Saudi embassy murder in Istanbul

[life on mars]

Here we go Saudi in at 23

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...United_Kingdom

The first two are very intresting EU or Non Eu .

[AlwaysAway2]

For national security reasons the true trade totals with Saudi are not disclosed.
The BBC go light on this stuff because they are conflicted badly. They are funded by a government approved taxation system known as the licence fee.

While I want to highlight that some parts and people in the BBC do a brilliant job of investigative journalism. I suspect they are censored too.

[cyril evans awaydays]

For national security reasons the true trade totals with Saudi are not disclosed.
The BBC go light on this stuff because they are conflicted badly. They are funded by a government approved taxation system known as the licence fee.

While I want to highlight that some parts and people in the BBC do a brilliant job of investigative journalism. I suspect they are censored too.

That's not correct either though is it. All exports are recorded, though some are likely to be classified so that their identity is not transparent (eg aircraft exports could be civil or military). The attached official government website trumpeting the value of arms sales to our economyy shows that the UK exported around £4.3b worth of arms worldwide in 2016 of which 58% went to the Middle East as a whole (so about £2.5b). Orders of around £5.9b worldwide were placed in that year.

https://www.gov.uk/government/public...stics-for-2016

The average export figures for 1999-2016 are on the interactive map of the ONS official website attached. Though there are more up to date figures for 2017 which I quoted yesterday.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindus...ith/2017-02-21

So the total contributions of our arms exports worldwide is still less than our annual exports to Sweden!

There are significant issues around how we engage with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Russia given their treatment of dissenters but lets not get how important these countries are to our economic well being out of proportion when making comparisons with Brexit.

[AlwaysAway2]

That's not correct either though is it. All exports are recorded, though some are likely to be classified so that their identity is not transparent (eg aircraft exports could be civil or military). The attached official government website trumpeting the value of arms sales to our economyy shows that the UK exported around £4.3b worth of arms worldwide in 2016 of which 58% went to the Middle East as a whole (so about £2.5b). Orders of around £5.9b worldwide were placed in that year.

https://www.gov.uk/government/public...stics-for-2016

The average export figures for 1999-2016 are on the interactive map of the ONS official website attached. Though there are more up to date figures for 2017 which I quoted yesterday.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindus...ith/2017-02-21

So the total contributions of our arms exports worldwide is still less than our annual exports to Sweden!

There are significant issues around how we engage with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Russia given their treatment of dissenters but lets not get how important these countries are to our economic well being out of proportion when making comparisons with Brexit.

FAIR PLAY on that.

You are well informed and I certainly bow to your greater knowledge on this.

[AlwaysAway2]

Liam Fox can’t go to Riyadh

If you are right and our trade is not that important. Severe sanctions must follow surely.

We are so weak on Sanctions. They are also a dangerous weapon.

The reason our banks and major companies are being cyber attacked is the simple Russian response to our Sanctions.
Fair play to them I suggest. We feck about with them and their economy and they feck about with ours.

Interesting new warfare.

[cyril evans awaydays]

Liam Fox can’t go to Riyadh

If you are right and our trade is not that important. Severe sanctions must follow surely.

We are so weak on Sanctions. They are also a dangerous weapon.

The reason our banks and major companies are being cyber attacked is the simple Russian response to our Sanctions.
Fair play to them I suggest. We feck about with them and their economy and they feck about with ours.

Interesting new warfare.

Don't get me wrong I think that the trade is important and is likely to be more so if the stated aim is to build new and grow existing trading relationships as we focus away from the European Union. In some ways this might weaken the UK's response given its aims for the future and the amount of investment the Saudi's make in London's financial and property markets.