The Language Business

About that British Council trustees piece

Well, another week has gone by, and I would guess that most regular readers will by now have seen the piece about the British Council trustees. Even if they haven’t, they might be interested to learn that it created a great deal of interest – not just in volume but in character.

In fact I can even name some of our new “Establishment” visitors, but of course I won’t do that here. Well, not without a certain amount of encoding: anagrams include Saw Nimrod, Oak and Coma, Numeric Rolls, Only Melancholic and My Rear Magnate. They at least should be able to recognise their own names. And perhaps enjoy a frisson of paranoia.

But it was less a matter of the individuals that turned up, and more the way the visits came about that was interesting. The piece was evidently at the centre of quite a lot of correspondence, and referrals came from emails and email attachments all over the place, including a whole slew of visits referred by the internal mail system at the American University in Cairo (an institution which I have had the pleasure of visiting several times, but not for about 20 years). As usual we had plenty of British Council visits from their centres all over the world – from South Africa to North Africa to India and Nepal.

So what was it about the piece that struck a nerve? Can it be that more and more people, not least British Council staff, realise that being "guardians of our mission" is a load of tosh, and that the essential and fundamental role of the trustees is to make the British Council look good? And that the deal is that the trustees will be flattered and fawned on, and in return lend their names to the organisation in order to provide cover for its anomalous and undemocratic status, its outrageous set of privileges, its failure in respect of basic ethics, its money-grabbing culture, its lack of transparency and the absence of accountability?

Or was there perhaps something else in the piece that created a stir? Any ideas?

British Council to appoint more trustees

Your role: To ensure that status quo with regard to the organisation’s role as an arm of government, a charity with HM The Queen as Patron, and as an opportunist commercial outfit with privileged use of diplomatic premises overseas, diplomatic status, and tax breaks, remains unchallenged. You will be given training in the mystical mantra of “at arm’s length”, and learn how to explain away the multiple undemocratic anomalies of the organisation’s structure and finances. You will be advised to see, hear and speak no evil.

Duties: As a British Council trustee you will be required to attend a few meetings a year where you will be offered a high standard of hospitality, including goujons of cod. In the unhappy event that you encounter any matter that might be considered controversial, or that you are contacted by an outsider who wishes to draw your attention to irregularities within the organisation, you are to forward everything to the Director-General / Chief Executive, who will do nothing. You should also turn a blind eye to any dubious practice you happen to hear of, and should avoid any discussion of the organisation’s ethics. You will be guaranteed the reassurance of the other trustees that you have done the right thing (and nobody really expects you to be accountable for the organisation anyway).

Qualifications: You should be British, and be able to demonstrate an unbroken record of toadying to the Establishment. Hillbillies of all persuasions are welcome to try but applicants should note that 80% of the present board are London residents.

Tip: The chairman of the board is a former leader of the Labour Party, and will be supporting Cardiff in the FA Cup Final.

Remuneration: No remuneration is offered for this task, but you will be made to feel important, and be assured that you are involved in vital work for Britain. You will also enjoy at least two overseas jollies per annum with first class travel and hotel arrangements, including unlimited champagne room service.

If you think you may be able to fit in, send your application to arrive no later than May 5^th. Interviews will take place after the Cup Final. Interviewees, especially Portsmouth supporters, are advised to wear mourning.

Final Funk for British Council Arts

She didn’t fit. In an organisation with a culture of privilege, back-scratching, cronyism and insider dealing, what chance did Venu Dhupa have? She had a record of achievement in the real arts world, she demonstrated transparency, she set out to do what she was appointed to do – and had no chance. The sharks were circling right from the beginning, and the great British Arts Establishment was mobilised by insider interested parties with their own mini-empires to make sure the money - our money of course - continued to flow along the established channels.

We congratulated the British Council on her appointment, and we gave every encouragement to her in her reforming work. But a parting of the ways was always favourite. The British Council lacks courage and it lacks integrity. It lacks direction and it puts its own interests, especially short term interests, ahead of ethics every time. And it’s scared of people like Venu Dhupa.

So it’s back to counting the threads on sheets in Venice hotels, ignoring the recommendations of those fat-headed committees, and looking after mates.

Stupid.

