The Blurred Line

This blog is purely for the things that I think are interesting and want to share with everyone. I, at all times, try to make sure that my political and personal issues are not included as this blog is for the things that should be looked at a little more. I am writing this because this is a blog which the line will get blurred. I am going to try and look at this case in a completely objective way. I am making you aware of this clearly because if there is any bais, you know the reasons why.

Have you ever seen the Lord of War film with Nicolas Cage? It is based upon the very famous arms dealer named Victor Bout (I did try to put his webpage up - in the interest of balance, but this is the best that I can do). It shows how someone makes money from the selling of weapons. The thing is, however, Britain is one of the biggest arms dealers in the world. If you don't believe me have a little look at DSEI or DPRTE.

Now I used to teach business studies and one of the things i used to say was about sole traders (My business studies teacher hat is coming out now!). Anyone can become a sole trader. You don't have to register with anyone, you can literally wake up one morning and state that you are going to be a business that day (not entirely true, but it helps with the understanding). Kinda cool isn't it? So what if you wanted to become a sole trader selling weapons? What paperwork do you have to fill in?

Now this is the reason for the title. I wanted to find out how easy it was to become an arms dealer. Let's be honest, it is something that is really interesting. Should I tell you lot how to do it though? The information is publically available and anyone (in fact, if you were to look on my www.whatdotheyknow.com profile, you would probably find the start of the trail of where I went to). Is the information more important than my own personal biased opinion?

Well, I am going to throw caution to the wind and simply give you the information. So, as a result I sent an FoI request to the Foreign and Commonwealth office and asked the question what does someone have to do to become a defence contractor… and they refered me to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) (Isnt it scary how easy this is?).

So another FoI requested to the BIS was made. Probably the easiest FoI I ever asked, actually, was:

“Please can you tell me what procedures and individual would have to go through to sell weapons to a country that is outside of the EU?”

Now for those of you who are long term readers will know that I have talked about section 16 before. It basically states that the government office MUST help you and educate you. So, with a rather large amount of trepidation I awaited my response.

So when I go the email stating to me to look here and that maybe I should register my company here, and that maybe I should go here for further reading, I was a little amazed and a little worried. Section 16 of the act means that they have to educate us and make sure that we are getting the information that we need and also helping us to locate it. I didn't realise how powerful those where.

I asked the question:

“Please can you tell me what procedures and individual would have to go through to sell

weapons to a country that is outside of the EU?”

and I get all the information and then some of what I want. It's a blurred line sometimes writing this blog in that finding the information turns out to be the things that I really dont want.