We're not having a Chinese banquet just noisettes of lamb he said
"We're not having a Chinese banquet, just noisettes of lamb," he said. "Only a few firms are cleared to cater at the Foreign Office, and the one we chose didn't have anything so exotic on its sample menus."Some veterans of the Peking siege cannot make it. Sir Len Appleyard is the present ambassador in Peking, Sir John Weston, our man at the UN, is chairing the Security Council this month, and Sir Percy Cradock, Mr Patten's arch-critic, is away. Sir Ray Whitney, Conservative MP for Wycombe, was among the 23 diplomats and support staff in the British embassy on the night of 22 August 1967. An ultimatum to the British embassy in Peking was rejected, and its staff prepared for trouble.What followed will be remembered by most of the 51 people assembling in the opulent Locarno Room of the Foreign Office for a commemorative dinner on Wednesday. The Indonesian embassy in Peking had been sacked and burned, the Mongolian ambassador's car set on fire and the Soviet embassy invaded. Britain became the target when the authorities in Hong Kong, determined to stop the mass demonstrations there, closed Communist newspapers and charged some of their journalists with inciting and participating in violence.
Later research has shown that in some cases Red Guards ate the bodies of their victims. In 1967 the frenzy began to be directed against foreigners. All over China "counter-revolutionary elements" were being "struggled" - in other words, anyone holding any authority, appearing to have middle-class tendencies or simply not showing enough fervour was liable to be publicly humiliated, beaten or killed out of hand. While Chris Patten recovers in France from five years of Chinese vituperation, a group of people gathering at the Foreign Office later this week would say the former Governor of Hong Kong had it easy. It is one thing to be called a "tango dancer" and "Triple Violator" by the New China News Agency; another altogether to be kicked and beaten by a mob of Red Guards screaming "Kill! Kill!" Thirty years ago this week Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution was at its height.
But some cigar stock holdings fell last month when the Wall Street Journal reported that public health advocates were targeting the trend.Health-conscious San Francisco has already plunged in. Late last year the city health department launched an advertising campaign showing cigars being swept into a pooper-scooper "They look like what they smell like," it urged "Don't put them in your mouth.". Though they can cause mouth cancer, cigars only multiply users' chances of developing lung cancer by about three, it is reported, compared with 20 times for cigarettes. This may have something to do with the fact that her husband Bill is occasionally seen with a stogie in his hand. He cannot light up in the office since Hillary banned smoking in the White House, but it is alleged that most of the time he simply chews on them.