To Chagos or not to chagos?

 Well it seems Labour is destined to give Mauritius £18Bn to take the Chagos islands off the UK's hands

The 280 Chagos  natives of the islands were removed by the British back around 1970.  The compensation they received was £650k (£2,321 each at the time).   In today's money that would be £31,000 each although the average price for house in the UK in 1970 was £4,163 so the adjustment is closer to £125,000 in today's money.  The average Mauritian earns £4,200 per year so roughly they were given 10 years wages as compensation. It's possible to buy a nice house in Mauritius for £34,000 today so they certainly could have back in 1970.

Given Mauritius never owned the Chagos islands, it is far from clear why the UK "should give them back" and indeed pay £18Bn "compensation".  The Chagos islands were a French colony that got bundled up with Mauritius for administrative purposes.  The Chagos natives speak a French creole which is different to the Mauritian Creole.

The whole rationale for the UK surrendering the islands is because in 2019 the International Court of Justice delivered an "advisory opinion" that the islands were not consenually obtained  - true - but the inhabitants were compensated.  There are now 1,500 descendants and many of the original 280 are probably dead.  

Starmer, as a supposed lawyer, would know this is not binding.  Assuming the UK was defending the legal case could appeal etc. But no!  It's switched to let's surrender them and give Mauritius £18Bn !!

So if there is a need for additional compensation then £18Bn distributed across 1,500 descendants (who have never lived on these islands) would be  £12M each. In reality they wont get a penny - it will go straight into the pockets of the Mauritian government.  

There are lots of islands.  A simple solution would be to allow the descendants to declare the islands a separate country and reside on the islands. Although the question who has title to the land is a big question since Britain "bought it". Anyway  Britain would be granted a 1,000 year lease on Diago Garcia for the airbase.  

Problem solved.


=============================

23rd May 2025 - the deal has been signed.

Well Stupid Starmer has now signed the deal.  We have given Mauritius the Chagos Island for free and have to pay them £101M per year for 99 years.  Or so we are told.

However Starmer clearly failed basic maths because he says the cost of the deal is £3.4 Billion (for something we already owned).  Doing simple maths that's £101M x 99 years = £10Billion ??

However this is not the real numbers:

-  We will pay £165m a year for the first three years;

- then pay £120m for years four to 13;

- then pay £120m plus inflation for every year after to year 99;

- £40m as a one-off to a fund for Chagossians;

- £45m a year for 25 years for Mauritian development.

If we assume that inflation is 3% for years 14 to 99 then by year 99 we will be paying £1.5Billion per year to Mauritius.  The total deal is costing nearly £50Billion......

Starmer you moron - can't you do maths?








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trust - country first, party second - Labour's lies and dishonesty

 I would say trust is probably the number one thing in a successful marriage/relationship. This year we ended up in a new relationship with the Labour government - OK it felt like an arranged marriage but nevertheless it was a fixed term union of the people and Labour. Killjoy Starmer started off on the 5th July 2024 saying positive things about this marriage.  Here's some extract from  Killjoy's wedding vows:      "Country first, party second"      "When the gap between the sacrifices made by people and the service they receive from politicians grows this big, it leads to a weariness in the heart of a nation, a draining away of the hope, the spirit, the belief in a better future" [this was aimed at the outgoing Conservatives - not the weariness that Killjoy is inflicting upon us.]           "Now this wound, this lack of trust, can only be healed by actions, not words."      "I know that, but we ca...
Read more

Les miserables - Labour's misery

 If I cast my mind back to 1997, Tony Blair entered government to  fanfare of positivity.  His adopted anthem of D:Ream Things Can Only Get Better echoing through the corridors of power. Tony was always positive, smiling.  I can't say I remember him fondly.  I'm still spitting feathers over Tony's then Chancellor Gordon Brown stealing £60k from my pension claiming I was the subject to pensions windfall tax for holding BT shares - annoying as BT was our biggest customer hence the company pension fund bought into BT.  Still at least Tony was smiling when he stole it from me.  Not once did he call me greedy. Anyway - the general population was upbeat despite Robin Hood Blair stealing from the not so rich and giving it to his Labour buddies (cronies nowadays). We genuinely believed things could get better. Then Miserable Brown came to power from Grinning Blair. He was always miserable.  Then things got worse as he trashed the economy.  We all bec...
Read more

Landlord EPC's part 2

Following on from the previous blog about the stupidity of  Labours EPC #C plans , I thought I would do a little more digging into EPCs. To start with I thought about doing an EPC assessor course. Prices are about £1,000+VAT for an on-line (not taught) course.  Pretty steep. I also looked into whether there's an on-line points calculator - the problem is you have to take the EPC report  as gospel and can't challenge it. If you do a quick search on-line you find horror stories where a property was C.  Then the EPC expired requiring a new EPC and the new assessor scored the property "D" - WORSE !!! The problem is EPC scoring is not transparent - you are in the hands of someone that did an on-line course for 3 days.  Has not got a degree in building science and will guess or assume the worst. The EPC assessors must think we are stupid and won't ask questions.... So in short who knows what the real EPCs of my buildings are. You can't discuss things with an EPC ass...
Read more