Students Talking

Something different. The idea is to have a video which generically promotes studying English in Britain to students. Because it only features students talking, students may find it easy to relate to. The video lasts for 3 minutes and 40 seconds. Click on the flag to activate the link.

Anniversaries

Three years ago I began this blog, and thanks to you, dear reader, the blog is a success. The stats are good, I have the names of many individuals who have taken out RSS feeds, I am contacted regularly by readers old and new, and the number of readers, inside and outside the British Council, who identified themselves to me at the recent IATEFL conference in Exeter was very gratifying. We will continue to use this blog as a means of balancing the propaganda that spews out of Spring Gardens by exposing the damage and the problems the organisation causes, and by reporting on the absurdity and hypocrisy of its status as a “charity”, supported by mandatory donations from the taxpayer, while using government / diplomatic cover and other privileges to line its pockets.

Ten years ago I signed a five year cooperative agreement with the British Council. It was a mistake. Today however, five years after that agreement expired, we celebrate because despite the treacherous assault on our business, the rip-off, the cover-up, and the bad faith of this dreadful organisation, we’re still here and we’re not going away. And, who knows, perhaps “truth will triumph”.

Twenty years ago I started my own business. In 1988, having collected my company car, P45 and some severance pay from my erstwhile employer in educational publishing, I bought a new Compaq “386” computer for £3000, a groaning “Nefax” fax machine for £2000, got some cards printed and I was off.

What happened, and how it happened, this is not the place to relate. But I can say that it has been an exciting Odyssey, as the business evolved from publishing training and project consultancy, through software development and systems support, to Internet publishing.

Internet publishing means many things. This blog is typically accessed about 200 times a day, sometimes half that number, occasionally twice that number, and that is surely about as high a number as such a narrowly focused blog is likely to achieve. Meanwhile our international education information sites together attract around 12,000 visitors loading over 50,000 pages of data. Every day. The Odyssey continues.

So, please celebrate these anniversaries with me. Thanks - and cheers!

Brown Gravy

In the latest Private Eye the insider arrangement between the British Council and the BBC and their Radio 4 programme “Inside the British Council”, as reported on this blog, gets a wider airing.

“Despite airing on 1 April, Radio 4’s fawning Inside the British Council was supposed to be a serious investigation of the UK’s cultural mission abroad”.

Fat chance. The concepts of the “British Council” and of “serious investigation” are like oil and water. And the BBC joins in the game. When one taxpayer-funded organisation routinely supports another with no concern for independence or representation of the interests of the people, you know that things are really bad. You’ll need to buy a copy of Private Eye and turn to page 11.

Meanwhile the PM has, like his predecessor, got excited about the English language.
This from an article published in today’s Wall Street Journal.

In the last half-century the English language has become not only the language of Shakespeare and Twain, of J.K. Rowling and Cormac McCarthy, but of science, commerce, diplomacy, the Internet and travel.

Not a sentence to stand for too much analysis, but you can see how the committee got there.

I am today asking the British Council to develop a new initiative with private-sector and NGO partners in America, to offer anyone in any part of the world help to learn English.

The parasites of Spring Gardens will now latch on to another “Prime Minister’s Initiative”, as they use taxpayers’ money to further their cause, and dish the pioneering entrepreneurs, taxpayers, on the way. Plus ça change.

PS. With our leader schmoozing in the USA, some might be interested to know how the Americans view public diplomacy. Well, USC have a web site dedicated to public diplomacy, and I'm delighted to say that it picks up on all our pieces on The Language Business blog.

Brown Nosing in Libya

"The English languages, and the British Council, are among our greatest assets in Libya."

The words of the British ambassador in Libya, Sir Vincent Fean. For the full egregious peroration, see the article in Al Arab.

Here’s another remark taken from the British Embassy Libya site:

The British Council, the educational/cultural agency of the British Government, is starting English language teaching in Tripoli in the autumn of 2006, at its new premises in Gargaresh.

We reported last year how the British Council had, through a Freedom of Information enquiry, been obliged to admit that it had used “Grant-in-Aid” money – taxpayers’ money – to pay for free places for the well-connected at this British Council language school. The British Council not only may not do such a thing, it flatly denies that it does such a thing. But hey, who’s looking? Who cares?

