Charles Crawford at Blogoir (" A digital hybrid of blog and memoir presented on a daily basis, or not.") had kind words for a speech by UK Foreign Secretary William Hague.
Money quote(s):
"Here is what appears to be the first-ever speech by a UK Foreign Secretary (maybe the first-ever speech by any Foreign Minister) on consular work. And v effective it is too.
I have written here about some aspects of consular work under Labour, not least the appalling Three Ps which Ambassadors were ordered to emote at every opportunity"
He had written:
"If more than a handful of British citizens look to have been involved in a 'serious incident' (Note: defined at a very low level, eg a motorway car pile-up with say five deaths) the Ambassador personally is expected to drop everything (CAP reform, Climate Change, Terrorism) and go straight to the scene."
Seems more like public relations than anything actually useful; and doesn't exactly send the message that the regular consular staff are to be trusted, would it?
"Is not there something wrong here? Namely a complete loss of proportion?
Hundreds of thousands of British people travel in different parts of the world every day. Just by the forces of Bad Luck a tiny number will hit trouble, of whom a small proportion alas will get killed or injured.
Of those, a proportion will have suffered because they themselves messed up in one way or the other (not least ignoring FCO warnings).
Of these, some of them or their relatives will rush to whinge to the media about the FCO support they received, merely to assuage their own incompetence or guilt.
That's how it is."
Lots of folks run into misadventure or plain bad luck overseas. Just like they do at home, in fact. I used to tell visitors to a certain tropical holiday destination that they were no more in danger (or out of it) than they were at home, but the hazards took different forms than they were used to, so to take due care.
"(T)he effort and sheer ingenuity devoted to consular work by the FCO are in fact world class. Imaginative use of IT is combined with smart organisation at HQ and at posts to deliver a service going far beyond what most other countries aim for, let alone deliver. Labour did a lot to boost the whole operation following mixed experiences in dealing with the ghastly Bali Bombing. As always countries share consular responsibilities on an ad hoc basis. Here the Foreign Secretary tells the European Union not to mission creep its way into this policy/operational area, although one might ask quite why this stern warning makes sense: if we coordinate so many other areas of policy work with EU partners, why not this one?
For us consular services will always remain a national responsibility. Within the European Union, there is no role for EU institutions in defining the consular assistance that Member States should provide to their citizens, or in providing frontline consular assistance. These are matters for which national governments are accountable to their Parliaments and we will oppose EU competence creep in this area."
CAA's experience with British (and Canadian) consular folks has been uniformly positive. They share the same attitude that U.S. consular officials have about their primary mission of looking after our overseas citizens.
"(H)e adds some knockabout examples of the exotic expectations which some people have about what service HMG might reasonably offer. My own best example as Resident Clerk was someone calling the FCO from Texas in the middle of the night UK-time to ask about the rules for importing pets into the UK.
However, he might have been firmer on the subject of people who rush to the media to make high-profile complaints which the media lovingly endorse. Yes. some complaints will be justified, although they need to be set against the many letters of praise and gratitude. But others will be ridiculous and annoying, frothing up private unreasonableness to make a stupid selfish noise.
It also needs to be remembered that sometimes consular officials go far beyond any normal call of duty. Back in Belgrade in the early 1980s an Embassy officer had to deal with a terrible road accident involving a British family. Somehow the victim survived in a Yugoslav hospital, but the Embassy colleague kindly housed the distressed spouse for a couple of weeks as treatment continued until the injured person could be shipped back to UK."
Just to be clear, CAA's experience with consular training was that under no circumstances were we to take our "customers" into our own homes, for reasons of liability if no other.
More usually, consular officials will have good relationships with local hotels or shelters where something can be worked out for our citizen's particular circumstances. And I would take every opportunity to laud certain "corporate good citizens" for their support of American citizens in need.
"(N)ote in this speech a new and very welcome adjective, all the more welcome for being so wildly unexpected - courageous:
We need courageous people, who will travel to disaster areas, comfort the victims of violent crime and comb hospitals and morgues when our nationals are injured or killed overseas.
Blimey. Whatever next?"
Hmmm. "(C)ourageous." We don't usually think about it in those terms, but it's true to a certain extent. We just do what we think our duties require, and hope it's enough. That being said, whenever CAA has to visit a morgue when about his consular business, there's a certain amount of mental loin-girding that takes place beforehand.
