The modern FCO like other British government departments is awash with ever-changing objectives/targets/priorities/strategies/goals, or whatever new jargon word they plan to seize on.  

In some deep sense a Plot has been Lost – such protean schemes show a striking inability to cope systematically with reality.

Regardless of what the latest dizzy jargon word is, one practical result is that every diplomat is instructed to focus relentlessly on his/her immediate targets, to the exclusion of marginal or less important work. This means activity which can be measured!

Ideally only that.

Nothing else.

One traditional part of an Ambassador’s role has been to ‘sell’ not only British goods and services but also a sense of the British way of life. This is necessarily immeasurable and so, according to FCO/Treasury thinking these days, basically a waste of time and resources.

Take the Marie Curie Great 500 fund-raiser in 2006. This all arose from my being alerted to the fact that in 2004 Edwina Currie was leading a group of some 100 intrepid British cyclists on a Polish charity bike ride from Krakow to Warsaw to raise money for Marie Curie Cancer Care – one point of course being that Marie Curie was born as Maria Sklodowska in Poland.

I duly invited this happy but exhausted group to the Residence for a drink to celebrate their excellent initiative. And when I heard that they expected to raise some 200,000 pounds, I asked why they did not set up five such groups and raise one million instead – the world’s first Million Pound Bike-Ride? If they did so, I would take part myself(!).

Edwina was struck by this reckless ambitious thought. And so after a formidable organizational job by Marie Curie’s team, it happened that in September 2006 well over 400 British cyclists plus myself starting in different centres in five separate wobbling groups set off on a 500km ride towards Warsaw.

Suffice to say that I completed this ordeal and took a week’s leave to do so. But only by applying amazing quantities of Vaseline to obscure and rude parts of my anatomy which I previously had not known I possessed.

This expedition allowed us all to see the glorious early autumn Polish countryside. And last sighted it had raised close to 1.5 million pounds – well beyond the organizers’ best hopes.

So, Ministers.

Isn’t doing stuff like this now and again – selling to foreigners a fine example of Best of British voluntary work plus helping inspire the raising of a huge sum for a vital British charity – also a worthwhile diplomatic Objective?