Another British company has had to learn the lesson that the British Council cannot be trusted, and had to realise that the state-sponsored organisation not yet grasped the difference between fair competition and theft. In this case we have a company that sought appropriate assistance, paying UKTI for their role and using the other taxpayer funded services of the British Council, in order to research and then set up an all UK educational exhibition - a first in Azerbaijan. So what did the British Council do next? The story is all here so I won't repeat it. But I feel anger and indignation that the British Council continues to be allowed to operate in this deeply dishonest way just to line its own pockets, even now 11 years after we first drew attention to such behaviour.
These ensuing 11 years have revealed that the British Council is in effect licensed to act dishonestly, to poach the business of genuine enterprise, to leach on others' initiatives, to steal ideas and above all to undermine the efforts of others in order better to help themselves (and they can organise cyphers with titles to have all that officially denied as well). That license is granted by the FCO (who wouldn't know how to spell enterprise, much less understand what it is), the hopeless FAC, the inert NAO and PAC, and the ever indulgent and supine Charity Commission. Plus support groups in the Commons and the Lords, chums at the Beeb and so on. And the so-called trustees of the British Council - "trustee" being yet another concept to have lost its value in 21st century Britain - are all parti pris. The institutions are not to be trusted and there exists no apparent democratic means to address the outrage. Bad stuff.
Sickening, David.
Posted by: Jane | May 08, 2013 at 08:23 AM
My goodness. This is very bad.
Posted by: John | May 20, 2013 at 05:14 PM