There is a reason the sun never set on the former British Empire.
25 Replies to “The Brits weren’t wrong.”
God wouldn’t trust an Englishman in the dark?
Without the French as neighbours the British would never had the ire to build an Empire.
and here we are decades later, and the brits are terminally stupid and the americans want to follow them down the Islamic toilet.
There is nothing unusual in writing character assessments of people in high (or low) places. The more honest the assessment the more one knows how to predict reactions. I had occasion to encounter Russians in the Soviet days and was expected to write up my impressions. No doubt, they wrote about me.
There is more truth in the Game of Thrones than anyone cares to admit. The problem today is that most voters are too stupid (as Ms. May once asserted)to recognize it. The Brits are past masters at the Great Game as Kipling once called it.
I glanced at that article and chuckled at how accurate the assessments were.
An accurate and profound understanding of the institutional corruption that followed after Turd the 1st’s imposition of french as an “official language”…
U.K. FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE DOCUMENTS
One memo on Quebec noted there was “a boorish uncouth element in French Canada manifested in corruption in government and business.”
Canada’s diplomatic corps also comes in for some harsh treatment in a report to the British foreign secretary from the high commissioner in Ottawa, John Wilson, the Second Baron of Moran. The Department of External Affairs was once “widely respected in the world,” Lord Moran wrote, but it had “undergone changes which are converting it all too rapidly into a huge, sluggish bureaucratic conglomerate, dominated by a French-Canadian mafia, ignorant of diplomacy, who have pushed aside the leading English-speaking professionals.”
Speaking of denigrating Canadian leaders, wasn’t it John F. Kennedy who said of John Diefenbaker that he never wanted to see that boring son-of-b..h again?
I believe that Dief thought JFK was young twerp.
Then I guess he agreed with Khrushchev on JFK.
Meanwhile our MPs hold apology votes for the cover of Macleans….
—————————————–
One memo on Quebec noted there was “a boorish uncouth element in French Canada manifested in corruption in government and business.”
Richard Hatfield collected dolls?? He and Mackenzie King – who corresponded with his dead mother would have made an interesting couple.
God granted JFK’s wish.
the best man to ever rule Britain was M Thatcher
It’s possible they were both right. (Personally I have more tolerance for boring old s.o.b.s than for young twerps, which is handy because now I am much more of the former than the latter.)
Joe Clark:
“Curiously stilted pomposity”
ha ha Overly generous I would say.
Too bad the article didn’t mention what the Brits thought of trudeau the elder – suggesting he possessed “unsound personal views.”
They had him pegged.
Richard Hatfield: collected dolls and little buoys.
I second that motion with Winnie a close second.
@Plainzfyre:
To be fair to Kennedy, he injured his back during WWII and it was a bother to him the rest of his life. Yes, he should have given the shovel to Dief.
Whatever we might think of JFK, he doesn’t deserve Plainzfyre’s nonsense.
He actually was a war hero (PT109) – a young navy officer who could have easily just sat the war out with the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington.
He had to pull all his father’s political connections to get in the US Navy in the first place since his pre-existing chronic lower-back pains made him ineligible for service (an earlier attempt to get in the US Army filed). There are plenty of privileged people who’d capitalize on the slightest medical condition to avoid war service. JFK was the opposite: a privileged person who was determined to serve regardless of his medical condition.
I’ll only add one thing about this: yawn.
Sure, there’s a voyeuristic pleasure in reading how the Brits viewed our political class back then. But of course, all countries produce diplomatic traffic. I’ve read more than a few of our own “diptels” reporting on the UK leadership in my time which, if revealed, could provide the British public with no less interesting glimpses.
As a Brit living in Canada,34 years now, I’d be interested in what the Canadian top guys thought about the pols in charge of the UK.
@JJM:
Thanks for the additional information. Well said. I had known of JFK’s history but had forgotten the details over the years.
God wouldn’t trust an Englishman in the dark?
Without the French as neighbours the British would never had the ire to build an Empire.
and here we are decades later, and the brits are terminally stupid and the americans want to follow them down the Islamic toilet.
