FORGIVE me for the melancholy, but this week has not been good for Britain's image.
The new Jaguar car was launched. What should have been a British celebration was marred by the fact that Jaguar is now owned by Ford and is therefore really American.
It also has one delightful feature missing - the leaping Jaguar has gone from the hood, not so much for its safety problems but because vandalism is now so rife in Britain that the manufacturers believed they would just be wrenched off by yobs.
Then the French Institute for International Relations, a government-funded organisation, devoted more than a quarter of a 400-page document to the insular, sick man of Europe, suggesting 'to study the United Kingdom is to study decline'.
The report described Britain as a country 'mired in political infighting and tabloid sex scandals'. It said the rot began in the 60s and Margaret Thatcher's rule in the 80s only helped make the political system more authoritarian.
We had an internal report on the filthy state of British cities with Manchester, Wakefield, Leeds and Sunderland coming out worst. Victorian cities the lot of them, all just about summing up the impression that absolutely nothing has changed since the 19th century.