Khartoum Update: weather, Ovaltine and Cocoa, the UN and Kofi Annan, Margaret Thatcher

It was very sunny and hot when I got here on Friday but now it is overcast and very warm. Reminds me of many days in Malawi all of those years ago! It’s not a problem, just a report!

 

Here is some news for you. I have just been to the shopping mall next to the hotel and can probably EXCLUSIVELY reveal, ie no one else has ever told you this, that they sell Ovaltine and Cadbury’s Cocoa there. Now, that is news isn’t it? I have run out of Marmite but didn’t see any of that, I am sad to report.

 

I am still seething, too, over the UN vehicles. I took some photos of just a few of them this morning: all 4x4s and all pretty clean looking. Well, this afternoon there were more than 30 of those big beasties in the car park. All clean too. Why do they need so many very expensive 4x4s to drive around town? I know someone will write to me and say they are helping in Darfur and in the South of the country ... well, I think they are working more against the country than for it. Moreover, for any doubting Thomases, why are there so many people in so many huge and expensive vehicles here at a five star hotel? Where is the cost conscientiousness? What about the opportunity costs of sitting here at what is probably a huge expense when there are people here who are dying of starvation; people who need these clowns to sort out the mess they are part of? I really don’t like this outfit.

 

I said this before but I will remind you. Apart from having spent 5 years in Malawi in the shadow of these people, I was utterly shocked when Kofi Annan got to Sri Lanka after the tsunami of 2006 and refused to visit victims in the Tamil Tiger area. Where is the humanity in that man, then the Secretary General of the UNITED Nations? Following his retirement from the UN, Annan went on to ensure that the illegally elected “President” of an East African country could stay in power by helping to cobble a deal with the Opposition Party. In the meantime hundreds of ordinary people from that country died in Political riots following that bogus election. What a sham of a man. Then his son surfaced from under a big black cloud of alleged corruption. Rotten from the core as Neil Kinnock prophetically said about Margaret Thatcher’s Administration.

 

Speaking of Margaret Thatcher, I have read a couple of times recently that Thatcher is suffering from mental illness: now that’s not news is it? Thatcher was mentally ill long before she became Prime Minister.

 

End of erudite rant!

 

DW