Last Saturday I felt in need of a morale boost so I quietly annexed a rather expensive box of dried figs from the larder which someone had brought as a prezzie. I did this without upsetting anyone in the house and without my wife even noticing! These two elements are essential for any successful annexation:<\/p>\n
This is of course much like recent events in the Crimea\u2026 Russia held a slightly lopsided referendum to show everyone that the locals wanted to be annexed, and then they invaded knowing that no one would be able to stop them. In the West, we wagged our fingers and said \u2018naughty \u2013 naughty\u2019, postponed a lunch party for G8 members and temporarily stopped some cash-rich oligarchs from shopping at Harrods and obtaining centre court tickets for Wimbledon. Of course, this leniency is all because Russia has lots of valuable gas and stuff that Europe looks at with envious eyes.<\/p>\n
I suppose it\u2019s a bit like the rich school bully whose parents have a 120 inch home cinema and a lovely swimming pool. Yes, he\u2019s nasty and picks fights on smaller neighbours but he knows we\u2019ll all be nice to him again after a few days, because we all want to go for a dip in his private pool and watch Gravity<\/em> on the huge telly. This isn\u2019t the first annexation in history and it certainly won\u2019t be the last. Over the years, some countries have got away with it and some have not\u2014all depending upon who\u2019s annexed what from whom and from where in the world the annexing\u2019s being viewed. However, there\u2019s one word to describe \u2018annexation\u2019 and that\u2019s \u2018stealing\u2019\u2014in other words taking something that isn\u2019t yours.<\/p>\n Rather than a paltry box of figs, I suppose I could have tried to annex something of greater value such as my garage\u2019s newest Mercedes, but that would be straightforward \u2018theft\u2019 and I should be locked up. Besides, such blatant stealing is morally indefensible and not the right way for anyone to behave.<\/p>\n But sometimes it gets more difficult to say with certainty what\u2019s right and what\u2019s wrong. For example, you go to a party and secretly stuff a carrier bag with loads of sausage rolls and sat\u00e9 chicken to take home afterwards. I don\u2019t think I\u2019d benefit from much local support if I was spotted shiftily hiding behind a potted palm with an empty Tesco bag. However, no one might ever know. In which case would this count as annexation or liberation or grubby petty theft?<\/p>\n I admit it\u2019s unlikely, but just imagine that France spent zillions of propaganda euros over a long time to finally convince the Channel Islands they\u2019d be better off leaving the UK and becoming part of France\u2026 Assuming they held a snap election to demonstrate a majority of local approval, could France then legitimately take over Guernsey Harbour? Would this be theft, \u2018scullduggery\u2019 or legal annexation? And no doubt the same annexing argument could also apply to Spain and Gibraltar or even Argentina and the Falkland Islands? What about England making a move for Peebles and Jedburgh from a newly independent Scotland who don\u2019t want (and can\u2019t pay for) all of their border territories? Or Norway quietly liberating the Shetland Isles and perhaps even West Dorset annexing Weymouth and Portland? All these possibilities have some degree of logic and will all generate exceedingly forthright nationalistic views.<\/p>\n Nobody wants to go to war any longer over territorial disputes (good thing too!), so I can see more boundary arguments being solved by common sense and mutually agreed swapping or \u2018shared common annexation\u2019. I reckon the next fifty years will see quite a bit of such convenient chopping and changing throughout the world. That\u2019s how the Crimea will end up of course\u2026 pragmatism will rule. Possibly this won\u2019t apply however to Weymouth and Portland who I hear might all follow UKIP and become an independent nation. Joke. Well, not quite yet anyway\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last Saturday I felt in need of a morale boost so I quietly annexed a rather expensive box of dried figs from the larder which someone had brought as a prezzie. I did this without upsetting anyone in the house and without my wife even noticing! These two elements are essential for any successful annexation: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-1955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-laterally-speaking","tag-humphrey-walwyn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}