.
In a report published last week by the South American business analysis website BN Americas, it was stated that the Falkland Islands has the most expensive mobile data in South America, and the second-most-expensive in the world.

In a run-down of data costs carried out by British price-comparison firm Cable.co.uk over the months of April and May this year, over 5000 mobile data plans were analysed, worldwide.

BN Americas’ focus was on the 1000 or so price plans available in the Caribbean, and Central and South America.

According to Cable, in Central America one gigabyte of mobile data costs, on average, £1.55.* Caribbean prices are significantly higher, at £2.85 on average; but even the Cayman Islands, the most expensive of the group, costs little more than £8.50 per gigabyte.

South America is more expensive again, averaging £3.38 across the region. Prices in Uruguay (22p), Colombia (41p) and Chile (42p) are among the cheapest in the world; but the stats are skewed for the entire continent almost solely because in the Falkland Islands, 1GB of mobile data costs, on average, almost £32. Across the rest of South America, it was considered notable if prices exceeded 83 pence – or US$1 – per gigabyte.

Numbers provided by local monopoly telecoms-provider Sure suggest the cost of mobile data in the Falklands is actually even higher. On a pay-as-you-go SIM, the cost of 1GB of mobile data would be £40, the same as the (£40) medium contract package which includes 1GB of data along with 350 minutes and 70 texts. (Sure were not able to tell us what that data was worth separated from the other items.)

Either way, this makes the Falklands the second-most-expensive mobile data market in the world – only two pounds cheaper per gigabyte than St Helena. These costs are well over double the price paid in the 4^th-placed South Pacific atoll of Tokelau, and 5^th-placed war-torn Yemen. Top-of-the-table Israel charges 3.3 pence per gigabyte, 1000 times less expensive than the Falkland Islands. At 12p per gigabyte, even the remote island nation of Fiji is more than 265 times cheaper.

BN Americas also suggested that 1GB of data should cost the equivalent of 2% of average monthly income – with the additional onus on operators to be charging that same amount for five gigabytes by 2026.

This goal was put forward, last year, by the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) – part of the Web Foundation, and with a membership roster including tech giants, social media platforms, and USAID – which ‘promotes the affordability of mobile broadband in low- and middle-income countries’.

A4AI calls 1GB of affordable mobile data a month an ‘entry’ package – this is in developing nations, NB – and in any case pronounces that ‘a gigabyte of data is not enough’. They call for more affordable access, and ‘public policies focussed on lowering costs.’

According to Cable analyses, several Central American countries had prices lower than the regional average, albeit still exceeding 5% of average incomes nationally. But from Mexico south, nine countries already offer as much as two gigabytes for the benchmark 2% of monthly income, and three nations – Brazil, Peru, and Argentina – offer five. In many countries in the region, 5GB of mobile data costs little or no more than 1.

While many of these are impoverished and/or developing nations, the Falklands is not. According to the 2016 census, the average per capita income was £23,142pa – and so at £38.57 the cost of 1GB of mobile data is more or less (depending whose numbers you use) 2% of average monthly income. But Sure’s biggest available phone package here only extends to 3GB of mobile data, and at £65, costs more like 3.5% of income. 5GB would cost at least £105 (on £65 contract, plus four 500MB data boosters), or almost 5.5%. On pay-as-you-go, it would come to £190, or very nearly 11% of average monthly income.

All of these studies, what’s more, refer only to the simple price of mobile data – not to speeds, coverage, or any other potential measures of data accessibility.

Citing various studies, the Alliance for Affordable Internet argues that greater broadband access could help contribute economically, a 2019 study by the International Telecommunication Union suggesting that a 10% increase in mobile broadband penetration would lead to 1.2% growth in GDP in the Americas.

*all prices converted from US dollars to pounds on Tuesday this week

—
For Falklands Radio

—
For The Critic

—
For Queen Mob’s Tea House

Nowadays, one might think, few would even know that. But that’s where Christopher Andrew – Emeritus Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, and late President of Corpus Christi, Cambridge (Marlowe’s old haunt) – begins his compendious survey, with the story of the twelve Israelite spies sent out by Moses into Canaan, then stricken with plague for coming back with intel that displeased their overlords.

At approx. one word per long, footnoted page, it seems hopeless, almost impertinent, to try to summarise The Secret World: a list of just the ‘firsts’ would take up half this magazine. What’s more, ‘intelligence’ includes a multitude of sins. But pulling together, variously, the threads of deception, subversion, image analysis, psychological operations, covert operations, propaganda, espionage, signals intelligence (Andrew’s chief hobby-horse) and what the KGB called ‘active measures’ (that is, killing) – or, in Clausewitz’s characteristically straightforward wording: ‘every sort of information about the enemy and his country – the basis, in short, of our own plans and operations’ – Andrew’s brightly-coloured tapestry depicts the following:

Egyptian-Hittite diplomatic correspondence (intercepted); the presence of seers in Classical militaries (ridiculous); Caesar’s early use of ‘substitution ciphers’; China’s 2000-year-long insularity; Mauryan India’s enthusiasm for assassination; the formative ‘Secret Stage’ of Islam; the 13th-century internal crusades of Christianity; the commercial intelligence of Renaissance Venice (‘the custodian of the archives was illiterate to prevent his reading their contents’); Ivan the Terrible; the intelligence partnership between Elizabeth I and the ruthless Walsingham; Richelieu’s Cabinet Noir; the original Special Relationship, between the English and the Dutch … [we’re approaching p200 now] … and so on, up to the grotesque return of holy warfare in our own supposedly enlightened era.

