Looks like there aren't any spitfires buried by Yangon airport after all. The search is now on for miscellaneous crates spotted at various places around Myanmar.
I'd always thought of this, um, effort as a kind of symbolic complement to the Age of Cameron. The bee in some guy's bonnet becomes a means of reclaiming the last golden era of the glorious past, the time of "the Few", before the socialists came along and ruined everything:
The dig got the go ahead after it secured funding from Belarusian video games firm Wargaming.net, and received permission from Burmese President Thein Sein during a meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron last year.
Can you imagine that conversation? Thein Sein's sat there thinking 'Oh right, he wants some kind of cultural symbol back, like those people who show up at the British museum asking to root around in the basement for their ancestors' skulls. How the mighty have fallen'.
But then again as a seruious Buddhist, and the Burmese generals are pretty serious Buddhists, he would have been aware of the personal merit that accrues to those who restore the idols, and indeed to thiose who help them settle their karma in this way.
I think it's more an indication that David Cameron is a schmuck.
Posted by: Alex | January 18, 2013 at 01:00 PM
Blair was a conman; Cameron is a mark.
Posted by: Alex | January 18, 2013 at 01:01 PM
Alex wins the internet.
Posted by: Chris williams | January 18, 2013 at 10:49 PM
Mind you, it is also a symbol of the new virtual age, in the shape of a virtual cargo cult. There's no longer any need for actual crates: just a rumour of crates is enough, and they will come. I'm hoping that the Duke of Edinburgh had something to do with this project: that would've been marvellous.
Posted by: Chris williams | January 19, 2013 at 09:49 PM