A classic!
We will never leran it, will we?
A good old guy from Eaton feels compelled to inform his own government, that he is going out there to overthrow someone elses government (Equatorial Guinea's to be precise) because he thinks, there is some money to be made there. Next we are going to re-found the East-Indian Company, back them with a nice mercenarry army and send them out rebuilding the Empire!

And the most revealing point is that the government first denied anything in this direction!
"No we had absolutely no knowledge of any kind of involvement of British citizens in the coup etats at all. No never, exept, well we did sort of, eh ... well, we got a letter - but we didn't read it, we thought the content might be a bit too unconveniant to know about."
Lying and decieving is what this government is best at and they get away with it! Ok the opposition isn't any better, after all Mr Thatcher didn't only know about the coup, apparently - and at the moment he has still to be seen as innocent - he even planned it. And for some reason I can't believe the Torry-leadership didn't know about it.
'Well, ok the son of our former and still celebrated leader, planned to overthrow an African government, but obviously we wouldn't know about it!'

When are we going to realise that the days of the Empire are gone? Everyboddy seems so desperate to return to the good old days. Have you forgotten what the bloody thing had cost in the end? Retaking Iraq - with others to follow - , overthrowing african governments (And it is really embarasing that, if they knew about it, why didn't they inform the Guinean government?) I really feel like a bad throw back into 18th century politics.
Hasn't anything changed? Wasn't there some kind of acceptance that each country is sovereign and engages in its own affairs without others messing it up? Well apparently not.

I think Germany and France should invade Saudi Arabia to bring them democracy! After all they are brutally suppressing their people, oh and they don't take enough meassures to fight terrorism. And as Blair mentioned quite nicely, every country can take on another country if global security is threatened and Saudi Arabia clearly threatens the world (our interests). And maybe then the US and UK will wake up to which policies they are promoting at the moment.