Brits marooned in Sinai

[Icarus]

The British authorities have placed a "hold" on all flights out of that vacation Holiday spot at the northern end of the Red Sea/southern most tip of the Sinai. That is a popular tourist venue for Brits. There are said to be as many as 20,000 of them there. It seems that air fares and five day hotel accommodations are available for 299 pounds thus the popularity of the beautiful beach resort. At the moment all the tourists have a real dilemma.

All this is, of course, related to the mysterious disaster of the Russian airplane on its' way back to St. Petersburg. The area ISIS has claimed responsibility for the apparent high altitude explosion. ISIS says that it is payback for Russian military presence in Syria. The Russians are very angry in a dangerously Russian sort of way. Napolean, Hitler, and several others learned, the hard way, to avoid pissing off the Russian Bear. This has the potential to become a serious problem. 

[Ecurb Noselrub]

So, Cameron doesn't want his people in the air, so he maroons them in the Sinai??  Seems a bit daft to me.  Now they are sitting ducks. If you give in to fear, terrorist win. 

[OldGit]

Seems the snoopers have picked up some conversations suggesting that ISIS (or whoever) got a bomb on the plane separately from the luggage.  The UK is sending a fleet of aircraft to pick up the stranded holidaymakers and their cabin luggage only.  The holds will be sealed and no ground staff will be allowed near them.  The big luggage will be brought back separately by the RAF.

Cameron doesn't want his people in the air, so he maroons them in the Sinai??  Seems a bit daft to me.  Now they are sitting ducks

The resort is supposedly guarded with a 'ring of iron'.  We shall see.

[Tank]

My daughters aunty-in-law is due to go out there in a couple of weeks. I'd pity the ISIS guy that tried to lay hands on her!

[Tank]

On the Russian issue Putin couldn't have asked for a better excuse to ship loads of troops into Syria and Northern Iraq.

[Icarus]

I'd be happy to have Putin and his military invade Syria, and Iraq and let us get the hell out of there.  The problem is that Russia can not afford much of that kind of thing.  Their economy is in the toilet and oil and gas prices are depressed.   

Even the Saudis are having fiscal problems because of the depressed petroleum prices. A whole gaggle of governments that were riding the prosperity cycle caused by previous crude prices are tapping into their sovereign wealth funds to make ends meet.  That is to say that they are selling off some of the assets that they have owned in other countries.  Because there are serious sell offs going on, the demand for financial assets has diminished along with the selling prices for those assets.  Russia is at or near the most precarious position of all the petro nations.

[OldGit]

Yesterday only 8 of the many planned "rescue" flights were allowed to land, so a lot of Brits are still stranded there.  Now Russia has banned all flights to Egypt and I believe some other countries have followed.  Oh, shit!