Forgive me, dear reader, for mentioning this again, but it seems to me that the British government has completely lost its senses. We have wars to win, deadly bugs in our hospitals, immigration out of control, personal data lost like confetti by government departments, a growing financial nightmare with a run on sterling, at least one bank on a precipice, impossible debt levels, young people dying on our streets and so on, and our senior politicians still bang on, even today, about the closure of two offices of the British Council.
There were 15 British Council offices in Russia, and the British Council itself closed all bar 3. There were until quite recently 5 British Council offices in Germany, and now there is one left, and that is closed to the public. Michael Bird is the local director.
This is from the FT.
In Germany, where there are no problems with the host government, the Council has reduced the number of branches from five to one, in Berlin, which is closed to the public.
The change, which is part of a Europe-wide strategy, was needed to "keep up with changing times", says Mr Bird. "We couldn't keep using UK taxpayers' money on a shop window," he says, “when few people were looking through it”.
Amen to that, even if you thought it was the right shop. Meanwhile the British Council in St Petersburg was teaching English, but they closed that operation down after the British Council had been obliged to find £1.4 million in unpaid tax. So now it’s presumably just another redundant shop window.
Is anybody looking through it? How many Russians were peering into the UK taxpayer funded “shop window” in the dozen British Council offices in Russia that the British Council unilaterally closed down? Not enough to keep them open, that’s for sure. And it was in any case we understand part of a “Europe-wide strategy”. Will there now be riots in St Petersburg or Yekaterinburg? Here’s what happened in Germany:
There was only "a handful" of complaints when our public facilities closed, Mr Bird says.
And he’s the salesman.
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