Bernard Ginns: Visitor finds cause for optimism – and need for discipline

We call them diplomats. And we tend to think of them as being exceptionally good at not giving a straight answer. In other words, the complete opposite to your typical straight-talking, no-nonsense Yorkshire businessman.

For example, if a diplomat says "yes," he means "maybe". If a diplomat says "maybe," he means "no". And if a diplomat says "no," he's no diplomat.

According to the poet Robert Frost, a diplomat always remembers your birthday but never remembers your age. Isaac Goldberg, the journalist, said diplomacy is to do and say the nastiest things in the nicest way. As humorist Oliver Herford had it, diplomacy is lying in state, while for Henry Wotton, the English diplomat and poet, an ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.

Last week Yorkshire played host to Georg Boomgaarden, the German Ambassador, who was visiting York and Hull at the invitation of the Company of Merchant Adventurers.

I caught up with him the morning after a dinner at the historic Merchant Adventurers' Hall in York and, as you'd expect, Mr Boomgaarden was very diplomatic with his answers.

I asked him about the event, which was attended by leading figures from across the region, including four vice chancellors, three high sheriffs, a lord lieutenant, the Dean of York, the chairman of Yorkshire Forward, the governor of the Merchant Adventurers of York, numerous business people and, in a rare public appearance, the artist David Hockney.