I'm so pleased you said this, SK, because I was beginning to think I'd became a sniper from the sidelines who sees less and less good about his original homeland? On the other hand, having just reread Peter Hopkirk's THE GREAT GAME it's tempting to believe that slipshod governance in Britain isn't merely a C20th phenomenon, but a grand old British tradition?
Reading the account of the Younghusband campaign (1904) to invade Tibet militarily (something our marvellous British parliamentarians had thought a wizard wheeze at the time) is one of the most depressing things I can imagine. After the assault on Guru (50 miles from Gyangtse, on the road from what is now Everest Base Camp), when Younghusband's men gunned-down 700 monks armed with flintlocks, one of his subalterns wrote in a letter home "I hope I shall never again be asked to machine-gun
men who were walking away".
But "timid" and "bungling" certainly ring true for me. Two months now after the Burmese monks demonstrated, what has Mr Broon done? Well, he has wrung his hands. He has "called for action". But he himself has taken no action at all. The "Myanmar" Embassy in London remains intact with all its staff in place (although Mr Milliband found himself able to expel four Russian diplomats three months earlier, for reasons he couldn't really explain except that he scored Brownie Points with George for it). Myanmar still banks in the City Of London (goodness me, we don't want to let wishy-washy things like human rights get in the way of banking...).
The latest, of course, is Britain's eager rush to bomb Iran. Mr Milliband supports the idea completely. Of course I'm sure that his being a jew with an American wife, and spending every free moment in America doesn't influence his position as British Foreign Secretary.
But bungling and corruption are not confined to one party. I read at the weekend that Jonathan Aitken, that pillar of rectitude, is being brought back into the Conservative Party to spearhead, errr... "Prison Reform". I'm sure he had a chance to chat to his old friend King Saud during his recent visit, too.
UPDATE:
Oh fer heaven's sake, look at this... [smiley of beating self over head with a mallet]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7091454.stm
