A Fact Sheet from Mrs Queen.

[Who2]

Mrs Queens people in the FCO have kindly sent me a fact sheet regarding Egypt.
No mention of how much us holiday makers spend here a bit 'fiscal I thought.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... _Egypt.pdf

Ps: Iv'e no idea what a 'fiscal is and cannot be bothered to find out....

[newcastle]

What struck me was that, although the regime has been trumpeting recently the rise in GDP, a more relevant figure - GDP per capita - puts Egypt on a par with Congo, Laos and Papua New Guinea.

Another relevant figure, not mentioned here, is that poverty in Egypt has now reached 33% - one in three of the population!

[Hafiz]

Papua is close to a failed state in terms of law and order, seperatism corruption and sovereign debt - sounds like someone else I know.

The Australian plan B for PNG is 5,000 troops and the same number of cops, 10 years and $US50 billion, a rerun of our 10 year 'intervention' in the god forsaken Solomons which cost $US10 billion.Other pacific island states are failing and this has nothing to do with climate change although they beg for dollars under that heading for everything.

Maybe when the latest IMF/World Bank plan fails there will be an occupation by debtors as in the 1880's.

Like other failing states the communist party of China is more than sniffing around with the standard offerings - bribes and debt its certain can't be repaved - very Egyptian.

The northern island chain of Bouganville is voting to separate from PNG this weekend after a 20 year civil war that killed 20,000 as it negotiates a too good to be true deal with China. To describe the putative Bouganville leaders as was criminals would be a great disservice to the generality of war criminals. Very Egyptian if you follow the rhetoric of the western left and keep an eye on the International Criminal Court and Sisi's granting of diplomatic immunity to scores of Egyptian military and politicians.

A standard view is that PNG was given independence in 1975 under UN pressure but much too early for a country with hundreds of language and tribal groups and a taste for human flesh. We caved in to the paragons of virtue in the UN - always Nordics with no experience of aid to backward countries and whose experience of war was either silence of collaboration - even under the UN in Korea. The standard left/center view is that we should have stayed on another 10 years. Giving Egypt independence in the 20's was a bit like giving an angry, infantile teenager control of the house.