One of the cancelled BBC World Services.
Five British Overseas Territories (six with Bermuda) and, assuming that it is heard in Belize, nine Commonwealth Realms.
Plus, assuming that it is heard in Guyana, another three Commonwealth countries, all with as many other ties to Britain as you could possibly want. Until now.
Nor is the expanding Commonwealth's cause much helped these days by the cancellation of Portuguese for Africa. Never mind that of Hindi.
Even Denis MacShane is not wrong all the time.
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So all they get is Voice of America, the country that treats the BOTs in the West Indies as sovereign states when it comes to dispersing Gitmo detainees.
ReplyDeleteSee another of your posts today about what has become of the FO (it probably does not want to mention the C) and see the comments about why that has happened.
Back when there was a Commonwealth Office, did it partially fund the World Service? I hope so. These decisions could never have been made if there still were such an Office and it were (still?) involved in that way.
ReplyDeleteWhich is most telling: that the last Secretary of State for the Commonwealth sat in Harold Wilson's Cabinet, that he later joined the SDP, or that he chaired the Independent Broadcasting Authority, a very concept now as unimaginable as that of the Commonwealth Office, before Margaret Thatcher destroyed it?
How sad that he had to be a European Commissioner in the meantime, and that he ended his life as a Lib Dem. But no such blemishes marked or mark the record of George Cunningham. If he had become a Lib Dem, or joined New Labour, then he would have had a peerage by now.
Ed Miliband could send several important signals by sending to the Crossbenches, to which Cameron has sent Richard Dannatt, probably the most effective backbencher of his generation, and certainly the erstwhile Labour Party Commonwealth Officer who went on to become the Eurosceptical and Unionist conscience of the SDP, very nearly kept his seat in 1983, uniquely very nearly regained it in 1987, has remained involved in the study of Parliament, and never joined either New Labour (defunct) or the Lib Dems (defunct).
Why doesn't Miliband do some healing by giving peerages to those ex-SDP MPs still alive who never joined the Lib Dems? There are not many left. Sorry, a bit off topic.
ReplyDeleteIf you are who I think you are, then you are a lot better-placed than I to progress that one.
ReplyDelete