The British Council is not an asset in Libya at all, but – as in so many places – a liability. It stands for slippery privilege, for wangles, for insider deals, for hypocritical posturing, and for more privilege. Is it a government agency? Fean says so on the Embassy site. Is it a business? Ask the man with the loo paper account. Is it a charity? Ask HM the Queen. Is it a mess? Ask anybody. It stands for slop and sleaze. When the British Council landed that lucrative contract to teach English in the universities in Libya, did anybody think of putting that out to tender? Was there any market input at all? I think not. Once again a base of public funding and diplomatic and charitable privilege was used to advance the cause, and line the pockets, of the British Council. “Among our greatest assets in Libya”? What a prat.

British Council's salami tactics in the UK

If you try to research the purpose or point or mission of the British Council, you will uncover such statements as these:

Our purpose is to build relationships between the UK and other countries to the benefit of all involved, and to increase appreciation of the UK’s creative ideas and achievements around the world.

That generalised statement has quite a lot of variations but they all share this vagueness, and successfully avoid any sort of articulate answer. While, on their British Council pages, England and Wales get something similar to that above, the Scots – doubtless more feared and less complaisant - get a “special”

We work with organisations in Scotland, the UK and internationally to connect Scotland and the world through arts, education, science and governance.

You can see how they must have wrestled over that one.

Gisela Stuart MP is on the record as asking Sir Michael Jay of the FCO (then a British Council trustee) and Lord Carter of Coles what the point of the organisation was, and those two cranked out some less than stellar, and quite different, answers as they cast about – but we’ll pass on those here. Because there is now a new dimension in play.

On April Fools’ Day the BBC broadcast “Inside the British Council”, and early in the programme Emily Maitlis asks Lord Kinnock of Bedwellty, the organisation’s chairman, what the mission of the organisation is. Here, exactly, is his answer:

“The mission of the British Council is to advance understanding of the UK in the rest of the world and to try to improve understanding of the rest of the world in the UK”.

In other words, according to the noble lord, it is now to be the turn of the benighted citizens of the UK to be being targeted by the British Council as recipients of its dubious enlightenment about the rest of the world. More exactly, while “advancing” understanding overseas it will “try to improve” understanding here. I expect it's more uphill.

Doesn’t that patronising rubbish say enough? The organisation is already way out of line here. Private language schools in the UK have allowed this organisation to, in effect, control their ability to trade properly by having the British Council’s accreditation scheme linked to their ability to recruit visa nationals. That unfortunate move was – however unwise – apparently their choice. But this mission declaration by the chairman of the British Council is utter folly. Why on earth should the British Council - unelected, unrepresentative, unaccountable, unethical and unwanted - be engaged in trying to improve our understanding, of anything at all, in the United Kingdom? Is this organisation now a British government sanctioned internal propaganda machine? We don’t want them, we don’t need them, and we don’t wish to pay for them.

Make sure they get no further.

And now British Council propaganda from the BBC

It’s not that surprising I suppose, but disappointing for those of us with memories of times when we believed in the BBC’s integrity. O tempora, o mores. On All Fools Day we listened to a Radio 4 programme entitled “Inside the British Council” which may be downloaded here.

We should not perhaps expect too much from Emily Maitlis, who failed to produce anything of weight to balance the deluge of British Council propaganda from their managers including their propagandist-in-chief, parent to a senior British Council manager, and career politician Lord Kinnock. (Was Fay Weldon, for example, not available?) Ms Maitlis simply signed up to the story and gave this organisation (which, Emily, you should note is also a commercial organisation) a big up. But then as it turns out the dice were loaded from the start; the programme’s producer was Kate Bland of Just Radio Ltd, a company for which the British Council is a key non-broadcast client, and which they describe on their web site as “the most innovative English language teaching network in the world”. So they know it's a commercial organisation then.

