We should all be grateful to Putin

In life sometimes not getting what you want turns out best for your interests. Many years ago I knew a Yank banker, George, who worked for a major US bank in London who was trying to put together a very big loan for a US corporate. We were having lunch one Sunday at his very posh flat by Marble Arch. He kept on dashing out to take phone calls related to this loan. The last time he came back crestfallen and said the loan was dead as Onassis has just pulled out of the deal. He reckoned that would cost him a lot of bonus money. We left soon after.

The company he was going to lend to was Penn Central railroad and two days later it went bust and defaulted on its loans. Onassis actually saved George’s career!

I opine Putin is our Onassis. He stopped us getting involved in Syria saving us money, material and most important the lives of our young men. We could do any good in Syria which is in a state of civil war. Preening politicians like Clegg who want to have ‘clout’ – a Russian term – a want to walk tall on the world stage get other people’s sons and daughters killed whilst they stay safe in Brussels

As David Starkey pointed out  freeing France from German rule in 1944 got us nothing but the undying hatred of the French. I remember one Eurocrat around 1980 telling me France had been liberated by the Free French forces. Incredible! The only thing they did was to march up the Champs Elysee after Paris had been liberated by the Yanks and British Commonwealth forces. When De Gaulle was having one of his many delusions of grandeur, left NATO, and demanded all US troops should be withdrawn from the sacred soil of  France the US Secretary of State simply asked what do we do about the ones in the cemetries?

Farage was right to point out the good aspects of Putin’s actions. The claim that Putin could have stopped the civil war in Syria with a single telephone call to Assad is a LibConLab fantasy that shows how out of touch Clegg, Cameron & Ashdown are.