Today being one of those days, this is limited to
an item from Iain Dale on the subject of trade with China. It says it all really.
Quote:
Iain Dale, 6 December, 2013
Am I alone in feeling queasy at the way David
Cameron has been crawling to the Chinese this week in a craven attempt to gain
their favour? “We will be the main advocate of China in the West,” he announced
on Monday.
Pass the sick bag. I completely accept we have
to do business with regimes we disapprove of – it’s what Bismarck called
‘realpolitik’. But what we don’t have to do is prostrate ourselves in front of
them and appear to beg them to like us.
What we should be doing is recognising their
agenda. Their strategy is to buy up key bits of our infrastructure and then in
20 years’ time exert their control and influence over us. It’s what they are
doing all over the world.
They’re buying up industries and infrastructure
which has a common theme – and the theme is that they all revolve around things
we need for our everyday life – power, water, sewers. And now I imagine they
will buy many of the about to be privatised shares in the Channel Tunnel.
We must be mad. The Germans would no more let
the Chinese invest in their nuclear facilities than give them control over
their armed forces. And let’s remember that the amount of German trade with
China dwarfs ours.
Regimes like China understand it when countries
stand up to them and act in their own national interest. They laugh at
countries which are so keen to ingratiate themselves that they will do anything
to attract inward investment.
Are we really that desperate?
Unquote.
The problem is that we could be that desperate
and it is beginning to show.
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