British Council and the EU

Birds of a feather, the bureaucrats of Brussels and of Spring Gardens have always been cosy. You have only to see, for example, how comfortable the Kinnocks have been in both environments. Both organisations are of doubtful value, extraordinarily expensive, over-privileged, and corrupt. The mutual attraction is of course because both organisations channel large amounts of public money, also known as our money, so where better than to each other? Trebles all round.

The blessed Gisela Stuart says that she doesn’t see why the British Council should use UK taxpayers’ money to promote Europe. We can no doubt all drink to that. The bizarre response of the anonymous British Council “spokesman” was that the money is being used to “research British culture”. Good heavens. Does this mean that at last, after more than 75 years posing as a “cultural relations organisation”, the British Council will perhaps discover what it is supposed to represent? Sadly no, there’s little or no chance of that. We know it paid for rentacrowd at the climate conference in Copenhagen, that it used its school in Tripoli to ingratiate itself with the Gaddafis, that it flies MPs around the world first class to keep Parliament onside, that it is the enemy of enterprise in the UK, and overseas. The British Council represents itself, and uses every means at its disposal to ensure maximum revenues from at least four government departments, obtains maximum comfort from the treasury, pays as little tax as possible at home (through charitable status) and abroad (through diplomatic status), and uses the resources paid for by the taxpayer to win maximum contracts for itself. And it owns a for profit company which pays no tax. Nice work if you can get it.

And as for the EU, how about this little gem? What this document shows (and you can Google for others in the same vein) is that the British Council couldn’t get further up its own posterior if it tried. Its role in Brussels is to win more business for the British Council. Which is pretty much its role everywhere else. What is guaranteed is that the British taxpayer is lumbered with paying for this disgraceful parasite, apparently in perpetuity.

 

Comments

[Jane]

Hi David and a Happy New Year!

The BC spokesperson said that the money is being used "to research the value of UK culture", slightly different from researching 'British culture'; but, even so, the usual complete waste of taxpayers' money by this despicable organisation. The BC is apparently a 'core partner' of this initiative (http://www.britishcouncil.org/brussels-more-europe.htm) and one of its main features is the "development of (thematic) focus and an initial geographical approach to culture in the EU’s external relations focusing initially on those newly gathered under the name BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China)and supporting EU neighbourhood policies through civic capacity building and support for cultural actors of change". Can you understand this drivel? I certainly can't.

If only more public figures would complain.

Excellent blog.

[David]

Thanks Jane, and my apologies for the tardy response and acknowledgement. This blog service stopped sending me notice of comments because I was sent a flood of spam which I have just been working my way through and deleting. I hope normal service will now be resumed. Gisela is a bit of a star, isn't she?

[Neil Robertson]

Same old song from the same old "usual suspects". I see from the link that one of British Council's 'liaison partners' on this bit of mission creep is the body that produced this 'yearbook' in December which carries a nauseatingly hypocritical piece by British Council on 'The Importance of Trust' and a pompous essay about Enlightenment values and Martin Luther King - strewn with even more pseudo-jargon - from former British Council 'intercultural dialogue' supremo Mike Hardy who is now apparently a professor of gobbledygook at Coventry University! Hardy was of course on of the two 'rogue' British Council officials who threatened me inside an armed compound in Gaza with career ruin if I named them in my "Protected Disclosures" after I uncover prima facie evidence of irregularity:

http://www.ifa.de/pdf/kr/2011/kr2011_en.pdf

[Neil Robertson]

British Council did once win (sorry 'share'!) a medal in this general area with some of the other Euro cultural orgs mentioned by them as 'partners' in 'More Europe': http://dblackie.blogs.com/the_language_business/2007/05/from_the_minist.html I wonder if the French and the Germans have explained 'the Humanities' to them yet?!

[Neil Robertson]

“What has changed is social memory; we have disconnected many of our behaviours, relationships and ideas from our collective memory of their origins
and meaning.” (British Council's former intercultural dialogue guru Professor Mike Hardy writing in glossy December 2011 Eunic Yearbook on 'Europe's Foreign Cultural Relations' from a new professorial perch in Coventry. Sadly for him and for British Council some of us have long memories and are still demanding justice for the double-dealing and dishonesty at The British Council when he ran BC's DATS commercial op