I was rather sickened to read that Mark Thatcher got a suspended sentence and a fine (yes, a six-figure one, but all the same …) for involvement in trying to start off a military coup on Equatorial Guinea. He says he didn’t know that the deal was actually for a coup, thinking he was financing an air ambulance. He’s been out on bail (his Ma, Margaret the ex-Prime Minister, put up the six-figure sum last September, and looks set to pay up this time too).
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\nAm I the only one who fails to find this story of his convincing? If you’re financing an air ambulance, you obviously deal with either a country’s health service, or with a medical insurance company, or a businessman who makes it plain that this is a bit of philanthropy or a bit of charitable PR, or even the head of the medical wing of the military. Didn’t he get the specifications for this helicopter or aircraft?<\/p>\n
The Independent has a lengthy report, The Thatcher Dossier<\/a>, in its current (Friday 14th Jan) edition. The authors observed that “a banner hanging from a building opposite [Cape Town High Court] read ‘Save Me, Mummy’, while a small group of protestors standing at the entrance shouted: ‘Shame, shame, shame'”. (It looks like Maggie won’t put up the “large splodge of wonga (cash)<\/a>” his buddy said he’d need to get out of jail in Zimbabwe, though.) The article also notes that Thatcher has a long history of shady deals.<\/p>\n See also an article by George Monbiot, Adventure Playground<\/a>, which discusses the attitudes of some of Thatcher’s upper-class chums towards Africa and its people:<\/p>\n