Our boys teach Libya the art of war waffle
British power in North Africa is not just about selling arms to emerging democracies. We are also doing something really devilish: teaching their elites to speak like management consultants.
The Ministry of Defence discloses, in a parliamentary answer, that it has been teaching English to Libyan military officers.
British training would once have entailed a few weeks at the SAS base near Hereford, showing them how to blow up bridges, liquidate despots with exploding socks, etc. Today, the emphasis is on teaching them jargon.
Benghazi to Wiltshire: The MoD is providing English lessons for Libyan army officers
Fourteen lieutenant-colonels were in April given business-English lessons at the Janzour Naval Academy, Tripoli, and two commanders have been on a management course in Cairo. A similar course was held in Malta.
In March, two Libyan colonels were sent to the Defence Academy in Shrivenham, Wilts, to study ‘managing defence in the wider security context’.
A further three senior officers in the Libyan forces were sent to HMS Collingwood for a course teaching them the euphemisms, abbreviations and Plodspeak favoured by Western bodyguards.
The HQ Land Warfare Centre in Warminster, Wilts, has drummed border management procedures into three colonels and a lieutenant-colonel, while two more Libyan lieutenant-colonels were packed off to Cranfield University for ‘Managing Defence in a Democracy’.
More from Quentin Letts for the Daily Mail...
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- Angela Rayner is at the walking-corpse stage in this political stink: QUENTIN LETTS watches PMQs 17/04/24
- Truss was smokin'! Even though she takes a while to catch light and can leave an acrid taste: QUENTIN LETTS watches MPs debate the smoking ban 16/04/24
- QUENTIN LETTS: We can guess who plenty of Labour MPs would cheer in an Israel-Iran penalty shoot-out 15/04/24
- QUENTIN LETTS: The BBC cares more about Asian aunties from Bradford and a rapper called Big Zuu than it does about the Greatest Story Ever Told 26/03/24
- 'Are you part of the deep state, Prime Minister?' And for once Rishi's answer was quite witty... QUENTIN LETTS watches the PM at the liaison committee 26/03/24
- A Tawny Owl admonishing her Brownies about their marshmallow toasting skills would have sounded more stern than the Deputy PM: QUENTIN LETTS watches MPs discuss the China hacking threat 25/03/24
- QUENTIN LETTS: The new Lady Smith, 28, swore allegiance to the King's 'hairs', signed the register and slapped down her pen as if she'd just filled in her Lottery numbers 21/03/24
- A minister was plonked between Rishi Sunak the veggie and carnivorous Penny Mordaunt: QUENTIN LETTS watches PMQs 20/03/24
- VIEW FULL ARCHIVE
A Libyan first lieutenant has been to York to learn ‘British military English’, and a naval lieutenant underwent the same at Dartmouth.
Is it wise to let the Royal Navy teach our allies English? One shudders to think what salty slang will now be heard along the Maghreb.
Six Libyan NCOs started this week at De Montfort University for a year’s course in ‘Bespoke English’. English as she is bespoke.
The idea, clearly, is to get to know men who may one day lead Libya. But will it work?
My friend Jo Xuereb-Brennan, a retired schoolmaster, did his best to teach English to young Libyan officers in Benghazi in the Sixties. One of them was a certain M. Gaddafi.
After me, everyone: A is for Assassin, B is for Bullet, C is for Corruption . . .
Lord Prescott is still chewing his fist about claims he lived high on the hog on an official trip to Australia. He alleges dirty doings by Whitehall Tories. One moment, please. I learn that Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood (no Tory, he!) has written to Lord Prescott, assuring him that there was no such conspiracy. What a pity Prescott has not made public Sir Jeremy’s letter.
To the Commons Speaker falls the duty of selecting Parliament’s Christmas cards. Designs chosen this year by uxorious Squeaker Bercow include an oil painting by Edwardian artist Bertha Newcombe. Distinctly unChristmassy, it shows a scene from the 19th-century campaign for Women’s Suffrage.
Journalists have recently been attacked by MPs for taking political acquaintances to dinner. But what is this? I hear the Commons Treasury Select Committee recently wined and dined with Stephen Hester, top man at the Royal Bank of Scotland. He is one of the people the committee has interrogated on bankers’ excesses. The dinner was apparently most convivial. No doubt it was in Mr Hester’s interests to make it so. But is such social contact wise for MPs?
Why do Lefties hate Downton?
Bafflement: The Ladies of Downton Abbey
One of the admirable things about ITV’s Downton Abbey is the espirit de corps of the cast.
Bien-pensant actor and satirist David Mitchell has just made an internet clip rubbishing the costume drama, calling it ‘bonkers’ and ‘completely nuts’.
He should not go anywhere near Highclere Castle, Berks, where the series is made.
His comments have caused bafflement among the show’s actors, many of whom thought of Mitchell as ‘one of us’. Why do people sneer so at Downton? Envy. It’s a Left-wing thing.
Going grey: Fiona Bruce
A grey area...
Men are getting it in the neck following the complaint of newcaster Fiona Bruce (right) that at 48 she must dye her hair to get on telly. Is this fair? My wife dyes her hair. I tell her not to bother.
‘My empress,’ I say. ‘You are even more beautiful with grey hair.’
‘Good grief!’ she snorts. ‘You don’t think I dye it for you, do you? I dye it because I don’t want other mothers at the school gate thinking I’ve let myself go.’
Boris Johnson is still pushing the Olympics propaganda with posters on the London Underground. The latest says: ‘Thanks to the Games, the next generation of champions have a great new velodrome to practice in.’ If Boris insists on wasting public money on such posters, he might at least tell his advertising agents the verb is ‘practise’.
Trouble brews
Last week, I mentioned that arts journalist Miriam Gross, in her memoirs, takes a pop at former Observer editor Donald Trelford for admiring chesty girls. I now hear that Comrade Trelford will be reviewing the Gross book for a forthcoming issue of the British Journalism Review.
As the old tune went (everyone do a trembly Fred Astaire voice, please): ‘There may be trouble ahead . . .’
Dead certs for the Funeral Oscars
Bournemouth has just held a ‘Joy of Death’ festival, ‘celebrating the people who work in the funeral industry’. One high point was the ‘Funeral Oscars’: there was ‘Embalmer of the Year’ and ‘Gravedigger of the Year’ (a Kent man with the apt name of Bernard Underdown).
Guest speakers included a former Fleet Street obituary writer, David Twiston Davies. He told festivalgoers of the time the Daily Telegraph’s then editor, Sir Max Hastings, issued stern instructions that the cause of death be included in editorial obits. That very day, a celebrated jazz trumpeter died. Mr Twiston Davies recalled: ‘The unfortunate fellow, in those pre-Viagra days, had been operated on to restore the strength between his legs, only for the stitches to come apart in an explosion.’
The fatal eruption of this penile implant was duly reported. Twiston Davies: ‘We didn’t hear so much about giving reasons of death after that.’
