Magic bullet 2

Clearly in fine fettle this month, having come up with two magic bullets.

This one concerns exit planning for authoritarian heads of state who are reaching their sell by date. Whereas some of these people may be thoroughly unpleasant and might otherwise fall victim to atrocious retribution if left to the mercy of their subjects or perhaps to the winners in some civil war, it is clear to me that we need to offer such people safe passage to some kind of gold plated, exilic home. Without some such offer, such people are not going to go quietly, and going noisily is apt to result in a lot of excess deaths, not least of more or less innocent bystanders, women and children. What we might think of as just deserts - and in the civilised west we should not be thinking of atrocious retribution as just deserts - are not a practical or humane way forward.

So I see here an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Find some civilised island which is in a bit of a state, perhaps a financial state or perhaps a sovereignty state, and build a whole lot of compounds, one for each former head of state. Island good because it is much easier to keep out unwanted visitors, difficult in a place like Gibraltar which might otherwise have been suitable. The compounds should be comfortable, luxurious even, but residence would be supervised and would amount to house arrest. Residents would not be able to plot return or anything else. The whole operation would be funded and managed by the UN, with the funds, hopefully, sorting out the state into which the civilised island had got itself. This might, even, include ceding sovereignty to the UN. An arrangement which might suit the Falkland Islands. Another attraction of these last would be that one could have one compound per small island, of which there are plenty.

A disadvantage might be that it would be hard to attract even well paid personal service staff to such a remote place. Where on earth are they going to go on their days off? Penguin hunting not everyone's bag. Where are the fancy shops? From that point of view, British Virgin Islands, Ireland or Cyprus might suit better, in which case, part of the deal would be that they stopped providing house room for tax evaders and worse.

Runners up would get the Olympics as a consolation prize.