One revelation (for me at least) in the programme was that the British Council gives courses in “Business Ethics”. My company had a cooperative non-financial agreement with the British Council for five years 1998-2003. When in 2001 they asked me to sign a waiver freeing them to include English language courses in their (single) database of UK courses (which I duly did), because of my understanding of business ethics it never occurred to me
1. that the British Council had already, months earlier, signed a competing agreement with the specially incorporated “Education Websites Ltd” which gave the organisation a financial interest in downgrading or even eliminating my business
2. that they would then, still without informing me, use this signed waiver as a basis for appointing their managers, the very same BC managers with whom I was required to liaise, to develop entirely new, separate and direct competition to my business
3. that these managers would then, still without informing me, construct a copy of my company’s data model (as then installed then on all British Council computers worldwide) and business model, and seek to persuade my company’s market, my company’s identical market, to switch allegiance from our services to theirs
4. that therefore I would emerge from a five year agreement having unwittingly participated in a technology transfer exercise with my “partners”, the British Council, now a direct and – given their public money and Establishment backing – grossly unfair competitor
5. that the organisation would destroy official minutes and records of key meetings relating to this activity
6. or that when the facts of the contract, companies and meetings were uncovered in 2005 following FoI enquiries, and representations made – to managers, trustees, the FCO, the FAC etc. – the organisation still would do nothing to remedy or even address the matter.
For the British Council to give lectures on business ethics is like John Prescott delivering a sermon on the importance of chastity.

By simply broadcasting their propaganda, and by using a company in the British Council’s pay to produce a programme about the organisation on our national network, the BBC tar themselves with the same unprofessional, sloppy, sleazy brush. Meanwhile the British taxpayer pays for both of them. For shame.

Parasite downgraded in India

"The British Council in Delhi, which once celebrated English literature, music and drama, has been downgraded. It is closing much-loved libraries of Chaucer and Shakespeare around the country and instead selling English courses and A-levels to the young Indian tycoons of tomorrow."

Thus The Times reports what the parasite is up to in India. The parasite thrives on anomaly. It can pretend to be an arm of government (in China, for example, its self-contained offices are designated British Embassy premises while in India its director is styled "British Minister for Cultural Affairs"), it can pretend to be a sort of international Lady Bountiful handing out scholarships and grants that we pay for, and of course it can recruit FMCG executive directors to play at "for profit" business. But what on earth is it actually for? Were we right to be paying for the British Council in India to keep open “much-loved libraries”? And if we were, is it now right that we subsidise the organisation to sell English courses and A levels? Why, for goodness sake, should the British taxpayer fork out to enable this parasite simply to earn more? It damages business at home and abroad, it interferes in any number of spheres in which it has little or no understanding, it lacks expertise even in those areas (e.g. “cultural relations”) where it would like to claim some sort of world leadership, and sets a thoroughly bad example with respect to what Britain is and stands for.

The British Council stands for privilege, amateurism, hypocrisy and yet more privilege, and above all it stands for itself. It would matter less if the organisation were not parasitically dependent on the taxpayer, if it did not masquerade as a charity getting more tax privileges, if it did not enjoy diplomatic status so getting even more tax privileges, if it did not enjoy civil service pensions so getting ever more from the taxpayer on an open-ended basis, if it did not purport to be representative, if it did not play silly games offering itself as a resource for those who might be "wary of government organisations", and if it did not do so much harm. The British taxpayer supports a lot of parasites, but none worse than this one which should be downgraded to its logical conclusion in India, and everywhere else.

Be wary, be very wary

See if you can spot the organisation which claims not to be a government body and which offers itself as an alternative to those who may be "wary of working with government bodies". No, it isn’t hard – and you have already worked it out. These manipulative hypocrites simply turn into whatever it suits them to be for public consumption, but the reality is that they are paid for by the British taxpayer, and without the British taxpayer they would disappear – despite their absurd and outrageous “charitable” status and their subsidised “commerce”. The British Council is a government organisation which pretends not to be. If you are wary of dealing with government bodies, be doubly wary of the one which pretends to be something different. And never trust them.

What follows is taken from today’s Guardian.

There are three ways for Iraqis to enter the UK as refugees, the first two open to those arriving in April. Iraqis formerly employed by the British in "similarly skilled or professional roles necessitating the use of ... English" are eligible to apply under the government's Gateway scheme, with 500 places reserved for Iraqis this year. To qualify they must have left Iraq and be recognised by the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) under refugee convention criteria. Applications are then processed through the BIA.
The second way is to apply through what a Foreign Office official called "the easier scheme" for which there are "not so many checks and balances". This applies only to people currently employed in Iraq by the Foreign Office, Department for International Development, British Council, or Ministry of Defence. The Foreign Office estimates that 280 employees and their dependants might be eligible. Under both schemes 351 Iraqis have so far been accepted to resettle or take financial compensation; 450 have been rejected, and 100 are still being processed.
The third way - and only way open to most - is to spend your life savings on a grim journey organised by people smugglers. Around 1,300 Iraqis claimed asylum in the UK last year. The rejection rate was 88%. Sweden, which refused to get involved in the Iraq war, took in 15,000 Iraqi refugees in 2007.

