The Limits of Goverment

As well as surging into the Total Politics Top 200 UK Political Blogs this blog has made it into the Top 20 UK Libertarian Blogs.

I achieved a more than respectable 11th place, amidst distinguished company.

Since the libertarian trend in all its many varieties is the shape of the future, this is a great result.

Many thanks to all readers who kindly took the trouble to vote for this blog in this category. If you have not yet done so, have a read of my Well-Armed Red Riding Hood story. 

Its (and, on a good day, my) philosophy: Strong, Thoughtful and Generous.

Here is one eloquent US feminist's analysis of the Palin phenomenon:

Make no mistake - the Democratic Party and its nominee have created the powerhouse that is Sarah Palin, and the party's increased attacks on her (and even on her daughter) reflect that panic.

The party has moved from taking the female vote for granted to outright contempt for women. That's why Palin represents the most serious conservative threat ever to the modern liberal claim on issues of cultural and social superiority. Why? Because men and women who never before would have considered voting for a Republican have either decided, or are seriously considering, doing so.

They are deciding women's rights must be more than a slogan and actually belong to every woman, not just the sort approved of by left-wing special interest groups.

Palin's candidacy brings both figurative and literal feminist change. The simple act of thinking outside the liberal box, which has insisted for generations that only liberals and Democrats can be trusted on issues of import to women, is the political equivalent of a nuclear explosion.

MSNBC's openly biased presenters are reeling.

Not everyone is happy.

Fascinating for the planet as all this is, behind the massive new noise McCain/Palin need to win key states.

And that will not be easy.

If you want to read online the FT's distinguished Lex column, you have to pay for it.

But at least Lex shares with us for free a nifty graph on the rouble's fortunes up to and following the Kremlin's Georgia intervention:

Russia’s 1998 financial crisis, after which one foreign banker observed he would rather “eat nuclear waste” than invest in Russian securities, is still alive in the market’s collective consciousness. Billions of dollars flowing out of Russia and the central bank being forced to intervene last week to prop up the rouble inevitably put traders in a cold sweat.

This piece at the excellent Knowledge Problem neatly looks at differences between Chinese and Russian oil reserve management styles:

There are few assets more specific than an oil well. If you invest wisely today to maximize the present value of the well's future output, that does you no good if you're not around to claim those future flows (because, for instance, you're rotting in a jail in Chita.) So, to hell with the future-maximize what you can produce today, even though that impairs the well's long run value....

Katherine Whitehorn's ramblings against competition as somehow juxtaposed against 'action for the common good' miss one other vital effect of competition, namely its tendency to incentivise frugal use of resources.

We hear all the time sundry collectivists urging the idea that capitalism and competition are uniquely wasteful of resources and environmentally destructive.

They tend not to mention the most ambitious attempt in human history to run a society via state-imposed socialistic 'cooperation' for the common good, and the remarkable environmental impact that had.

Because it is not easy regularly to bring about major cost-reduction strategies, businesses (and governments, and consumers) focus on making 'marginal' efficiency and other cost savings wherever they can be identified.

And the brilliance of competition is that it endlessly encourages this process through innovation.

Take shops.

You want to buy a new lawn-mower. In your town there are four shops selling them.

Once upon a time you would have had to telephone round to check the rival costs and availability of the model you wanted.

Now you can do much of that via the Internet.

But what if you could just type the make/model into your car computer which then guided you directly to the shop offering the best deal?

What if your car was transactive?

Come on, Katherine, tell us.

Would not smart kit like that created by competition itself give rise to wonderful new forms of cooperation - for the common good? 

Back in late 2005 Guardian prima columnista Polly Toynbee was urging the case for Gordon Brown to replace Tony Blair:

From now on, the economy will turn upwards and there is no need for Labour to panic - yet, of course, they will. Faced with bad polls, there will be growing pressure for Blair to announce his departure by next autumn's party conference.

... Labour's man needs to arrive as fresh, surprising and progressive as Cameron now seems. People worry how this puritanical and somewhat dour chancellor can stand up against the ebullient, debonair young prince. But age and style have nothing to do with it. It is the brightness and the content of their policies that matters.

And, lo, in 2007 it came to pass that Gordon Brown was poised to become Prime Minister:

A 10-year chancellor must leap out of the starting gate like a fresh contender. He must electrify the stale air with new ideas and new directions strong enough to reach right down to these jaded roots. That takes high voltage jolts of surprise and optimism.

Then, it happened!

There was something stunned about Gordon Brown's expression as he stood on the threshold of No 10. He looked genuinely awestruck, as if the hugeness of the weight that had just fallen on his shoulders had taken him by surprise.

Mere weeks later it was all going wrong:

There is a stunned disorientation among Labour MPs, alarmed by both Brown's vision void and his sudden incompetence ... The backbenches sat through Darling's politics-free performance on Tuesday like the Animal Farm beasts gazing through the farmer's window in the final scene. Far too late they realised something awful was happening before their eyes: you could have cut their silence with a knife.

