Have a friend who lives there and she says it is getting very out of shape, not seen much in our press about it.

Scary times in Latin America.

I know a dentist from there, she’s moved over here to work. She says it’s pretty bad over there and I imagine she’s a lot better off than those queueing to get basic goods.

Why can’t they sell their oil, to stubborn to change?

They are selling their oil, trouble is they have the highest ‘break even price of any major oil producer.

As a result the last few years of the Saudi’s deliberately forcing prices down to put pressure on Iran has inflicted massive collateral damage on Venezuela.

Their oil just isn’t bringing in the money currently and without it they’re pretty ergonomically screwed. Add this to a rather febrile political atmosphere and the country’s a tinderbox.

Don’t want to be a pain but it’s not correct to say that SA is having a pop at just Iran with the low oil price. USA tight oil was also a target plus trying to get Russia to see the sense (in SA’s view) reduced out put would give high price. There are other geo-political subtexts depending on who, where you live and work. Venezuela’s messed up economy for various reasons has not done well given the oil price issue mentioned above.

a rather febrile political atmosphere

That’s a bit of an understatement. President Maduro has stuffed the supreme court with his followers, and said court has declared that the (opposition-led) Congress is invalid. Half the opposition leaders are in jail, the freedom of the Press is severely curtailed (in practice if not in law), and all this with a background of protests and inflation somewhere over 700%…

http://jeremycorbyn.org.uk/articles/venezuela/

How odd….all his articles about Venezuela have been deleted…..

One of Jez We Can’t’s quotes can be found here:

http://www.conservativehome.com/leftwatch/2016/04/does-corbyn-still-admire-venezuela.html

Friend is working out there, pays an old lady 1.5usd per day to stand in line for him to get things.

He is the only person he knows who hasn’t been robbed.

It’s not safe to stop for accidents.

Reality check for him was when a shop owner commented to him that he had just spent a years salary in candy for Halloween.

Fifteen years ago Venezuela was run by right wing politicians who kept in line with the US. It was the fifth biggest oil producer in the world. However all the oil money went to a very small percentage of the population. Caracas was one of the most dangerous cities in South America crime-wise, largely because of the massive disparity between the haves and have-nots. You may remember the floods that washed away shanty towns in the early 2000s.

Along came Chavez and tried to improve matters, redistribute wealth etc. The US pulled the plug and they ended up with even worse conditions, except that this time even the small wealthy minority weren’t happy.

Chavez is gone now and as far as I can see things have just got worse.

In many ways Chavez was trying to do what needed doing and I can see why Corbyn supported him but the trouble with any country going down a popular socialist route is that they will have to make it on their own, which is pretty much impossible.

It ain’t so clean cut on Chavez, he made many mistakes especially around placing family members in powerful posts (that could be seen as understandable) but not a very socialist thing to do. The oil price really is killing them, soon to be literally unless something gives.