Saturday 3 March 2007

Not big and not clever


So the news for the last day or two has had this story bubbling under the surface. Some Tourists have been kidnapped on the Ethiopia and Eritrean border.

Now the foreign office is mobilising to try and track them down and I guess negotiate for their release.


It is sad that this has happened to fellow citizens, but really, holidaying in a war zone? Do you think they managed to get any holiday insurance?

Is Disneyland or Magaluf really that bad an option in comparison?

14 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:44 pm

    This is an uncharacteristically small-minded post, if I may respectfully say so, 'Slicker.

    If you only go to places for which you can get travel insurance, you will not properly have lived.

    It's good to see HMG doing something worthwhile, for once - i.e. actually looking after its citizens, rather than telling them impertinently how to live.

    At this moment, sadly, I bet the citizens in question wish they were American - or Israeli.

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  2. TP, people may go tothe danger zone if they like. but I don't see why the government should then help them out.

    It was their free choice to go and surely they knew the risks.

    Why should their freedom be my responsibility?

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  3. Anonymous5:26 pm

    These weren't tourists; I suspect they were doing a FO recce or were journalists looking for s story.

    I've been there and while the scenery is utterly fantastic you wouldn't go for a holiday unless you planned on trouble and were looking for it.

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  4. may well be Shot, we'll have to see.

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  5. Anonymous7:17 pm

    Once the government gets NOT to support you in the "danger zone", it also get to decide where that is. It's rather like the NHS deciding which illnesses are your own fault and then not treating you. State medicine therefore equals nationalising, not so much the services, as your body.

    The government is there to serve the people, hard as that may be to imagine with the present bunch.

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  6. I went to Northern Ireland during the Troubles, in a Brit-reg car and drove through Newry two hours after a bombing. county Antrim was also very pretty at that time of year.

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  7. Having worked for a med assistance co as an interpreter [if you have a med emergency abroad and phone the emergency no in your ins policy you think you're calling your ins co but you're not - you're calling people they employ to sort you out medically or repatriate you] I think it's highly unlikely that these tourists got travel insurance, unless they weren't truthful about where they were going and why. That's what all the fuss about travel insurance was about last week, wasn't it? - that policies won't cover you for acts of terrorism, etc., and indeed, why should they? But I agree with tp that a country can't just stand by and do nothing for its nationals in such circumstances and also, if no one went to these places, how would we know what is really going on? Like your other commenter, I think there is more to it, though.

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  8. Well CU lots of perfectly innocent British Muslims were playing beach volley ball and taking snaps in Iraq and Afghanistan. Usually having taken another innocent holdiday in Pakistan, en route.

    I am shocked at the brazen assumtion they were there to shoot at British troops . Shocked , I tell you

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  9. TP, but in the NHS's case they will treat you (at the moment!) for whatever your illness.

    This is different, you decide to go somewhere very dangerous (there is a war on over the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia)and then the Government steps in to save you.

    I just don't see the logic. I do not want the state responsible for me the worldover; just as I do not want to be responsible to the state.

    There are only a few places on earth where there are real border dsiputes that would end in situatiosn like this. If you choose danger, then danger it should be for you.

    I see your point, I think we have different philosophies about the role of the state.

    WC- thanks, yes insurance terms is an issue here, hence my mention of it.

    N - I know, we should resuce and repatriate those caught up in such places when they were on innocent 'training' courses. The sooner we get them home the better, eh?

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  10. Anonymous12:45 pm

    Tom should have been a war correspondent. Part of me years for that kind of excitement, but at the end of the day, I could never deliberately put myself in danger, I have to consider the impact of leaving my family without a mother should the worst happen.

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  11. This reminds me of the Swedish girl who I met on the kibbutz I was staying at in the late 1970's. She explained that her government didn't want Swedes to go to a war zone and there would be no assistance if trouble befell her.

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  12. Anonymous12:51 pm

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