Nicholas Laughlin's blog etc.

So England is going to Zimbabwe for the World Cup after all. Agree or disagree with the decision, but get your facts right, unlike the writer of this letter printed in today's Gleaner:

Is it not hypocrisy when the Prime Ministers of Australia, Great Britain and New Zealand want to boycott cricket World Cup games to be played in Zimbabwe, supposedly because Mr. Mugabe is not behaving himself?

But is Mr. Mugabe not a good student of his former colonial masters? He is simply doing what the colonial masters did many, many years ago; they went into Zimbabwe and without a please or a thank you took away the people's land and gave it to Caucasians. Now that was not cricket. Mr. Mugabe, having studied them very carefully, has now updated the system and has taken back the land and has evidently distributed it to his cronies.

When the British finally gave up their interest in Zimbabwe, did they ever think of righting the wrong they had done?... To my mind if the present owners of the land had only done the moral thing and negotiated with the government a solution could have been found. More than likely they could have given a part of the land back to the people and they should also have helped them in establishing farms and teaching them new methods of agriculture. This would have been the moral thing to do, but in this modern world where is morality?

For the record: it's not the land "reform" question that prompted the idea of boycott; it is the fact that Robert Mugabe is deliberately starving half his people.