Does Great Britain really exhaust natural resources?

In a rather twenty-first century form of expression, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has launched a youtube video thanking her Uruguayan counterpart for banning a British vessel from Montevideo’s port on Monday.

HMS Gloucester, heading for The Falkland Islands, was due to stop in at the Uruguayan Capital for supplies after sailing from Rio de Janeiro in neighbouring Brazil.

Uruguayan President José Mujica however, felt it necessary to call the Brit Ambassador to, well pretty much tell the Gloucester to bugger off. You needn’t worry sailors. You’ve missed no navy-like night of early-hours, ravishing entertainment in Montevideo. It is, if not the world’s, easily the continent’s most mind numbingly boring capital city, where a Saturday night sees you sitting alone in a downtown bar staring out into deserted streets and wishing you were back across the River Plate in the twenty-first century home of CFK and her youtube.

Uruguay cited its close economic, cultural and touristic ties with Argentina and the ‘very delicate Malvinas issue’.

While in CFK’s youtube broadcast to President José Mujica she said, ‘I read somewhere that you had told United Kingdom Ambassador that you wished to preserve your relationship with Argentina, and that is why I believe this is some sort of joint defence from our region, because we know they are coming to exhaust our natural resources. They may come for the oil, then they may come for the fishery. They are after Argentina for now and they may be after Uruguay tomorrow, if they feel they are lacking something up there.’ 

She went on to say, ‘I appreciate the eternal solidarity Uruguay has shown towards the Malvinas issue, for this is a question that belongs to the whole of South America.’

One might say that she went a little overboard.

The UK government has said that ‘it respects the Uruguayan right to withdraw clearance on the Royal Navy HMS Gloucester vessel to access Montevideo's port on its way to Malvinas Islands.’