Iceland should withstand the grubby, corrupt, and bullying antics of the UK and Dutch governments in attempting to foist off some of their losses and the blame for it on a people who were betrayed by their government. Inevitably they have been threatened with what amounts to sanctions and punishment if they fail to agree.
Just who have the three banks concerned based in Iceland who conned the local politicians into allowing them tax privileges been involved with and who are the big money people at the end of the line who have been caused serious difficulties? They include English Premiership football clubs, many of whom are going through the throes of financial reorganisation and retrenchment. Why should a captive Icelandic population approximately the same as the City of Hull stand the racket for one of the most overblown, overpaid, privileged, and indebted groups on the planet?
Much is made of the losses of UK local councils and a lot less said that they were throwing money at Icelandic high risk accounts despite ample warnings that the banks in question were not as good as they claimed to be. Even less is said that it was John Prescott who was in charge when the local councils were urged to be fancy free with their investment deposits.
Who else is there? The many very wealthy financiers are include those who have been highly leveraged in real estate and property, people who for years had the financial press grovelling and fawning on them. One has taken substantial losses in his field. Now it seems that another specialises in is ripping off the very aged in sheltered housing and have provoked the foundation of an organisation led by eighty year olds striving for justice. What a comment on the nature of the UK government, robbing the aged and vulnerable poor to pay off the rich.
True there will be a number of depositors who were unwise enough to accept advice urging them to put major deposits, or even their life savings and pensions into these accounts, but I suspect that these could covered to some extent by the UK and Dutch governments, and may be a relatively minor cost.
Why is so little said about the dealings of any of these people? Why is the UK media so shy of telling who has what, where it is, and how they came by it? In the 18th Century, a period of elite power, corruption, exploitation, and distaste for democratic ideals almost as bad as in the last thirteen years, at least people knew who had the money, where it came from, and the size of it.
We do not know much about any of these or their liabilities that generations of Icelanders and UK taxpayers are expected to rescue. If any enquire too closely to comment they are faced with the super-injunctions which silence them completely. We do not even know who is protected by them. How come the Prescott family dealings seem to evade any notice? Just what have Tony and Cherie been up to? Where is Gordon’s piggy bank? Alastair’s post Northern Rock? Jack’s? Harriet of the dropped charges? Balls and Coopers?
Many senior politicians in the Labour Party seem to be very well provided for, so where is it all? Just who is connected to the Iceland monies and how? We do know that RBS and HBOS and others are and we do know that the vulnerable condition of the UK commercial real estate has a lot to do with government activities.
My view is that the Icelanders should react positively and learn from their ancestors. They should send emissaries to other places in the northern waters proposing a Confederation of the North based on a shared heritage and a common economic interest. The Faeroes, The Shetlands, The Orkneys, Greenland, perhaps the Outer Hebrides, perhaps even the Scottish Highland region could be a new truly democratic multilingual state on the Swiss pattern free from either the financial agglomerations of London and New York or the EU and all its evils, never mind the protected elite withdrawing rooms of Edinburgh.
With care and determination the Confederation might be central to agreements with Canada, Norway, Russian and Sweden over the control of the Arctic and all its assets. The eruption all this would cause would have a greater impact than even the Laki Fissure event of 1783-4.
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