There is nothing unusual in writing character assessments of people in high (or low) places. The more honest the assessment the more one knows how to predict reactions. I had occasion to encounter Russians in the Soviet days and was expected to write up my impressions. No doubt, they wrote about me.
There is more truth in the Game of Thrones than anyone cares to admit. The problem today is that most voters are too stupid (as Ms. May once asserted)to recognize it. The Brits are past masters at the Great Game as Kipling once called it.
I glanced at that article and chuckled at how accurate the assessments were.
And then we have this….
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/703200/Whitehall-hire-1900-extra-spies-protect-UK-terror-attack
An accurate and profound understanding of the institutional corruption that followed after Turd the 1st’s imposition of french as an “official language”…
U.K. FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE DOCUMENTS
One memo on Quebec noted there was “a boorish uncouth element in French Canada manifested in corruption in government and business.”
Canada’s diplomatic corps also comes in for some harsh treatment in a report to the British foreign secretary from the high commissioner in Ottawa, John Wilson, the Second Baron of Moran. The Department of External Affairs was once “widely respected in the world,” Lord Moran wrote, but it had “undergone changes which are converting it all too rapidly into a huge, sluggish bureaucratic conglomerate, dominated by a French-Canadian mafia, ignorant of diplomacy, who have pushed aside the leading English-speaking professionals.”
Speaking of denigrating Canadian leaders, wasn’t it John F. Kennedy who said of John Diefenbaker that he never wanted to see that boring son-of-b..h again?
I believe that Dief thought JFK was young twerp.
Then I guess he agreed with Khrushchev on JFK.
Meanwhile our MPs hold apology votes for the cover of Macleans….
—————————————–
One memo on Quebec noted there was “a boorish uncouth element in French Canada manifested in corruption in government and business.”
Richard Hatfield collected dolls?? He and Mackenzie King – who corresponded with his dead mother would have made an interesting couple.
God granted JFK’s wish.
the best man to ever rule Britain was M Thatcher
It’s possible they were both right. (Personally I have more tolerance for boring old s.o.b.s than for young twerps, which is handy because now I am much more of the former than the latter.)
Joe Clark:
“Curiously stilted pomposity”
ha ha Overly generous I would say.
I do recall when Kennedy came to visit Canada in 1961, and they asked the Prez. to help plant a tree on Parliament Hill. Typical socialist who had never done any hard work, JFK sprained his back. They should have left Dief, a Saskatchewan boy, handle the tree and let JFK play with the rake.
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/andrew-king-jfk-and-how-a-tree-planting-at-rideau-hall-rippled-through-history
Too bad the article didn’t mention what the Brits thought of trudeau the elder – suggesting he possessed “unsound personal views.”
They had him pegged.
Richard Hatfield: collected dolls and little buoys.
I second that motion with Winnie a close second.
@Plainzfyre:
To be fair to Kennedy, he injured his back during WWII and it was a bother to him the rest of his life. Yes, he should have given the shovel to Dief.
Whatever we might think of JFK, he doesn’t deserve Plainzfyre’s nonsense.
He actually was a war hero (PT109) – a young navy officer who could have easily just sat the war out with the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington.
He had to pull all his father’s political connections to get in the US Navy in the first place since his pre-existing chronic lower-back pains made him ineligible for service (an earlier attempt to get in the US Army filed). There are plenty of privileged people who’d capitalize on the slightest medical condition to avoid war service. JFK was the opposite: a privileged person who was determined to serve regardless of his medical condition.
I’ll only add one thing about this: yawn.
Sure, there’s a voyeuristic pleasure in reading how the Brits viewed our political class back then. But of course, all countries produce diplomatic traffic. I’ve read more than a few of our own “diptels” reporting on the UK leadership in my time which, if revealed, could provide the British public with no less interesting glimpses.
As a Brit living in Canada,34 years now, I’d be interested in what the Canadian top guys thought about the pols in charge of the UK.
@JJM:
Thanks for the additional information. Well said. I had known of JFK’s history but had forgotten the details over the years.