My Blog friend Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections has posted a detailed write up about the recently concluded CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting). I urge my readers to read his very interesting post.
After having been reading his posts for quite a while, I am convinced that Jim is an incurable Optimist and a Romantic. While I am tempted to say that I belong to that elite group, I am afraid that sometimes, only sometimes, I tend to be cynical about many things that Jim would find fascinating.
I have left the following comment on his blog. My readers from other Commonwealth countries may wish to chip in with their own, either here or at Jim’s post. The others will learn a great deal about this club and as Global citizens of this shrinking world, may want to do so too.
“As one of the 800 million Hindus and citizen of a Commonwealth country, AND and Anglophile, I think that it is a waste of taxpayers’ money to hold these junkets for mutual admiration by the CHOGMs. In the sixty years of its existence, it has not achieved one single sensible thing of common interest to the members of the ‘club’. With such amazing communication methods available to us the ‘diversity’ can be harnessed like you and I have done. I can tell you hair raising stories about what happens to Commonwealth funds used for so called development work in the less developed member countries. If I were to vote for its winding up, I would vote for a loud ‘yes’.”