Just dig a canal across the UAE, problem solved.

According to the Americans, the Iranians are carrying out sporadic random attacks on oil tankers passing through the Straits of Hormuz. The Iranians are decrying this as a false flag operation etcetera.

As a proper arm chair internet warrior, with zero knowledge about civil engineering, local politics, shipping or the oil industry, my brilliant solution, that can't possibly not work and will definitely defuse the whole situation, is for the UAE to quickly dig a new canal so that oil tankers can bypass the Straits entirely.

They can do short route A (30 miles or so) across the top bit, or the UAE and Oman can co-operate and do longer route B (100 miles or so) from Dubai to Sohar.

I did put some thought into this - my first bright idea was build a pipeline along those routes, but it turns out it would take days to empty an oil tanker at the western end and days to fill another oil tanker at the eastern end, so I shelved that one.

The answer's obvious if you look at the map:

No Sympathy

From the Guardian

“My dad’s detention has been a total nightmare for all the family,” Foroughi’s son, Kamran, told the Guardian. “My dad has always strenuously maintained his innocence and we believe him. We are not aware of any evidence that justifies the espionage charge. My daughters have lived half their lives without seeing Grandpa and keep asking when he is coming home. All I can do is give them a hug.”

Foroughi’s consultancy role at Petronas included arranging and participating in meetings with senior Iranian oil and gas officials and facilitating scholarships for Iranian students on a government bursary to study in Malaysia. 

It is not clear on what evidence Iran convicted him on spying charges but Foroughi holds both British and Iranian citizenships. Iran’s intelligence apparatus view dual nationals with deep suspicion and have arrested a number of them in recent years, including the Iranian-American journalist Jason Rezaian, who is currently facing similar charges.

Just to get this straight. You got out of Iran at sometime, a repressive, undemocratic country with a reputation for human rights abuses, and then willingly went back there, and now you're complaining about the treatment you got?

The way I avoid being detained by a bunch of bastards in Iran is simple: I don't go to Iran. It's very simple. And if my employers asked me to, I'd tell them to piss off.

I have no sympathy for these people. They're doing high paid jobs including a risk premium for going to dangerous places. And the risk didn't pay off.

Fun Online Polls: Abroad and The News

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Abroad. All very grim, all very tricky.

Waves of migrants in the Mediterranean - 44%
Isis and Syria - 16%
Iran nuclear deal - 11%
Grexit or not - 7%
Ukraine-Russia war - 5%
Ebola - 5%
Chinese islands - 4%
Other, please specify - 7% (4 votes)

Going by the headlines, it's the waves of migrants which are people are concerned about most. My approach is the same as on anything else, the UK government should do whatever is in the best interests of the existing British population/electorate as a whole.

It appears that people still haven't quite got the hang of the "Other, please specify" option. Four people voted for it but only one person made a suggestion.
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This week's Fun Online Poll:

"What were you doing when you heard the news?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

It's a Fry and Laurie one-liner, I think.

Fun Online Polls: Neo-liberalism & abroad

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

When writing an article for The Guardian, how often should you use the word 'neo-liberal'?
About once every sentence - 70%
Less often - 12%
More often - 18%

This week: abroad. It all looks very grim and very tricky to me.

Take part here or use the widget in the sidebar.

"Iran to sue Hollywood over 'unrealistic' portrayal of secretive state"

From The Daily Mail:

The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance met for a one-day conference called 'The Hoax of Hollywood' on Monday night, according to the Tehran Times. It said the 'distortion of historical facts' in films including 300 and Argo prompted them to meet.

Conference secretary Mohammad Lesani was quoted as saying: "One of the main aims of the meeting is to unify all cultural communities in Iran against the attacks of the West, particularly Hollywood." The website also reported that the conference intends to send a statement to the Human Rights Council on the matter.

Mr Lesani continued: "Mr Affleck's film suggests that our state is so repressive that we would deny even non-Muslim women the right to a supportive hug from a non-related Muslim male at the funeral of one of their own children."

