actually, the Japanese stole Burma from the Brits, then perfected the idea. Does that sound too confusing? They then farmed the idea out to the local generals, in return for looted hardwood and rubber. The deal is still on. It's what they call constructive engagement.

The plundering of England

It used to be simple: Normans against Saxons. You could tell which side was which by the language. Normans were the tall blond ones who spoke French, which was the official language of government in England for something like 400 years. Saxons went from being freeholders to become tenants. Now, 941 years after the Norman invasion the linguistic divide has been reduced to a few vestigial shibboleths, and a German royal family sits on a vast real estate portfolio amassed over the centuries by Norman and Tudor forebears, with former owners paying for recalcitrance with their heads, and often spilling their guts as well. Over time the gruesomeness has gone but the Domesday heist continues. The use of treason charges to increase Crown property was rendered unnecessary by the purchasing power generated by estates already under management, and calls for land reform have been democratically stymied by the landowners sitting in the House of Lords.

So are we now at peace?

In modern England the two sides have morphed into two opposing "interest groups": those who pay *interest* - or rent - and those who collect it. The former have a vested *interest* in higher inflation, which reduces their debt, while the latter have an *interest* in it staying low, and also hold the most of the levers to make sure it does. Perhaps significantly, house prices are left out of the calculation. This simple omission masks an important fact: that even when interest rates appear stable, the rising equity base on which interest is being paid means ever increasing income for the lenders.

Look at the small-ads outside Earl's Court station and you will see that all the rents asked for accommodation are higher than the wages offered for jobs. This situation would have been familiar to Saxons living under Norman landlords.

The Norman invasion's legacy is a nation obsessed by property - and blondes. Hair dye has allowed Saxons to become temporary Normans. Tabloids and trash TV create working class celebrities out of nothing, and then shoot them down when they start behaving to the manor born. Conversely, Normans have learned to jettison plummy vowel sounds when dealing with the feral underclass at home, only to rediscover them when among their own kind in foreign ski resorts.

Curiously, Brits facing eviction for unpaid mortgages still love their Queen. But if a flick through the Daily Mail is anything to go by, they still have a lot of hatred to spare, and no fixed object to pin it onto: dole fiddlers, philandering vicars, other drivers, football referees, striking railmen, pedophiles, and the judges who let them out.

Maybe by sending their brave lads to sort out other conflicts in the world, they can make their own ones disappear. Bringing home the World Cup would help. But I think we ought to draw the line at pontificating at African governments who go in for genocides, ethnic cleansing and wholesale expropriations. After all they are merely preparing the ground for constitutional monarchies of their own. And will one day learn to plunder in a more gentlemanly way.