Skip to main content

How (not) to win friends

I see DC managed to infuriate the Lithuanians through a rather crass remark over the weekend.

On the one hand it seems a bit petty to get cross, but on the other there are 100,000 Lithuanians who Cameron clearly thinks are a bunch of layabout dole scroungers.

In fact they are mostly hard working, church going types.

Judging by this letter, they may have a sense of humour too:

"Dear Editor,

I see that David Cameron has suggested that one legged Lithuanian lesbians should not receive lottery or Arts Council grants.

I am pretty surprised that such bias can be openly expressed by a British Political leader in this day and age.

Admittedly, no one in the 100,000 strong Lithuanian community currently resident in the UK is aware of any one legged lesbians amongst us.

However, we are sure that should such a person exist and they had the relevant artistic talent then they would receive their grant based on the same criteria that a one legged lesbian Conservative would, namely through the quality of their work.

Lithuanians in the UK are often well qualified and working at the highest levels. Amongst our small business people is an exceptional group of hard working entrepreneurs- we are not the kind of people who ask for hand-outs, no matter how they may be deserved under your system. Indeed most of us during our stay do try to contribute to our host nation, through a myriad of church and community groups.

Perhaps Mr. Cameron should pay a visit to our beautiful country, where he will find one legged folk to be pretty rare, but where artists and performers are of exceptional quality even without the support of the British Arts Council.

Yours

Denis Serebriakovas"

Touche, Mr. Cameron...

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hmm I seem to recall you thinking that Poles who chose to make their homes here permanently were guilty of inertia. Et tu Consul...


Lepidus
Anonymous said…
Mention of Lithuania puts me in mind of a friend of mine.
Anonymous said…
"Serebriakov-as", eh? Doesn't sound particularly Lithuanian to me.

Popular posts from this blog

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop

Media misdirection

In the small print of the UK budget we find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British Finance Minister) has allocated a further 15 billion Pounds to the funding for the UK track and trace system. This means that the cost of the UK´s track and trace system is now 37 billion Pounds.  That is approximately €43 billion or US$51 billion, which is to say that it is amount of money greater than the national GDP of over 110 countries, or if you prefer, it is roughly the same number as the combined GDP of the 34 smallest economies of the planet.  As at December 2020, 70% of the contracts for the track and trace system were awarded by the Conservative government without a competitive tender being made . The program is overseen by Dido Harding , who is not only a Conservative Life Peer, but the wife of a Conservative MP, John Penrose, and a contemporary of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford. Many of these untendered contracts have been given to companies that seem to have no notewo

KamiKwasi brings an end to the illusion of Tory economic competence

After a long time, Politics seems to be getting interesting again, so I thought it might be time to restart my blog. With regard to this weeks mini budget, as with all budgets, there are two aspects: the economic and the political. The economic rationale for this package is questionable at best. The problems of the UK economy are structural. Productivity and investment are weak, infrastructure is under-invested and decaying. Small businesses are going to the wall and despite entrepreneurship being relatively strong in Britain, self-employment is increasingly unattractive. Red tape since Brexit has led to a significant fall in exports and the damage has been disproportionately on small businesses. Literally none of these problems are being addressed by this package. Even if the package were to stimulate some kind of short term consumption-led growth boom, this is unlikely to be sustainable, not least because what is being added on the fiscal side will be need to be offset, to a great de