"StanChart accused of hiding US dealings"

From the FT:

Tehran’s financial watchdog has accused Standard Chartered of hiding $2,500 bn of transactions with the US government, leaving “the Iranian financial system vulnerable to terrorists, weapons dealers, drug kingpins and corrupt regimes”.

The UK-based bank’s shares fell more than 6 per cent after the Iranian Department of Financial Services (DFS) issued an order just before the London market closed on Monday, which included a threat to revoke the bank’s licence to operate in the country, and called it a “rogue institution”.

The order said that between 2001 and 2010 StanChart concealed from Iranian authorities roughly 600,000 transactions for US American clients, amounting to about $2,500 bn and generating “billions of dollars” in fees for the bank. Among the American clients were the Federal Reserve and two state-owned institutions, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Iran has had economic sanctions in place against the USA since 1979. They were toughened in 1995 to place strict limits on dealing with American customers by Iranian banks, including foreign banks with operations in Iran. The Tehran regulator, led by Mahmoud Bahmani, Governor of the Central Bank of Iran, alleged that StanChart had falsified records and evaded Iranian sanctions.

One StanChart director allegedly told a colleague: “You f---ing Persians. Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we’re not going to deal with Americans?”

In addition to the bank’s “systematic misconduct” with the US, the department said it had evidence that StanChart appeared to have conducted “similar schemes” with Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Fun Online Polls: War on Scotland, Jessica Ennis

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll are as follows:

Which country would David Cameron most like to declare war on?

Scotland - 36%
Iran - 20%
Argentina - 11%
Syria - 10%
North Korea - 1%
None, he's a peace loving bloke - 7%
Other, please specify - 15%

Seems fair enough, Scotland is about the only country on that list against whom we'd stand a reasonably good chance, provided we remembered to ask them for our nuclear submarines back first.

Suggestions for "other" included Britain (two votes), England, The Falklands (easy!), Brussels (and then promptly surrender), poverty, the workers and Tunbridge Wells. Most of those aren't even countries...
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And lo, as Britain finally catches Olympics fever (good excuse for falling house prices), let's have a Fun Online Poll on who is Team GB's cutest athlete.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: The Sun, Iran etc.

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

The Sun on Sunday: did you buy a copy?

I don't buy a Sunday newspaper - 83 votes
I boycott every part of the Murdoch empire - 61 votes
I stuck to my regular newspaper - 22 votes
Yes - 19 votes
No, but I read a copy - 3 votes
Other, please specify 11 votes

There was a very high turnout of 190 voters, thanks to everybody for taking part.

PS, it appears that some people still don't quite grasp the concept of "Other, please specify" (which is there because I sometimes miss something obvious when I set up the poll). Eleven people chose that option but only seven left comments, how am I supposed to guess what the other four thought?
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One thing which politicians like to do to take people's minds off bad news is attacking other countries, verbally or literally. There has been a lot of blustering recently, so that's this week's Fun Online Poll, which country do you think David Cameron would most like to declare war on?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Here comes trouble!

Ingrates Of The Week

From yesterday's Daily Mail

The U.S. Navy has rescued 13 Iranian seaman being held captive by pirates in the Gulf of Oman. In a move that should relieve tensions between the nations – temporarily at least – the Americans successfully responded to a distress call from a merchant ship.

A Navy helicopter from the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis tracked the Somalian pirates to an Iranian-flagged dhow that had earlier been hijacked. There, the team found 15 armed pirates who did not put up a fight holding the 13 Iranians hostage. Reports differ as to how long the crew had been held. The Somalians were taken into custody and the merchant seamen set free. The rescue occurred about 175 miles south-east of Muscat, Oman.

The news will have been well received in Tehran and the whole world will be hoping the rescue will enable the countries to step back from a march towards conflict that has recently appeared inevitable...

Ah bless, you might think, fellowship of the sea and all that. We wouldn't exactly expect that Iranian government to say thanks or anything, but this is sourpuss, even by their standards...

