Earlier today, I posted about, amongst other things, Sir Andrew Cahn, chief executive of UK Trade & Investment. The FT had quoted him as saying, that despite the recession, Britain's security exports had a bright future. I hadn't actually put two and two together and worked out the implication of his saying that his organisation had 'doubled their staff' in this area. The Campaign Against the Arms Trade provide quite a lot of help in understanding Sir Andrew: his job is to boost and subsidise these exports. He's taken over the former Ministry of Defence functions around this - well apart from the really dodgy stuff around exports to Saudi Arabia.
Worldmapper offers this image of the value of arms exports in 2003, with countries re-sized to represent their relative importance in the trade overall. Does it look like Britian has an underdeveloped arms sector?
Worldmapper offers this image of the value of arms exports in 2003, with countries re-sized to represent their relative importance in the trade overall. Does it look like Britian has an underdeveloped arms sector?
This recession is turning into a vulgar agit-prop morality tale: the bankers get bailed out, the arms manufacturers get twice as many civil servants to help them and the rest of us wait for the downturn to hit us...
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