Awol

Yep, my fault!

No one is saying give the Falklands to the Argentinians so they can turn it into Nuevo Buenos Aires, rather come to an agreement whereby oil & gas revenues are split between the Falklands & Argentinians. That afterall is whats it all about really, with a settlement t Everyone wins. Already been done but the Argies tore up the profit sharing agreement in 2007. If they weren't such petulant children they could have built the infrastructure in Argentina to refine the crude and made a packet on that too, but no. **** them, they don't deserve anything.

By law the resources belong to the Crown, i.e. us. If shale gas really has the potential they think then bringing in private companies to make a bomb instead of using direct public investment into a national entity is mad. Like the Falklands situation really.

IF they reopen at all. Plenty of rumours that they may simply go straight into administration to preserve the existing capital. The new owner may have the initials VP, which is nice.

Corcaigh, maybe you didn't get the memo but the Troubles are over. You can unload that Republican chip off your shoulder and chill out now.

Don't think so, it had been out of service since 2004 and was being used for spare parts. Maybe some bright spark borrowed the plug?

The Argie navy is so knackered it would be akin to beating up a small blind child, in a wheelchair. I'm not kidding either, things are so bad that their flagship the ARA Santísima Trinidad sank at it's moorings in January through want of maintenance.

So doing the wrong thing in one place invalidates doing the right thing elsewhere? Meh. Don't feel too bad about it, it's the USAF's main base in the Indian Ocean - with barely a tea swilling Brit in sight.

You weren't hallucinating, squaddies and other gov employees in Cyprus will be covered by UK PLC. The other 60,000 ex-pats will just have to suck it up. That said it's seemingly all changing by the minute and I don't think they'll get the vote through Parliament later.

Short term the Government will be shut out of capital markets, leave the euro and revert to the Cyprus £ - which was stronger than GBP before they joined the euro. The value of Cyprus Pounds would be significantly lower than the current euro (reflecting the country's economic weakness) and imports would be more expensive. The flip side of that is Cyprus instantly becoming the cheapest holiday destination in Europe and if Iceland's experience is anything to go by they would soon be on the road to a real economic recovery. They would control their own currency which would float at a level suitable for the national economy and (big bonus) could also put their worst offending bankers in jail.. Longer term Cyprus has gas reserves to be exploited that will make the island very rich indeed, but for 18 months to 2 years it would be tough. The alternative is permanent dependence on the EU and being drip fed life support from Brussels/Berlin while the people are slowly reduced to penury - I call that the Goldman Sachs Model. The consequences for the EU however would be significant. Although Cyprus is only 0.2% of the EU economy, it would demonstrate that the single currency is reversible. That in turn would hit investor confidence in the survivability of the euro as a currency and the eurozone more broadly. Why? Should Cyprus leave then would the people of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy continue to accept the grinding austerity that is destroying their countries, or think "sod this, if Cyprus can do it so can we"? The danger then is that the whole EZ (and with it the EU as currently formed) would begin to unravel. Seen from Brussels the existential danger is a country leaving the euro/EU and making a success of that exit.

Well the Telegraph live blog is saying that el presidente doesn't have the votes to get the measures through the Cypriot Parliament so this may all be academic anyway. The alternatives are default and a quick fire exit from the euro then the EU, and/or the Russian navy acquiring a nice warm water port when Gazprom buys a new island. This whole thing is a f'ck up of epic proportions and all over 10 billion euros, chicken feed in EU bailout terms. To top it all these banks are in debt because they invested massively in Greek government bonds... Doh!

Hoping that this is a hypothetical situation and not about to happen to you.. The current plan (still to be signed off) is to lift 4,387.5 euros from your account (based on 6.75% of total deposit) sometime between now and Thursday. This will be given along with lots of other people's savings to creditors of a Cyprus bank. Most probably these will be other banks. The European Central Bank will then lend a further 10 billion euros to Cyprus which will be used to recapitalise their banks, putting Cyprus a further 10 billion in debt. Hopefully someone will correct me if I've got that wrong, but I think that's the genius plan cooked up in Brussels. I read it was everything, even pension funds. Sorry, can't provide link it was hours ago. EDIT: Quoting mongness

Quelle surprise. You've got to be a pretty special kind of person to think stealing from the Russian Mafia is a good idea, being a politican won't save you.

Interesting! The under sea gas fields between Cyprus and Israel are thought to be huge, would make sense for Russia to want control of them otherwise they'd loose their stranglehold on energy supplies to central Europe.. Cyprus can't take that deal without leaving the EU though, no way it would be accepted in Berlin.

