And bloviating bureaucrats! Recently disclosed letters from UK diplomats to their home office in London reveal the contempt and exasperation they harbored for their foreign hosts. To their credit, the supercilious officials sniffed equally impatiently at cocktail parties and the "stuffiness" of their own ministry.
LONDON – It's not exactly diplomatic – details of what British ambassadors really think about their foreign hosts were disclosed Sunday following the release of a series of frank, and sometimes outright rude, letters to London from embassies around the world.
Canadians are deeply unimpressive, Nigerians are maddening, Nicaraguans often dishonest and the Thais commonly lewd, British diplomats claim in notes sent to Britain's Foreign Office over the past five decades.
The letters were disclosed to the BBC under Freedom of Information laws.
Lord Moran, high commissioner in Ottawa between 1981 and 1984, claimed Canadians had limited talents.
"Anyone who is even moderately good at what they do – in literature, the theatre, skiing or whatever – tends to become a national figure. And anyone who stands out at all from the crowd tends to be praised to the skies and given the Order of Canada at once," Moran wrote in his letter, according to files released to the BBC.
The letters also reveal how diplomats were bored by endless rounds of cocktail parties, and exasperated by the British government's failure to shake off its stuffy image overseas.
Until 2006, ambassadors retiring from their post or moving country traditionally sent a valedictory dispatch to London, offering their candid personal assessment of the country in which they had served.
In a 1967 memo, Roger Pinsent, Britain's outgoing ambassador to Nicaragua, was scathing in his criticism.
"There is, I fear, no question that the average Nicaraguan is one of the most dishonest, unreliable, violent and alcoholic of the Latin Americans," Pinsent wrote.
Two years later, David Hunt – then high commissioner to Nigeria – said the West African country's leaders had "a maddening habit of always choosing the course of action which will do the maximum damage to their own interests."
"Africans as a whole are not only not averse to cutting off their nose to spite their face; they regard such an operation as a triumph of cosmetic surgery," Hunt claimed in his letter.
Anthony Rumbold, Britain's ambassador to Thailand from 1965 to 1967, mocked his hosts for an apparent lack of culture. "They have no literature, no painting and only a very odd kind of music; their sculpture, ceramics and dancing are borrowed from others, and their architecture is monotonous and interior decoration hideous," Rumbold wrote.
"Nobody can deny that gambling and golf are the chief pleasures of the rich, and that licentiousness is the main pleasure of them all," he said.
Other diplomats used their letters to criticize British bureaucracy, and the sometimes dull world of international relations.
The rest of the diplomatic report card here. I guess bureaucrats are the same everywhere – always pompous and mostly contemptuous of what they are in charge of overseeing. The Brits I suspect, are especially jaded. Although Nicaragua, Nigeria (and other African countries) and Thailand bear the brunt of bitter and hostile criticism, I find the condescending assessment of Canada as a nation satisfied with utter mediocrity, a withering low blow. Wonder if it will prompt Ottawa to opt out of the Commonwealth.
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