Then it was all down:

Maybe he hasn't the character, the toughness, the fibre, the daring. He was always the Macbeth who failed to wield the knife. In those waiting, plotting years of half-cocked conspiracies, a Lady Macbeth would often have shouted: "Infirm of purpose!"

And down:

A year ago, this week's cornucopia of good policies would have signalled the truth of Gordon Brown's words as he stood outside Downing Street and said: "Let the change begin." If these had been his opening salvos, if these had signalled his clear direction of travel, he might not now be sinking fast ... Now it is late, a whole year too late. Is anyone still listening?

Which brings us to today:

The smell of death around this government is so overpowering it seems to have anaesthetised them all. One bungle follows another and yet those about to die sit silently by...

Unseating a prime minister is very high risk - but a dying party should be ready to take dangerous medicine if that's the last chance left.

On 29 June 2007: as they stepped into No 10 yesterday, here was as decent and clever a team of ministers as ever graced the cabinet table.

Now they are ... a cabinet of minnows.

It's tough being a cheer-leader, waving those glittery pom-poms and smiling brightly as your team collapses and the crowd laughs both at the players - and at you.

Jon Worth has a couple of thoughtful observations on the farcical European Parliament report which broods on the disruptive role of bloggers.

I think that he has a point, of sorts. But the best way to deal with vampires when they pop out is not to assume they are unmenacing just because they are pallid and sickly. Rather nail them briskly to the floor with a wooden stake.

Above all, he ignores the fact that reports such as this - paid for by us victims - tend to help define the European psychological and political-moral debate over media issues, ensuring that it plays out in a context which starts from an instinct for EU/state-sponsored official 'balance', rather than an instinct for freedom.

Look at the hapless socialist Estonian MEP who launched this dire exercise, trying to explain herself:

Speaking to the EUobserver, Ms Mikko clarified her intentions: "We (sic) do not need to know the exact identity of bloggers. We need some credentials, a quality mark, a certain disclosure of who is writing and why. We need this to be able to trust and rely on the source."

"The Economist is a valuable brand, its articles are trusted by readers without contributors having to reveal their names," she said. "If there is a way to validate the best bloggers the same way that publishing in the Economist validates its writers, it should be done."

"It is clear that a Harvard professor of international relations is likely to treat, for instance, the Middle East peace process or European integration in an educated and balanced manner," she added. "The same trust cannot be put in a radical high school student from Gaza or a Eurosceptic who has never been out of his village"

"The reader should know why this or that blogger should be trusted on a particular issue."

Almost every word she says here is profoundly, unfathomably stupid.

Above all there is a way to 'validate' the best bloggers.

It's called the marketplace, millions of judgements by millions of people, evolving over time, exploring what makes sense and what does not.

This tragic woman needs a strong coffee in Cafe Hayek - where orders emerge.

Back from a long drive in the heavy rain, passing the time listening to BBC radio Any Questions for the first time in years. (Note for non-Brits: this is a veteran deeply earnest current affairs programme featuring four panellists of differing views answering questions from a live audience from a local venue somewhere in the UK.)

Tonight's episode featured two prominent British professional women of unrelentingly progressive views.

Maybe it was the awful weather, but I found it dispiriting to hear them opine at gloomy length about why British women are not breaking through the Glass Ceiling despite so many measures designed over decades to promote 'equality', then, scarcely pausing for breath, make various crass remarks against Sarah Palin (yes, including disparaging her hairstyle).

(Note: back in the USA latter-day left-feminism likewise has simply collapsed under the strain, so we have to look to conservative white men to explain things.)

Most such BBC and other media debates in the UK are depressing for another reason, namely the unimaginative range of views expressed and the underlying assumption that if there is a problem somewhere in society we all need More Government to help tackle it.

As I swerved through floodwaters I found myself howling for someone to throw in one or two rabid libertarian thoughts now and again. One of the male panelists, a Republican American of course, was somewhere in that area but not with much élan.

Lots of agonising also from the two women about the deep divisions within the Labour Party and the 'dangers' of the party splitting irrevocably. I would have said that politics is a market-place too, and that it does no harm for a large ruling party to crash and burn now and again when it has run out of intellectual and moral juice.

There'll always be another politician coming along to vote for.

Maybe we need a quite different form of politics - one based upon the state fearing the people, not the other way round. 

Politics not all about treating citizens like criminals. The horrible demise of the Labour Party could set a powerful example for a few years and so be just the job.

This (via Daniel Hannan) is absolutely grotesque.

What are we being reduced to?

And why are we paying taxes to subsidise the madness of thought leading to such a pernicious, creepy document being even considered, let alone written?

