Absurdities of our time

Following several storms in the UK, and some really awful images of water pouring through a house in Wales, I see in The Guardian that "more than 11,000 homes in England to be built on land at high risk of flooding." If there's a buck to be made, short-term, that is, there the UK government is to be found. We desperately need some long-term planning, and some strict rules to make sure that government employees cannot earn money elsewhere and have to declare their wealth before and after office, and justify the difference between them. We need big inheritance and wealth taxes to redistribute wealth and stop the obscene plunder that accompanies all these horrible decisions.

The previous Prime Minister, Theresa May, took the UK to war with Syria. As a national policy decision it was immoral and futile. However, her husband, Philip, essentially acted as the unofficial advisor to the Prime Minister while being a Senior Executive at a £1.4Tn investment firm.

The fact that Philip May is both a Senior Executive of a hugely powerful investment firm, and was privy to reams of insider information from the Prime Minister – knowledge which, when it becomes public, hugely affects the share prices of the companies his firm invests in – made Mr May’s official employment a staggering conflict of interest for the husband of a sitting Prime Minister.

Philip May is a Senior Executive of Capital Group, an Investment Firm which buys shares in all sorts of companies across the globe – including thousands of shares in the world’s biggest Defence Firm, Lockheed Martin. Philip May’s Capital Group owned more than 7% of Lockheed Martin in March 2018 – a stake said to be worth more than £7Bn at this time. His Capital Group is the largest Shareholder in BAE. Shares soared with the Syrian airstrikes, following the so-called chemical attack on the city of Douma, now shown to be false and reported at the time as in all probability false by Robert Fisk of The Independent. Those airstrikes saw the debut of a new type of Cruise Missile, the JASSM (each cost more than $1 million), produced exclusively by the Lockheed Martin Corporation. US President Donald Trump  tweeted that the weapons being fired on Syria would be “nice and new and 'smart'!”

The share price of Lockheed Martin soared and Philip May's firm made a fortune.