British Council gets a bargain in Nigeria

Let’s hope that the accounts of the British Council in Nigeria are properly audited. Because today’s news tells us that the British Council are planning to spend £100,000 on “greening Nigeria”. Indeed the local director Sam Harvey told newsmen that the project would be carried out “in all cities of the country” as part of the British Council’s programme to “check climate change”.

The number of assumptions underlying this plan is challenging. Would the British Council, of all organisations, have any idea how to spend £100,000 on “greening Nigeria”? Does anybody seriously believe that this sum of money could green Nigeria at all? Does anybody believe that whoever the British Council hands this money to, it will have the effect of greening Nigeria? Does anybody imagine that even if such a daft project could be carried out it would have any bearing on climate change? Does anybody in the real world (i.e. outside the British Council) think that this use of our money makes sense?

Yesterday (see below) we reported how pupils from 15 Canadian schools are being paid for by the British Council to go on a trip which the UK schools could not afford. Now I think that’s a complete waste of our money too, but since the British Council apparently has so many choices about how to throw British taxpayers’ money away, they could perhaps spend some of that £100,000 on those impoverished British kids whose only trip to Iceland to date is likely to have been with Mum to pick up some fish fingers.

There is of course an alternative point of view, which I offer for the sake of balance: that this expenditure makes perfect sense, that £100K will green Nigeria (so a few million should take care of the whole world), that the glaciers and polar icecaps will then firm up, and that dazed scientists worldwide will slap their foreheads wondering why they didn’t think of that. A statue of Ms Harvey will be erected in Parliament Square, and the French will run out of Médailles de la légion d'honneur as all 7000 British Council employees have their nominations accepted.

And Britain’s leading export will be flying pigs.

Canadian Cousins

I like Canada. I have been to that magnificent country half a dozen times. I have Blackie cousins in Canada that I am in contact with. I do not have a problem with Canada.

But I question why it is that we British taxpayers need to support the British Council there. Whether it is their strategic importance as the world’s second largest oil producer and their considerable wealth that attracts the attention of Britain's favourite "charity" I know not, but I find myself wondering why Britain should pay for programmes in Canada that it cannot afford for itself.

My attention was drawn to this by a press release today relating that the British Council is putting up $35,000 for some Canadian schoolchildren to join an expedition to Iceland (yes, please read that again). The children come from 15 schools in Canada.

Charlottetown Rural was one of 15 schools picked to be part of this project. Originally, there were only to be 13 schools from Canada and two from the United Kingdom; however, it was too expensive for the U.K. schools to take part this year.

That’s right. Believe it or not here is a project being paid for by the British taxpayer which is too expensive for the British to take part in, even our 2 to their 13. Fortunately however there are British who are able to profit from the "climate change" experience, and a click on this link will reveal a picture of our rugged hero, the local British Council director, ensuring that Britain is, despite the expense, properly represented.

Curious to know what else the British Council were up to in Canada, I went to look (as suggested on their web site) at their events calendar. As you too can see, it matters not which month you select, there are no events. None at all (and the French version is the same).

I expect they're too busy.

Still wary? You should be

"As we operate at arm's length from the UK government, we are able to build relationships with those who may be wary of working with government bodies."

The organisation you will remember claims not to be part of a government body. All the evidence points in the opposite direction. Today for example there's an announcement about a new British Council web site.

The British Council has handed Rufus Leonard a brief to overhaul its website to the UK's educational and cultural standing across the world.
The brief, handled by the Central Office of Information (COI), will include creating the British Council’s online identity and new interim Web platform, including a new home page. The project is scheduled to run over the next six months.

Note 1. To judge from the first sentence in the announcement above (go on, read it again), the chosen organisation is as inarticulate as the BC. If they can’t even proof read their own announcements, why do they get the job? Well, it turns out that they already have a deal with “FCO Services” which evidently wants to become more "self efficient".

