Sorry and sad?

“We are sorry.”

“We” is News International, and in the course of one well-crafted apology – and would you expect anything less from a consummate newspaperman? – Rupert Murdoch used the S-word three times (once “deeply”), offered us “regret”, acknowledged “the serious wrongdoing that occurred” and committed (but without quite saying it) his organisation to “live up to this” (the idea of a free and open press) and to taking “further concrete steps to resolve these issues and make amends”.

As apologies go (and we after all live in the age of the incontinent apology) it ticked nearly all the boxes.

But is it authentic?

It is never just the words, but the context that is important. Not just the sorry bit, but much more – not least the taking of responsibility and the commitment (whether express or implied) not to do whatever you are apologising about again.

And that is the bit I missed.

And “Sorry and sad”? 19th century rhyming slang for “bad”.

Whisky Tango Foxtrot

Quite what Andy McNab would have made of the fiasco in eastern Libya is anyone’s guess, and, given the reluctance of our Special Forces to disclose any information at all, we are unlikely to hear very much more.

What is astonishing is how very 19th century it all seems.

A Chinook (if it was a Chinook – it may just be that that is the stock image the BBC uses when a large helicopter is involved) is not a gun boat, but the idea of sending an armed diplomatic party to parlay with the natives (without telling them first) is so very Empire.

And a “serious misunderstanding” (William Hague in the House of Commons) a perfect example of diplomatic language.

Blair Take 2 (Friday)

Richard Norton-Taylor excellent in guardian.co.uk this evening on new evidence from Lord Goldsmith: Chilcot inquiry: Blair shut me out says former legal chief, Lord Goldsmith

I was particularly struck by,

The document contains a handwritten note by [Sir David] Manning [Blair’s foreign policy adviser], warning: “Clear advice from attorney on need for further resolution.” Blair scrawled in the margin: “I just don’t understand this.”

Didn’t get it then, doesn’t get it now, probably never will.

And as for Lord Goldsmith, read the late Tom Bingham’s analysis in The Rule of Law, pages 120 – 129.

Acts of the Apostles, chapter 20, verse 35?

The Church of England is sometimes remarkably inept.

A good example of entirely failing to get it is Exeter Cathedral’s Christmas lunch for its Volunteer Stewards and Guides. These are the people who, for most of us, are the face of the Cathedral. As the Cathedral website says,

Exeter Cathedral, like all cathedrals, relies on its team of Volunteers Stewards and Guides to welcome visitors and provide guided tours throughout the year. Their role is one of public relations and as such they are ambassadors on the Cathedral’s behalf. The time and dedication of them all cannot be praised highly enough.

And there are a fair number of them – some 90 or so.

But far fewer will have gone to the Christmas lunch today, as the Cathedral asked each of them who wanted to go for £12.50 for a buffet lunch and one glass of wine. And for a number of them this was simply too much.

What a way to thank people for a year of service.

Cultural differences always make it a “little bit sticky”

An article by Ed Crooks and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in today’s FT points up the difficulty that BP has had in finding “the right tone to fit America’s emotional register”,

That climate of opinion [ where even Barack Obama has been attacked for failing to show enough emotion, and pushed by the US media to show how angry he is] makes it particularly damaging for BP to appear to be making light of the disaster.

Mr Hayward has been the target of many of the attacks on BP, becoming the “most hated and clueless man in America” according to the New York Daily News, after a string of inflammatory remarks.

Some of the comments for which he has been criticised have been entirely defensible, such as his admission to the Financial Times that BP lacked the engineering capability to tackle a blown-out well in deep water. Others have been crass and insensitive, such as his observation that “I’d like my life back,” for which he was forced to apologise on Facebook.

He has a British tendency to make a joke or smile to try to defuse tension, which has made it look as though he does not understand the gravity of the situation.

It was that last paragraph that really caught my eye.

Being a Brit I understand only too well that approach; after all, it is a stock-in-trade for most of us this side of the Atlantic.

But cultural differences have been a perennial source of misunderstanding for Britons when dealing with Americans. A telling example was at the height of the Korean War, in April 1951, when men from 1st Battalion, the Gloucestershire Regiment were holding a key ford over the Imjin River. They found themselves heavily outnumbered by the Chinese, who had sent an entire division of 10,000 men against their 650.

A day and a half into the action, surrounded and with ammunition and supplies running low, they were in imminent danger of being overrun. An American, Maj-Gen Robert H Soule, asked the British brigadier, Thomas Brodie: “How are the Glosters doing?”

As reported in an article in the Daily Telegraph on the 50th anniversary of the battle,

the brigadier, schooled in British understatement, replied: “A bit sticky, things are pretty sticky down there.” To American ears, this did not sound too desperate.

The Glosters lost 622 men and officers to death, injury or captivity.