Sir Mark Lyall Grant was born with so many silver spoons in his mouth it is a miracle he didn’t choke. The National Security Adviser is, surprise surprise, an Old Etonian. He is also one of the nastiest people I have ever met.
In 1999 within the FCO he tried to remove me from my position as Deputy High Commissioner in Accra because, in a speech at an anti-corruption conference, I had stated that British firms too were sometimes involved in corruption. My speech had in fact been cleared in advance by DFID, and I survived. But Lyall Grant was dismissive of my argument that it was intellectually bankrupt to attend anti-corruption conferences and pretend corruption was just something foreigners did. In a very frosty interview, he told me my job was to promote British interests, not promote the truth.
I survived Lyall Grant’s attack only by appealing to the Head of the Diplomatic Service, John (now Lord) Kerr, in a minute in which I complained directly of Grant’s unpleasantly aristocratic attitude towards me, and used Hazlitt’s words about Byron applied to Lyall Grant “This spoil’d child of fortune…”. The entire episode was published in detail in my memoir “The Catholic Orangemen of Togo.”
Lyall Grant is now National Security Adviser and made responsible by Cameron for persuading Labour MPs to bomb Syria. A disagreement has arisen tonight over whether he admitted or not that a great many of the “70,000” are “extreme Islamists”.
But one thing that should be very well understood, is that I can personally testify that Mark Lyall Grant has no respect for or attachment to the truth. He directly told me that furthering the British interest is more important than truth. In that case, he was taking the interest of corrupt British companies – especially BAE – as being identical with the national interest.
In the current case, I have no doubt he will be conflating the interest of his fellow old Etonians in government and again of the arms industry with the national interest. I can guarantee nothing will pass his lips undistorted to suit that agenda.
That a truly obnoxious man like Mark Lyall Grant is such a senior official is the most complete proof you could have of the rottenness of the United Kingdom.
Rotten to the core. What can we do?
C’mon Craig – get off the fence! Tell us what you really think of the man! 🙂
I now remember his wifelet Sheila, with another diplomat’s wife, talking down to President Assad’s English wife.
UN ambassador wives in peace plea to Syria’s Asma Assad
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17753841
As you see, the BBC put the boot in too.
Sam Cam never purchases luxury goods. She only flogs them to rich Saudis.
http://www.biography.com/people/samantha-cameron-20937113
and ‘Dave’ as she calls him, never harms any children. Just delegates that job to the poor bloody infantry.
And I see too that Cameron has today resorted to calling Corbyn a “terrorist sympathiser”.
So we now we know he’s definitely out of arguments.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/many-of-david-camerons-70000-moderate-syrian-fighters-are-actually-radical-islamists-it-is-claimed-a6756256.html
Well who’d have guessed it !!
Is being a terrorist sympathizer one of the newly created crimes?
Andrei Vishinsky, I think your talents are needed.
So Sir Mark has only been in post since September. All part of the scheduled plan to wage war we presume.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/national-security-adviser-appointment-sir-mark-lyall-grant
Sir Kim Darroch whom Lyall Grant replaced, is off to Amerika as UK Ambassador in January.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11815169/David-Camerons-national-security-adviser-to-be-new-ambassador-to-US.html
He didn’t go to Eton. :O)
Stooges all.
Darroch isn’t even Oxbridge. He went to the University of Durham. I guess he had to go. How could he be trusted?
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/01/us-military-expeditionary-force-isis-iraq-syria
Repost from previous thread and relevant in our unseemly rush to a vote on Wednesday .
Washington and London still unable to coordinate news releases . A diplomatic ‘ friendly-fire ‘ accident ?
Felicity Arbuthnot was on Lyall Grant’s case in August 2012. He was at the UN then.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/08/historic-hypocrisy-un-backed-rogue-states-plan-syrias-slaughter/
and on the pair of them in April of that year
http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-regime-change-united-nations-duplicity-kofi-annan-and-diplomats-wives/30535
She describes him as ‘humanity deficient’. LOL
Craig
You mentioned John Kerr. I should be interested to hear your opinion of him (as was, I mean).
Kim Darroch took a third at Durham. But he is as intelligent as others with firsts and several higher degrees. And a good bloke.
Andrei Vishinsky AND Vasiliy Ulrikh would be even better.
I had and still have a high opinion of John Kerr.
Habbakuk’s painful social insecurities are among her most endearing traits. Hard as he tries to be a shadowy Internet spectre, the poor dumb chav can’t help trying to prove he’s in with the in crowd, as with this poignant invocation of his social superior Darroch. His idol Darroch himself seems less keen on obsessive internet one-upmanship, perhaps because he has a job and a life.
