Originally Posted by
Ken Scott
Should we end up in another war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands let's hope that the French are on our side then rather than helping get the Super Etendards ready to attack our fleet.
Why should they?
They didn't last time round, despite what some of the press would like us to believe. John Nott described the French as our most important allies in his memoirs (he later qualified this to say that he meant of the the Europeans, but not far behind the US). It may be that one French arms firm 'forgot' about the team of technicians that was there, but the French Secret Service found out, and the directors of the arms company suddenly remembered about the team when President Mitterand personally 'phoned them and politely pointed out that people doing this sort of thing would go to prison (because they were breaking sanctions).
The problem Europeans were the Italians and the Spanish.
Anyway, this story is in the Telegraph, so even if they've got it from the most impeccable sources imagineable, there's probably at least one completely avoidable and spectacular error in there (up alongside the misreporting of Timmo Anderson's lecture last week).