House of Saud?

Enki

If this mafia state happened to be non fiscal beneficial country, our Government would be committing military hardware to bring its Dons down; all Tories really need to ditch the amoral code, it’s their country and their Laws is not consistent with other interventions, a nod of approval to Gove and cohorts. Not concerned with Karl Andree, all bit of ruse, these supposed lashings, they will not happen, I’m sure clemency will be shown.

Moreover, with Friday afternoons and state decapitations, not just the banged to right criminals, people from third world countries enslaved and wanting to leave, people with learning disabilities and mental health problems having their heads lobbed off and their headless torsos flown over markets. Really is time now, to distance ourselves from the cash, this mafia state of Saudi Arabia offers the UK.

johntheexpat

They have money.  Nothing else matters.









Apparently.

Trollslayer

All parties have treated it the same.
Of course, plenty people from the UK benefit e.g. people working over there taking the money. Maybe if that stopped governments might stand up to them more.

johntheexpat

Such a shame you try and make this a party political issue.  As if Labour were any better over Saudi Arabia when they were in government.

weaponx031277

The problem is that for economic reasons we need to be nice to all these obnoxious regimes. Except when the US tells us to impose sanctions.
Saudi is a big military hardware buyer for the UK and the royal family spend a fortune in the shops and clubs of London.  France has the same problem.  Over the summer the Mediterranean coast is overrun with Saudi princes and their entourage buying luxury goods and spending money to show off.  And its the Saudis who are giving Egypt the money to buy the two formerly Russian warships.

But even tinpot little tyrannies are embraced if there is an economic advantage.  A significant percentage of immigrants crossing the Med. are coming from Eritrea where the president is an evil bugger.  But instead of crapping on him and massively reducing the immigration across the sea, we send envoys from HMG to sniff around for a few relatively insignificant mining contracts.
We need to reset our moral compass and accept that there may be a cost.

js58

Yep Tony Blair personally got a serious fraud corruption investigation dropped into BAE's deal with the Saudis as it wasn't in the nations interest.

I hate the way all parties grovel down with the Saudis. If they didn't have the oil they would have been bombed back to the stone age for supporting all those Islamic terroroist groups along with quite a few other Gulf States.

tapzilla2k

I don't really have anything to add to this discussion right now but I thought I'd mention that there's a really interesting documentary called Bitter Lake (currently on iPlayer) that deals with the West's relationship with the Saudi's and the Middle East:

BBC iPlayer  - Adam Curtis: Bitter Lake (NSFW, strong language and some graphic images of war and terrorism)

It was a bit of an eye-opener for me.

Trollslayer

Not the first or last grubby dealings from Prime Ministers of Tory and Labour stripes to protect the cash flow from the Saudi's.

Saudi Arabia's extreme version of Islam is what's driving Islamic extremism to a big extent. Ironically it might be what topples the Saudi Royal Family from power or they'll be as brutal as Al Saud was when he was carving out the modern Saudi Arabia. If it's true about the Saudi oil fields beginning to produce less oil then things will probably change quite quickly and that will have many ripple effects in the region.

Enki

I think it's estimated there is about thirty years before output drops there.

tapzilla2k

What have Labour got to do with it now, its Autumn 2015 not Summer 2010, plenty of time for the Tories, to apply some British values to weapon selling instead of keep following the money. Some Tories proudly boast " London is the eighth Emirate"!  Can't keep expecting to conduct amoral business  and legitimise such regimes and cry is not cricket, when the next austere wahhabi terrorist comes along.