No, I hadn’t heard of FCO Services either – another state subsidised business ffs. Apparently not yet a “charity”, but give them time.

Note 2. So close is the British Council to central government, and so absurd the notion that it is “independent” or “at arm’s length”, that even the new web site is handled by the Central Office of Information.

The British Council gets around £200 million as a grant from central government, i.e. paid for by the taxpayer. It also gets massive financial support by having publicly funded civil service pension schemes with early retirement, plus further support from the taxpayer by being excused taxes. Even their web site development is covered by the COI. This grotesque parasite then uses this base of funded privilege to “earn” money “principally teaching English and administering examinations”. Let's look at that.

ELT. There is no shortage of ELT providers worldwide, and the British Council are simply unwanted, state-subsidised competition for genuine TAXPAYING businesses. The MoD ELT contract for example is gifted to the BC without going to tender. Paid for by the taxpayer.

Exams. The big one is of course IELTS (around 1,000,000 candidates paying around £100 a throw, so about £100 million in t/o annually) in which the BC is a partner organisation, the other partners - UCLES and IDP (Australia)  - recognising the value of having a British government “diplomatic” inside track into so many key markets. That is, for example, how it works in China – the biggest market of them all. We are subsidising the BC (and UCLES and IDP Australia) here as well.

Without diplomatic status and subsidy its “commercial” operations cease to be viable and without the massive government support the parasite enjoys elsewhere it would die, and die very quickly. True, if it really were independent of government it would then be able to operate legally as a charity. But, erm, charities normally have a purpose, and people who understand it and support it voluntarily. The parasite has neither. And if it ever did operate "at arm's length" from government, the arm (pace Venus de Milo) dropped off a long time ago.

The Italian Challenge

Those sweet Italian judges have ruled that women having an affair can lie to protect their honour or, to put it another way, that it’s OK to be dishonest as long as it’s to protect your reputation for honesty. Even in court. Blimey. 

But, hey, let’s not be too hard on the Italians. We have plenty of ways of bending the rules here in Britain; readers will know that I am about to say something about the British Council. But is it anything new? Well, I for one didn’t know until today that the British Council had contracted with the firm in which the wife of the PM (then “only” Chancellor of course) was a partner for its “Public Relations”.

The Times also reports of Mrs Brown:

In 2001 she moved to the arts division of the financial public relations giant Brunswick. Over the next three years it received £79,000 from the British Council, mainly in the form of monthly retainers.

The one thing that the British Council understands best is where its bread is buttered, and operates accordingly, following the money. Does it matter? I think it matters a great deal because our wretched “representatives” in Parliament refuse to deal honestly with the organisation. And when its patronage extends even to the families of our most senior politicians, those of us with a legitimate objection to the organisation have a right, and a duty, to point to a systemic failure of democracy.

In Britain an organisation may be an arm of government, or it may be a charity, or it may be a business. It cannot be all three because taxpayers should not have to subsidise a business (whether, as in this case, it uses the subsidy to compete unfairly with taxpaying business or not) and a government should not use a charity for its own political ends. It’s illegal. Neither should foreign countries have to host businesses masquerading as government departments and then listen to the self-righteous railings of the British politicians who are responsible. But in the case of the British Council all such principles – of the integrity of government, the integrity of business, the integrity of charitable status, the integrity of the organisation’s management – are utterly compromised.

If we could just fix up some of our British judges with some married Italian women, we might not have to wait long for a new legal precedent that gave legitimacy to this corrupt anomaly. And there would be no need to depend on a peculiarly British mix of hypocrisy, arrogance, self-interest and evasion.

Flashman pushes for religious holidays

The dreadful org is trying to push further into our lives, even here in Britain, and has produced a report based on international research into bullying. It’s apparently based on research in 47 schools in 9 countries, so about 5 schools per country. The conclusion is that a higher number of pupils in British schools perceive bullying to be a problem than in other European countries. The last international report the org produced like this was about how fast people walked, and it was probably just as (un)scientific, just as (in)accurate, and just as silly.

