Update: Welcome Iain Dale readers, although all credit or discredit for what follows goes to the author of the lively passages below, namely Jamie Stokes, "an English person with bafflingly unclear motives for living in Poland".

Here is a droll account of a visit to a not very British Embassy in Warsaw:

I fondly imagined I would be ushered into a book lined study by a retired sergeant major where I would have a cosy fireside chat with a Sir Humphrey Appleby look-alike. We would ostentatiously drink tea with milk, munch jammy dodgers and roll our eyes about Poland without a hint of justification.

I was a tad disappointed. Her Majesty’s Civil Service appears to have taken the view that the best image to present to the rest of the world is a recreation of a British dole office rather than, say, anything else. There were far more bolted-down plastic chairs and “assault-proof service positions” than I had expected and far fewer leather-backed chairs and book-lined studies.

I had a heart-sinking moment. Poland’s bureaucratic offices may be famously shambolic but at least they don’t treat all members of the public as probable knife-wielding loons.

More:

There didn’t appear to be a British person anywhere in the building. The receptionist was Polish, the security guard was Polish and the women behind the bullet-proof glass were Polish. The “service providers,” as I’m afraid they are probably called, were of that rare and strangely annoying breed of Pole who have practiced their pronunciation to the point where they sound like terminal laryngitis sufferers…

I wish I could blame the unhelpfulness of the strangulated ladies on Polish genetics, but it was clear they had been mercilessly trained in a modern British version of unhelpfulness that required them to refer you to the embassy website every other word. It was intensely annoying.

Read on…