Nice One, Gordon
I’ve just received a press release from my friend at Campaign Against the Arms Trade welcoming the British government’s closure of DESO, which can only be a good thing. Read the press release here and the PM’s announcement here.
Military exports account for 2% of British exports, but DESO, the Defence Export Service Organisation, still got a budget thirteen times the size of the organisation that dealt with trade in stuff that, you know, wasn’t designed to kill people.
Better late than never, I suppose.
Shame that the announcement comes hot on the heels of the government telling us it’s spending 3.8 billion on aircraft carriers. Still, at least we’re not selling them to governments who can’t afford them and who’d use them to oppress weaker nations, or something. Also, it means one hell of a lot of new jobs in some very deprived areas of Scotland. I wish these things were more black and white.