This is not simply by way of a completist stratagem. Israeli security services, Andrew points out, take their mottoes – and their remit – from religious scripture. Likewise Sun Tzu, the Indian Arthashastra, and the Hadiths all actively feed into contemporary, real-world conceptions of what intelligence is for, and even how to go about it. Andrew’s avowed intent is ‘to recover some of the lost history of global intelligence over the last three millennia, to show how it modifies current historiography, and to demonstrate its continuing relevance to intelligence in the twenty-first century.’

Straightening out the ‘non-linear’ history of intelligence is one thing: peaks and troughs occur, nations scale back intelligence activities in peacetime, and official secrets legislation hinders research. Few people had heard of Bletchley Park for decades after WWII; and Cold War history to date remains misshapen by the Kremlin’s ability to better keep a secret than the CIA.

But Andrew is determined to correct the ‘long-term historical amnesia’ not only for the purpose of tweedy, collegiate assessment, but also for the sake of ongoing intelligence. Wars, not surprisingly, routinely prove a hasty turning point. But Xenophon suggested it was probably a good idea to give some thought to spies before hostilities (a lesson repeatedly unlearned over the intervening ages) – and yet for most of the hundred years between Waterloo and WWI, Britain essentially had no intelligence infrastructure. It is absurd to have to reflect of Bletchley Park (e.g.), that ‘no other wartime profession was as ignorant of its own past.’ Andrew fairly grinds his teeth at the thought of Allied cryptanalysts busy reinventing the wheel (or many spokes of it), completely unaware their predecessors had helped repel the Armada and defeat Napoleon doing just this sort of work.

‘The value of even the best intelligence,’ of course, ‘is only as great as the use made of it.’ The Secret World, inevitably, contains a litany of ‘intelligence failures’ which are, often as not, in fact broader political ones. The burning of the English fleet in the Medway (no budget); Pearl Harbour (inherent racism); Stalin before Operation Barbarossa (Trotsky mania); the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (missed by CIA; but ill-considered by the KGB). Andrew admits it’s possible to get away with these: at its height, the Roman Empire had so many soldiers that there were essentially no rebellions, and no need for much intelligence. But the same cannot be said of our ‘Forever Wars’.

A lifelong academic, bestseller of intelligence scoops like the Mitrokhin archive, and official historian of MI5 (in which role, if in no other, he is enrolled in the Security Service), Professor Andrew knows whereof he speaks – and, no doubt, from time to time, whereof he must keep silence.

Though not shy to repeat himself to make a point (he laments, as scholars will, that other historians fail to note the vital issues in his field), this magisterial result is highly readable, if barely portable. Needless to say, it’s packed with fascinating characters. And with 200 pages of notes and bibliography that are an absolute trove for the intelligencer (not to mention raw material for several dozen novels), The Secret World looks certain to become a standard reference work for graduate intelligence-type courses, and beyond.

—
For The Oldie

— The Nelson Evening Mail, June 22 1909
.

A six-year-old has become a multimillionaire, reviewing toys on YouTube.

The US has the world’s 2^nd highest prison population, with 693 prisoners per 100,000.

Icelandic sea cucumbers fetch £438 per kilogram.

‘Word up’ means ‘I comprehend what you are saying and verify that your statement is true, my good brother.’

Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel.

Ms Reeva Steenkamp has never been a stripper or a ho.

The hearsomeness of the burger felicitates the whole of the polis.

Gary Ross Dahl invented the pet rock in 1975.

Necrophilia is legal if you don’t know it’s a corpse.

The Worshipful Company of Poulters host an annual inter-livery pancake race.

Matt ‘Toast’ Berry really does do voiceover work, for Absolute Radio.

Everyone is going to paint a portrait of Peter Hitchens, until he likes one.

We need to talk about the real problem with ‘unlikeable’ women.
.

— The Nelson Evening Mail, January 6 1909
.

In LA there is a chess set designed for the East India Company, featuring Sikh soldiers vs Afghans.

Among a certain kind of people, being ‘passionate about Israel/Palestine’ is usually a substitute for having any actual political thought.

During WWII, in Germany, a Django Reinhardt record was worth 2kgs of butter on the black market.

A sailor has a tattoo of a swallow for every 5,000 nautical miles he has travelled.

Sam Lewis Craft has been named the Rain Men Player of the Year.

Alfred the Great of England believed that a thorough grounding in the liberal arts was essential for those called to exercise judgement and authority.

A South Benfleet millionaire has revealed how she earns £1,472/hr.

A town in Iceland has painted 3D zebra crossings in an attempt to slow down speeding cars.

Bobby Kennedy had an affair with Marilyn Monroe, then had her killed by Communists.

Truth is harder to bear than ignorance, and so ignorance is valued more.

Brett Dean’s new opera, Hamlet, contains precisely zero tunes.

The Fuegian word ‘mamihlapintafoi’ means ‘(two people) looking at each other, hoping that either will offer to do something which both parties desire but are unwilling to do’.

In 2017 over half the people living in absolute poverty work for a living.
.

—
For theartsdesk

—
For theartsdesk

—
For theartsdesk