British Council “a nonsense of an organisation”

Labour MP and Treasury Select Committee member John Mann has called for the British Council to be scrapped referring to it as “a nonsense of an organisation to sustain”. Made during a debate on the economy called by Labour, his message is directed to his party leadership urging them to be specific in where they would make cuts. The British Council’s outreach work should, he said, be undertaken by British universities.

It’s good to hear, at last, that someone in parliament can see what a nonsense the organisation is, and we must hope that Miliband and co listen to his representations, which are otherwise sensible cost-cutting measures on rents, cutting back on multiple redundant layers of government, moving Whitehall departments out of London and so on.  The Conservative led government might do well to listen too.

The idea of British universities taking on the organisation’s outreach work is an interesting one. One item that we might expect to be low on British universities’ agenda would be assisting the Australians in their international student recruitment, as the British Council are attempting to do at this very moment.

Comments

[Neil Robertson]

The former British Council official Emma Sky who was caught red-handed in Palestine sponsoring a public administration project she herself conceded was in fact 'non-existent' has popped up again - this time in the Swedish capital of Stockholm at a seminar last week to brief oil companies on 'The Arab Spring'. She seems to have stopped describing herself as 'Lady Sky' but the CV provided suggests she now regards herself as an expert on 'conflict prevention', 'poverty elimination' (sic?!), 'human rights' and 'public administration reform' - and is now a Professor despite previous accusations of 'toxic cluelessness' and all those unanswered BC questions about her British Council role as pushy part-time 'Governance Advisor' in East Jerusalem - including her 'skyjack' of a £1.9m DfID project and her 'brazen' attempt to challenge/remove the UK DfID-appointed international Task Force within 48 hours of their - delayed -deployment in the region:

" Emma Sky

Emma Sky is currently a Visiting Professor at King’s College, London. Previously, she worked as an
advisor to the US military in Iraq, to NATO commanders in Afghanistan, and to the US Security
Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process in Jerusalem. Emma Sky is a British specialist on conflict resolution, poverty elimination, human rights and public administration reform. She has managed international development projects, on behalf of the UK government, the World Bank and the European Commission, in several development countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Palestinian Territories and United Arab Emirates.
Emma Sky's formal education was at Oxford (UK), Alexandria (Egypt), Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(Israel) and Liverpool (UK). She speaks Arabic, Hebrew and French, and has published numerous
articles in foreign policy and security magazines."

[Neil Robertson]

http://www.energimyndigheten.se/Global/Press/Nyheter/Invitation%20to%20NOG%20seminar%20on%20MENA.pdf

[Neil Robertson]

http://kjohnsonnz.blogspot.com/2009/11/from-new-york-times-november-2009.html New Zealand Public Administration specialist Dr Keith Johnson comments on the role of British Council's Emma Sky in Palestine and the subsequent profile of her in New York Times

[Neil Robertson]

"Arabs, Kurds and Emma Sky" (Talisman Gate blog):

http://talismangate.blogspot.com/2009/04/arabs-and-kurds-and-emma-sky.html

[Neil Robertson]

'The first representative of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Kirkuk, and the most influential advocate for the city with Paul Bremer, the first head of the CPA was Emma Sky, a slim, brown-eyed, thirty-six-year-old Englishwoman. Sky speaks some Arabic and once worked with Palestinians in the West Bank; though she opposed the invasion of Iraw, she volunteered to join the occupation authority. Upon arriving in Kirkuk, she saw that the most urgent taks was to reassure alienated Arabs and Turkomans and the triumphant attitude of their Kurdish neighbours did not mean there was no future for them here. As Sky travelled around the province, her prestige among Arabs soared. Ismail Hadidi, the deputy governor and an original Arab, gave her his highest praise: "We deal with her as if she's a man, not a woman." Sky believes passionately that Kirkuk can be a model for an ethnically diverse Iraq: "People have to move away from this zero-sum thinking," she told me in Baghdad (sic!). "Kirkuk is where it all meets. It all comes together there. Yes, you can have a country of separate regions, where people don't have to deal with other groups. But can you have a country where people are happy with each other, where people are at ease with each other? I think Kirkuk [NB oil pipeline runs through Kirkuk] is going to tell you what kind of country Iraq is going to be." Compared with the problems of Israel and Palestine, Sky said, Kirkuk's can be solved relatively easily. "Kirkuk you can win. Kirkuk doesn't have irreconcilable differences - yet." George Packer's 'The Next Iraqi War' in The New Yorker 4 Oct 2004.

[Neil Robertson]

"Over time, many Kurds began to regard Emma Sky and the CPA as biased towards Arabs. When she met the Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani in Suleimaniya he snapped, "They call you Emma Bell". The reference was to Gertrude Bell, the British colonial official who lived and, it is said, took her life in Baghdad. Fluent in Arabic, and in love with the culture, Bell was admired by large numbers of Arabs. After the First World War, she drew up the boundaries of the modern state of Iraq, in which Sunni Arabs became the holders of power and Kurds saw their dream of nationhood dissolved." (New Yorker 4 Oct 2004)

George Packer's goes on to explain how 'the Iraq Property Claims Commission, which Sky was instrumental in setting up - didn't begin to hear claims until April and still hasn't issued its first decision. Aazad Shekhany, a Kurd who once directed the commission, concluded that the whole thing was an elaborate stall to keep the peace, and he put the blame on the Coalition.' In subsequent elections, another Sky critic - the Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani - was elected President of Iraq (a post he still holds in 2011!) In January 2011, Sky told The Chilcott Enquiry in closed session in evidence that was later declassified how she was working for The British Council (and thus not a civil servant) when a civil service e-mail inviting people to volunteer for Iraq was forwarded to her and she was told to go to RAF Brize Norton without any vetting or UK briefing and get on a plane to Baghdad before turning up in Kirkuk & taking on the role of Provincial Governor. In that capacity she told Chilcott her main role was not 'reconstruction' but 'managing a political process' - and dishing out bundles of money.

[Neil Robertson]

http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/52057/Sky-2011-01-14-S1-declassified.pdf