I probably attended 5 schools at one time or another in England, and spent rather more time there than any BC researcher, and I think everybody there, pupils and teachers, was savvy enough to realise that bullying was a problem. Because bullying always was and always will be a problem – in class, games, out of school, via text messages, email, in virtual environments and so on - and the British Council, as a classic bullying organisation, knows that as well as any. But as is the norm with reports from the British Council, the agenda here is to establish a role for the organisation, and to seek to justify its massive subsidy from the taxpayer.

Here is a telling line from the report in The Guardian:

When asked how to remedy the situation, one-quarter of the children replied that they think there should be more religious holidays recognised in the school calendar.

Oh please. I have a different experience of Britain from the British Council because I never heard anybody suggest anywhere, publicly or privately, that more religious holidays – or even publishing the dates of the Jewish or Chinese New Year, or Diwali or Eid al-Fitr or even Whitsun - could be a remedy for anything, much less for bullying. The case for having fewer religious festivals in the British school calendar is arguably rather stronger anyway.

We have all seen bullying at school, and it’s a nasty phenomenon which it is the duty of teachers and principals to control and eliminate at every turn, whether it involves “migrants” (the currently “correct” term for immigrants) or anybody else. If you haven’t seen bullying, and do not see it as a problem, then this is not your planet. To say that bullying is part of human nature is not defeatist but realistic, and of course it is the duty of all responsible parents and teachers to seek it out, root it out where possible, and minimize the suffering it causes. But for anybody to imagine that any initiative or programme involving that arrogant bully the British Council, or more religious holidays, is likely to change any aspect of this is a naive delusional fantasy.

The Bottom Line

It seems a long time since we featured that Sunday Times ad from the BC when the organisation set out to recruit a team of “executive directors” to join their new “Chief Executive” on the new “executive board”. The British Council was, as we could all see, moving into a new corporate, go-getter, enterprise “executive” mode, and was looking for a team the taxpayer might sponsor to play that game.

And, by Jove, it seems they got one. The new Director of Operations at the British Council evidently has a background in fast moving consumer goods, and has been involved in the international marketing of brands such as Colgate Toothpaste, Carapelli Olive Oil and Lotus Freshness Toilet Tissue. Clearly, despite the company he now keeps, this is not a chap who is likely to wipe his elbow by mistake.

The new director is profiled in a recent edition of the British Council in-house rag, where it also relates his international experience, having worked in “Brussels, Belgium” and “Florence, Italy”, which no doubt helps his credentials, while underpinning the geographical knowledge of British Council readers of the rag. But it’s the culture he brings to the organisation that is of real interest. This is a man who is clearly on the money.

“I’d like us to get away from thinking of our activities in terms of source of funding and instead to think in terms of a portfolio of powerful British Council branded products that both delivers cultural relations impact and maximises income from all sources – grant and commercial. Indeed, wherever feasible, I’d like us to aim to generate profits from our products, which we can in turn reinvest in development and delivery of ever more powerful cultural relations products”.

Rarely has a British Council senior manager been quite so public about the importance of the bottom line. Meanwhile last week the Foreign Secretary announced (as we reported) that the government was extending the British Council’s work in the Middle East, so we must hope that the organisation, and its new operations chief, understands that that is one part of the world where “ever more powerful cultural relations products” will, in addition to an awareness of bottom lines, require a certain finesse and local knowledge. Given his experience, we would only offer our friendly collegiate advice to the new director that it is a region where, in general, the right hand knows what the left is doing and, having looked at his portfolio, suggest therefore that toothpaste and olive oil may be the stronger suit. And of course we wish him luck.

Teddy Bears Picnic

Headline news as the courts review whether it was really “security” issues that caused the British government to pull the Yamamah arms enquiry then being undertaken by the Serious Fraud Office, or whether, as those who are bringing the case maintain, it was simply a matter of money. Well, well. Surely this has nothing to do with the British Council? Does it?

Cooperation between the British Council and BAE is a matter of public record, and anybody who wishes to know more about their projects in Saudi – and there are plenty - has only to Google using obvious key words. Let’s look here instead at the organisation’s involvement in India.

The British Council’s UKIERI (UK-India Education and Research Initiative) has come up with a programme for India which involves school exchanges - see the 2006 press release featuring the (then) Prime Minister, Baroness Blackstone, Lord Kinnock, Bill Rammell and of course the corporate sponsors (“champions”) – GSK, Shell, BP and BAE Systems.