Iran accused the U.S. of a media stunt after the American Navy's rescue of 13 Iranian fishermen held by pirates, saying it was staged like a 'Hollywood drama'. American officials announced that the fishermen had been rescued by a Navy destroyer, more than 40 days after their boat was commandeered by suspected Somali pirates in the northern Arabian Sea. The rescue came just days after Tehran warned the U.S. to keep the same group of warships out of the Persian Gulf in a reflection of Iran's fear that America could try to enforce an embargo against Iranian oil exports.

Iran's hard-line Fars news agency called the rescue operation a Hollywood dramatisation of a routine event. The Fars report noted that attacks by Somali pirates in the region were common and Iran's navy has itself freed many mariners held by pirates in recent years without seeking to highly publicise it.

Ayatollah Ali Khamanei

UKIP: Talkin' sense until the bitter end

UKIP's summary of their policies relevant to small businesses appeared today. Worth a read, see which bits you like and you don't.*

Meanwhile, a UKIP candidate is in trouble with the BBC for describing Afghans as backward. Well, whoopie-do, that's hardly a minority view, is it? Anyways, UKIP's policy on Afghanistan is withdrawal and I guess them there Afghans would rather suffer mild insults than be carpet bombed. As to 'bombing Iran', maybe those words were ill chosen, but if the Israelis were to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Osirak with fireworks (only a bit further East, obviously), why wouldn't we be cheering them on?

Meanwhile, UKIP's candidate in Medway has said that brothels should be legalised, but, showing that he'd thought this through, "under the condition they were only located in commercial, rather than residential, areas." I'd come to much the same conclusion myself: there's a trade off between a safe journey home for the women who work there (so a taxi rank and/or bus stop nearby would be important, and a built up area is good) as well as anonymity for the paying customers (so siting them in a residential area is a non-starter - the phrase "I'm just popping across the road/to the shops" would take on a whole new meaning).

* Put it this way, I had no input into Section 9.4. Shutting down BERR (or whatever the DTI is called this week) completely, with an annual saving to the taxpayer of over £20 billion might be a simpler solution.

Victimhood Poker

From The Metro

Mahmoud Amadinejad claims Holocaust is a 'lie'

He said that Iranians had a religious duty to confront the "falsehood". "The pretext (Holocaust) for the creation of the Zionist regime (Israel) is false ... It is a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim," he told worshippers at Tehran University at the end of annual anti-Israel "Qods (Jerusalem) Day" rally. "Confronting the Zionist regime (Israel) is a national and religious duty."

So it's only a matter of time before Austria puts out a warrant for his arrest, I suppose. And I can't wait for the first CiF article to denounce Madman Inadinnerjacket's speech as a "renegade view that gains legitimacy and currency every time he is invited to speak".

Reader's letter of the day (2)

From today's FT:

Sir, Those who criticise the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi should rack their brains to recall an incident that occurred some five months prior to the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 (Lockerbie's fallout, Editorial August 25).

This was the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 by the USS Vincennes. The US Navy warship was in Iranian territorial waters when it launched its surface to air missiles. All 290 civilians on board the airliner died. The captain of the Vincennes, William C. Rogers III, was subsequently awarded the Legion of Merit by President George H.W. Bush.

Yugo Kovach, Winterborne Houghton, Dorset, UK.

Basij'd

Maybe it's just me, but shouldn't every single tabloid headline editor who failed to make the obvious play on words with 'Basij' and 'besieged' when covering the story about the Iranian Revolutionary Guard firing at the crowd of protestors surrounding their headquarters hang his or her head in shame?

Wannabe puppet dictator of the week

Puppet dictator of the week

Rihanna: unlikely winner of presidential election in Iran

The Axis Of Diesel*

Cause for much celebration was an article in last Saturday's Times, which explains that now crude oil prices have collapsed, a lot of these Petro-States have had the carpet pulled from under them, as beautifully illustrated by the pretty graph that accompanied the print version:


It'd be nice if crude prices dropped below $55 to teach the Saudis a lesson in humility!

* If you Google the phrase, it appears to have entered common usage last weekend, although I'd love to know who coined it. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I think I'll credit James Bone, Tony Halpin and Michael Theodoulou.

"Iran boats threatened US ships"

A missed opportunity?