Sunday, September 25, 2011

The Maldives Are Quite Low to the Ground

The set-up:
The average elevation above sea level is four feet. I'm told by someone who was present that the former British Foreign Office minister Jeremy Hanley was on an official visit to the Maldives and asked what the highest point of the archipelago was. The head of the Maldivian reception committee looked the imposingly built Tory up and down and said, 'It's you, Minister.'
That's from Landfalls by Tim Mackintosh-Smith, published in paperback earlier this year.

The punchline:
When the Maldives cabinet met underwater, it was not because the island nation had disappeared
And that is a real live, no-fooling BBC photo caption from last week.

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