But a central player here is the Hawk fighter aircraft and this BBC report from a few years ago tells of a (then) forthcoming deal with India for the beast worth £1 billion. Today the British Council manages a project which involves school exchanges between Brough in Yorkshire where BAE make the Hawk and schools adjacent to Hindustan Aeronautics in Bangalore where they make the plane for the Indian air force. As in Saudi, “soft” diplomacy is involved in these matters. Does it matter?

Look at this PPT file and check out the slides. Slide number 7 includes, for example, this:

– Exchange of Teddy Bears and Dolls in school uniforms.

– The bears will go on a journey around the schools bringing back exciting story of their adventures to their home school.

Now you may perhaps feel that there is something a little disturbing about the involvement here of children and dolls and teddy bears. But what should perhaps be more a matter of concern is that this mixing of cuddly imagery and arms is orchestrated by an organisation that claims to act in our name, which we pay for through our taxes, and which enjoys the status of a registered charity. Charities cannot of course as a rule be representative or publicly funded, but as we know there is a notable, embarrassing and somewhat hideous exception. And it does things like this, and such things damage the status of all charities.

Let’s step back. Wherever we stand on the issue of arms sales, let’s question whether an organisation that has no status in our education system should be allowed to involve children in soft diplomacy designed to lubricate and massage the sales of arms. Let’s question whether it is an appropriate use of our money. Let’s ask whether Britain should use its official resources to foster links between charities and the arms trade.

For us in Britain to do this is, we might say, a democratic imperative.

Foreign Secretary announces British Council plans

There is an excellent article by Simon Jenkins in today’s Guardian commenting on the “Democratic Imperative” speech by the Foreign Secretary. I commend that article to readers, but the nature of this blog compels me to zero in on one sentence from the Miliband speech, and it is this:

Through its education and cultural programmes the British Council last year reached out to over 16 million people; that is why we are extending the British Council work in the Middle-East, as well as Central and Southern Asia.

I will bite my tongue on the matter of what is meant by “reach out to” and whether all this reaching out might involve actual useful contact or even any contact at all, since reaching out and contact are rather different. (I can for example tell of many communications that I myself used to “reach out to” British Council management, trustees, committees etc. which as far as I know produced no contact as they were - and remain - unacknowledged). The point is, yet again, that Mr Miliband makes it 100% clear that the British Council is dependent on government, and works at the behest of the government which controls it. Now if that were explicit rather than fudged, and if in consequence its charitable status was removed (as it would have to be since charities must, as we have noted many times, as a key legal principle, be independent of government and other funders) that would resolve at least one issue. Unfortunately the “democratic imperative” falls short here.

Consider the irony: the British government controls an organisation which has to claim to be independent in order to keep its (charitable) tax status at home, while its (diplomatic) tax status overseas is of course dependent precisely on its government status. And as we all know it also operates cosy commercial anti-competitive subsidised and tax-free earners out of government premises and behind a government façade. And it’s not just the Russians who point this out.

David Miliband uses this prime example of privilege and hypocrisy, this formal demonstration that principles matter less than expediency, that freedoms and taxpayers’ money are not applied fairly or equally, that institutions can be whatever people in power want them to be, and that the rules – of commerce, of charity and of government diplomacy – can all be bent when it suits, he uses this to help to spread “democracy” as a function of some sort of “imperative”. It’s falling apart, it’s a disgrace, and it’s a mistake. It is also undemocratic, and there is work to be done – by Mr Miliband - here.

British Council keeps MPs sweet

Any MP on a tour abroad can be sure of a warm welcome from the local British Council office in a chosen destination. The organisation is well aware that without Parliamentary support it would collapse, and so it keeps its paymasters nicely buttered. And since its senior managers fly First Class and stay in luxury hotels, naturally their sponsors are entitled to the same treatment. At our expense.

Today’s Telegraph reports on a recent case, where an MP was piggy-backing a private holiday on top of an expenses-paid “business” trip at the invitation of the British Council. The MP is reported as saying that he has turned down offers of other Far East trips from the British Council, for which we should no doubt all be grateful. Gosh, just imagine if they all did that.

Of course piggy-backing holidays on the back of “business” trips is standard fare within the British Council as we reported in November 2006. But it’s all OK because the people who pay them do it too. Bless.