As The Times has revealed, Somali pirates have marked down their ransom direct for Paul and Rachel Chandler, the kidnapped British sailors, from the strange $7 million total to $2 million (about �1.3 million).
One does not need to see an additional design of bad Mrs Chandler, distant rigourously from her father and wasting afar in trouble after 4 months, to be overcome with the incentive to phone up the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and ask them, a mite rudely, what they embrace taxpayers income for if not to make use of it in emergencies similar to this.
All that the tactful use has to do is embankment the arrogant British clarity of the high dignified belligerent and grab a small dollars. Forget the fashion about not negotiating with terrorists (as prolonged as theyre not Irish). Enough is enough. The ransom should be paid and the Chandlers, a really typical integrate from Kent who are trapped in a majority pale situation, should be liberated immediately.
This is a one-off that, were it not so tragic, would resemble a farce. Two prime yachties, by no equates to rich, retire early and confirm to walk turn the universe underneath sail. They are kidnapped by pirates in the expectancy that any one in a wish qualification in that piece of the universe is a initial cousin of the Emir of Dubai.
But instead of a small rich sheikh, drizzling in dollars, the Somalis find theyve kidnapped Mr and Mrs Tunbridge Wells, who have invested all in their journey in the aged but majority desired 12-metre Lynn Rival. There, but for the beauty of God and a improved grant plan, competence go any one of us.
But given the Chandlers he, 60, was a polite engineer; she, 56, an economist are not rich, important nor powerful, no one in management cares and there is no family income to buy their freedom. Nor, tellingly, is there any flesh to quarrel their cause, as has been clear from the impulse of kidnap when a Royal Navy boat watched it occur from 50ft afar but intervening. (International laws to follow, chaps. Might have involved the hostages. Could even have got the uniforms wet. All such excuses have been made.) Now, however, the pirates patently realize they prisoner the wrong people and are seeking for a face-saving approach out that will cover their costs.
If the FCO does not exist to movement for the Chandlers and their similar to ie, majority of us afterwards what on earth is it for? And because does one gulf the dispiriting guess that if any ten shrewd people picked at pointless got together in a room they would be means to sort this disaster out faster and some-more well than the diplomats have done? Diplomats who, we need usually kindly remind, we compensate to be expert.
By my reckoning, �1.3 million is peanuts in conditions of open spending. Its probably what they outlay on paper clips in the FCO; or at close to the cost of repair the upholstery in Gordon Browns limousines. On a some-more critical note, I gamble the contingent cost of profitable off those obliged for the abominable Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust liaison was far more.
Sometimes comparisons on how we outlay open income are conjunction astray nor inappropriate, but educative. In 2009 3 buliding of FCO staff were given bonuses. And the method was criticised this month by the National Audit Office, that found that, given 2002, construction projects on embassies had run over bill by scarcely �57 million. All that marble, doubtless.
Yet ask the FCO, the grande lady of state institutions, with the annual output of �2.1 billion, to gangling a small to save dual lives, and it adopts the viewpoint of one who has a really bad smell underneath ones nose. Because, of course, this is not about what we can afford; this is about principle. And we FCO mandarins are majority appropriate at principles.
Why, their beliefs hold loyal in the majority contrast circumstances, when Kenneth Bigley and Margaret Hassan were kidnapped and beheaded so dreadfully in Iraq. Ransoms competence have saved their lives and income was there but the line held. No populist, life-saving unsteadiness here. No negotiating with terrorists.
You know, if you asked the British open tomorrow what they thought, I think you would get a resounding opinion to compensate the ransom. Pay it, even if sheltered by a third party. But only do it.
Saving this integrate would be the kind of charitable movement that counts far some-more than any fanciful destiny hazard so the FCOs evidence goes that by profitable one ransom, the lives of all Britons abroad will be put in larger danger. (Not that Im cynical, but it strikes me that a sure thing called fight in Iraq and Afghanistan has already finished for us on that score.) And it needs to be finished fast. Rachel Chandler was enormously considerable in the video clips, well-behaved and dignified, but she was apparently underneath aroused mental and earthy pressure. Those who saw her described her as sick, concerned and disorientated. Delay could finish in the majority comfortless way. If it does, the Government should be underneath positively no illusions how angry the British open will be.
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