And here I am over at Business and Politics, ingeniously linking the always interesting subject of Ambassadorial entertainment expenses to Human Rights:

Lurking at the back of an Ambassador’s mind is a new concern:

“What happens if I entertain that senior foreign colleague but a truculent Management Officer questions the value of the event or the amount I spent on it, and refuses to refund me the money?”

The paradigm has shifted. As has the Ultimate Decision.

The experienced policy-competent Ambassador no longer decides whether an event is in the national interest. The Management Officer (who has done no senior diplomatic/political work) now decides. A new cadre of junior Political Correctness Commissars is created, finally loyal to their own pathological anxieties about ‘getting into trouble’:

“My job is to get the best value for taxpayers – it’s not my job to risk being exposed in the Daily Mail for agreeing that one!”

How to challenge these people if they get obstructive? They can hide behind the (true) argument that ‘they are just doing their job’. Or horror! They play the bullying card, if an exasperated Ambassador crossly tells them to just shut up, refund the claim and obey orders.

This behavioural phenomenon is part of a wider disaster wrought by New Labour’s systematic attack on Authority in favour of Process…

Read the whole thing. Or not.