My friend/landlady got back from an international camp hosted by Woodcraft Folk today, bringing together 'thousands of children and young people from across the world for ten days of camping, co-operation and friendship'. Ten participants from Senegal's equivalent organisation were supposed to be there but only two were. The British Embassy in Dakar didn't get round to issuing the other visas.

I shared a meal with the one Senegalese adult this evening and he talked about the passports having been 'confiscated' by the British Embassy. Of course they weren't - no country (as far as I know) can confiscate a passport issued by another country - but I completely understand why it felt like that: another member of the aspiring delegation had to cancel a business trip to Paris because he was unable to retrieve his passport from the British bureaucratic morass.

At least the UK no longer claims to be teaching good governance to the rest of the world.