Tony they cannot access their accounts at all electronically or otherwise until the government unblocks the banking system - presumably to be done after they've finished looting their people's savings. If I had money in the banks of one of those countries I'd be thinking the same. One consisent feature of the EZ crisis is outright denial that something could or would happen, right up to the minute that it does. Three weeks ago the current leader of Cyprus was saying this very event was unthinkable, but now those irritating elections are out of the way the pan-European bankster-politco alliance can resume their war against the people. I took Tony's scenario to be the same as your ATM one. That is, assuming you had transferred all funds out of Cyprus in that window between the deal and the system shutdown, you'd be liable for the % of what was there? That said, the only people likely to have done that are politicians and bankers. Right, sorry. They've confirmed that in that scenario people would still be liable, that said it appears to be changing all the time. Rueters now saying (no link, on telebox) that they may raise the bar for confiscation of funds to accounts with 100,000 euros and above on deposit. Maybe the grown ups have told the children in Brussels that starting a revolution would be bad for business? Even if true it doesn't change the fact it's still daylight robbery though.

Tony they cannot access their accounts at all electronically or otherwise until the government unblocks the banking system - presumably to be done after they've finished looting their people's savings. If I had money in the banks of one of those countries I'd be thinking the same. One consisent feature of the EZ crisis is outright denial that something could or would happen, right up to the minute that it does. Three weeks ago the current leader of Cyprus was saying this very event was unthinkable, but now those irritating elections are out of the way the pan-European bankster-politco alliance can resume their war against the people.

So will people be unable to access funds until then or is it just to stop scenes of people queueing outside banks? They can't access their accounts at all until then - assuming the date doesn't get pushed out further. See above. Those who managed to get some money out of an ATM before they ran dry (to try and reduce their balance and therefore liability) won't benefit either, the set % theft of their money will apply to the account balance at the time the deal was struck in Brussels.

The Cypriot Parliament seems to be getting the jitters (probably imagining themselves dangling from lamp posts) and they've pushed out the decision for another 24 hours. That means the banks are shut for another day and the level of panic/anger/frustration will keep building in the general public. If even if they decide not to do it now the confidence of people will be buggered. Up to now all bank deposits up to 100,000 euro in any EZ bank were guaranteed by law. The fact that a government has considered stealing money from the private accounts of an entire nation is a game changer because it demonstrates that when it comes to saving the euro the rule of law no longer applies, there are no lines that won't be crossed. The alternative to the bailout scenario is Cypriot default and exit from the single currency, something that will not be allowed regardless of the consequences. A very smart man called John Locke said: That's the EU today, in a nutshell. EDIT: Cypriot Central Bank just announced the banks will remain closed until Thursday..

Hope not. The bad stuff the journos were up to (phone hacking etc) was already illegal so doesn't require new laws, just enforcement of those that already exist. Perhaps that would be easier if the Police weren't quite so corrupt, but if they were cleaned out/up properly that might have a more beneficial effective more generally than ending the freedom of the press - which is what statutory regulation effectively means.

Ladies and gents, we have a winner.

Facing Bailout Tax, Cypriots Try to Get Cash Out of Banks

We had penguins in Dhekelia.

Surprised this hasn't already been posted so here's a new thread for it. Pretty incredible situation unfolding in Cyprus this weekend. It is the latest country to require a bailout to prop up it's banking sector, which has combined balance sheets eight times the size of the Island's economy. The EU have agreed to give them a 10 billion Euro bailout, on the basis that they implement a "tax" on all Cypriot bank accounts amounting to 6.7% on accounts containing less than 100,000 and 9.9% and accounts with more than 100,000 euros. In the EZ bank deposits are protected from this action by law so they've got around that by calling it a "tax" instead. The Cypriot Parliament have to approve the measure on Monday (a bank holiday) and in the meantime controls have been put in place to stop savers emptying their accounts physically or electronically - this vast theft is due to take place first thing Tuesday morning. In return for this state sponsored looting savers will get shareholdings in insolvent banks that will probably be utterly worthless within hours. The EU proposal is incredible, basically stealing the savings of ordinary people in a bank raid that has no more legitimacy than walking through the front door wearing a balaclava and waving a sawn off. Despite the now customary denials of possible contagion by EU officials (perhaps 'financial terrorists' is more accurate) it also sets a precedent for what might happen in the other Med countries that are financially screwed at the moment. If this goes ahead (and it looks like it will) you'd expect that 1) there will be a bank run on Tuesday so big that all financial institutions in Cyprus will simply collapse, 2) the riots that follow will be epic, and 3) 1 & 2 would likely lead to a similar problem cascading beyond Cyprus into other EZ countries. Innstead of the now established practice of channelling tax payers money to big banks through governments, the plan now seems to be cutting out the middleman and taking cash from the public directly. This could get very messy, very quickly.. link

According to this from 2012 link: What goes north after that over and above the costs of local defence spending seems less certain.

That 75 million is the cost of D e f e n c e. It is not spent on the Islanders themselves. The UK does not subsidise the Falklands Government, it simply provides for defence and foreign policy. Incidentally they also have full employment so probably have little need for welfare anyway. No, but I've laid out the reasons why so often and so clearly that you simply cannot have missed them. Therefore this must be a wind up and I'll just leave it there, particularly as you refuse to answer any questions yourself.