@Monteverdi
1 Dec, 2015 – 9:15 pm
Note the timing of the news report you cite. We’re being softened-up for a full blown war in Syria, which will be against the Russians.
Although the UK’s contribution to American imperialism will be diddly squat, in political terms the vote in Parliament tomorrow has some importance.
By forcing people to think about Syria in terms of “good and evil”, “us and them”, and “to bomb or not to bomb”, the managers of UK public opinion don’t want us to think about the larger context of events in the Middle East, especially western imperialism which has dominated the region for over 100 years, with Britain, France and more recently the US ruling these lands directly or backing corrupt local tyrants who have looted their countries and prevented economic development. Is it any wonder that some people there are filled with rage and despair and turn to violent fanatics promising deliverance?
In 1898, the US declared war on Spain in order to “liberate” Cuba from Spanish colonial rule. Today, the US and its followers are waging war against Syria in order to “liberate” that country (from its current President and/or “terrorists” and/or the Russians).
Here’s what happened in Cuba during the 63 years after it was freed from Spanish rule:
“(The US) dominated the economic life of the island by controlling, directly or indirectly, the sugar industry, and by overtly and covertly preventing any dynamic modification of the island’s one-crop economy. It defined clear and narrow limits on the island’s political system. It tolerated the use of torture and terror, of fraud and force, by Cuba’s rulers. But it intervened with economic and diplomatic pressure and with force of arms, when Cubans threatened to transgress the economic and political restrictions established by American leaders.”
From “The Tragedy of American Diplomacy” by William Appleman Williams (1959).
The same John Kerr who’s on the steering committee of the Bilderberg group, and he sits on the committee of the Trilateral commission, he was also a director of Royal Dutch Shell, not to mention a director of Rio Tinto.
If it’s the same John Kerr, the must have very good connections indeed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kerr,_Baron_Kerr_of_Kinlochard
Craig
I am pleased to hear that.
Debretts Guide, etc
“His idol Darroch himself seems less keen on obsessive internet one-upmanship, perhaps because he has a job and a life”
_______________
You sound as if you know Kim. What’s your opinion of him?
I doubt if a GCHQ functionary would have much contact with a high-ranking ambassador. On the other hand, isn’t MI6 part of the Foreign Office, and don’t its officers often operate under diplomatic cover?
Does anyone know what happened to a post of mine from Before it’s News? It does not mention John Kerr or Sir Mark Lyall Grant but it is concerned with security. Frankly I don’t think we will be major players in any forthcoming policy over Syria. What the report did contain was two South Front videos about recent action in Syria not yet made publicly available.
Sir Mark Lyall Grant was born with so many silver spoons in his mouth it is a miracle he didn’t choke. The National Security Adviser is, surprise surprise, an Old Etonian. He is also one of the nastiest people I have ever met.
He will fit in well with all the odious bastards in the Tory cabinet then. Cameron and co have been itching to bomb Syria for at least 2 years. The Foreign Affairs Select Committee are against air strikes in Syria, and it has a majority of Tory MPs on it.
John,
if you could separate out the Syrian videos from the looneytunes stuff about secret bunkers for the world elite in Morocco, that would be good.
Craig, I would if I could, but I cannot find any means of separating them. They appear to be embedded.
“He will fit in well with all the odious bastards in the Tory cabinet then. Cameron and co have been itching to bomb Syria for at least 2 years. The Foreign Affairs Select Committee are against air strikes in Syria, and it has a majority of Tory MPs on it.”
Things move fast in wars and two years is a very long time.
Two years ago regime change was the object but not any more, if Assad is overthrown ISIS will move in and take over that is for sure and as much as we don’t like Assad we don’t like ISIS a lot more.
I don’t know just why they do want to bomb Syria, it probably has more to do with David Cameron’s ego than military strategy but I think regime change in Syria is well and truly not on the cards.
The prime minister called on them not to “sit on their hands” and side with Jeremy Corbyn and others he labelled “a bunch of terrorist sympathisers”.
Obviously getting rattled.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34980061
Iraq’s response to the news that Obama is sending US special forces;
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2015/12/01/U-S-deploying-specialized-expeditionary-force-to-back-Iraq-Carter.html
Indeed, Mary – quite the transfer device, eh? Associate those not in favour of a fresh new bombing campaign with “terrorist sympathisers”. Classy stuff.
The Lib Dems, with their 7 MPs and exciting new leader (what’s his name again?) are on the side of bombing, crawling into bed yet again with Cameron. That’s the sort of bold thinking which will get the Lib Dems back with healthy numbers at the next election, you mark my words.
It would be great if Labour arranged a coup d’état and voted against Cameron. He had to resign. The LibDem are voting with him. The lying cowards. The Labour Party are finished if Cameron wins. Vote all the corrupt liars out.