On the subject of feminism, here is Naomi Wolf gushing on the psychological gains to be had from shrouding her body, Muslim woman-style:

I experienced it myself. I put on a shalwar kameez and a headscarf in Morocco for a trip to the bazaar. Yes, some of the warmth I encountered was probably from the novelty of seeing a Westerner so clothed; but, as I moved about the market - the curve of my breasts covered, the shape of my legs obscured, my long hair not flying about me - I felt a novel sense of calm and serenity. I felt, yes, in certain ways, free.

More:

...many Muslim women I spoke with did not feel at all subjugated by the chador or the headscarf. On the contrary, they felt liberated from what they experienced as the intrusive, commodifying, basely sexualising Western gaze.

Puh-lease.

Luckily Naomi did not wear her gloomy garb in intrusive, commodifed, basely sexualising Egypt:

Sexual harassment of women in Egypt is on the increase and observing Islamic dress code is no deterrent, according to a survey published this week.

The Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights (ECWR) describes the problem as a social cancer and calls on the government to introduce legislation to curb it. The findings contradict the widely held belief in Egypt that unveiled women are more likely to suffer harassment than veiled ones.

All this makes me recall the former Pretoria regime's reasoning for apartheid.

They insisted that Africans would be much better off, able to develop their authentic ways and customs, if living separated in their own tribal homelands. Separate but equal.

Of course the world howled with derision when Pretoria paraded various homeland leaders who said they agreed with all this. Why, said the world, should these people be taken seriously when they have no reasonable chance to choose the system they live under?

Back to Naomi:

I do not mean to dismiss the many women leaders in the Muslim world who regard veiling as a means of controlling women. Choice is everything. But Westerners should recognise that when a woman in France or Britain chooses a veil, it is not necessarily a sign of her repression.

In most 'Muslim' countries women have no vote and diminished civil rights. Is their acceptance of the fact that they cover up but men do not in any sense capable of being accepted as a fair choice?

In Western countries too, how far in fact are Muslim women free to choose to dress in a way unlikely to please their local ethno-religious community'?

Free choice?

Or a pseudo-choice defined by their false-consciousness imposed by systemic patriarchal gynocidal repressed male violence?

So, Naomi, tell us.

How can we tell when a woman choosing a veil in any country is not a sign of her repression?

Update: how about a woman's right to choose a husband?

From Fred Thompson.

This article by Bruno Waterfield and the leaked EU report about the way the No campaign successfully mobilised public opinion via the Internet to bring Ireland reject the Lisbon Treaty are fascinating on many levels.

Note especially the Euro-lamenting that traditional media outlets are facing many new forms of competition and therefore serving up a less good product:

Aaaargh.

Reckless carbon use on Earth is now having worrying ramifications at the heart of solar system, viz the Sun.

Please governments. Tax us higher to pay for all those schemes to deal with these problems, otherwise all is lost.

One thing is utterly clear.

The Earth is set to get either warmer or cooler.

Definitely.

As if the EU's ambiguous response to the Georgia crisis was not depressing enough, life is getting tougher on the economic side too in Europe:

The eurozone as a whole shrank by 0.2pc, the first contraction since the launch of the single currency a decade ago. Germany led the slide with a fall of 0.5pc. France and Italy fell 0.3pc. The delayed effects of the strong euro, tight credit, and slowing exports have now kicked in with a vengeance.

Problems for my own British-based budget as we sit in muggy Orlando:

The pound could soon dive to barely more than a dollar and a half while gold prices plunge to $650, experts predicted yesterday amid fresh evidence that the commodity boom is ending and the dollar's resurgence is under way.

But whereas the UK can hope to use its currency as a set of buffers, the Eurozone faces much more searching internal strains:

... the euro is nothing like the dollar. It has no European government, tax, or social security system to back it up. Each member country is sovereign, each fiercely proud, answering to its own ancient rythms.

It lacks the mechanism of "fiscal transfers" to switch money to depressed regions. The Babel of languages keeps workers pinned down in their own country. The escape valve of labour mobility is half-blocked. We are about to find out whether EMU really has the levels of political solidarity of a nation, the kind that holds America's currency union together through storms.

My guess is that political protest will mark the next phase of this drama. Almost half a million people have lost their jobs in Spain alone over the last year. At some point, the feeling of national impotence in the face of monetary rule from Frankfurt will erupt into popular fury. The ECB will swallow its pride and opt for a weak euro policy, or face its own destruction.

Gulp. 

Back in the West, there is a health and safety policy I have not seen before here at Aquatica, the new water-park next to SeaWorld in Orlando.

As one waits in line for a good splashy ride, a tape-recording in a prissy male Australian voice tells us all that:

Your security is our number one concern. Therefore, lifeguards may not make eye-contact when speaking to you. Nothing personal, mates. No worries!

Huh?

Does eye-contact with lifeguards make some people feel insecure? Or is it that the lifeguards' beady eyes must be roving ceaselessly to spot potential trouble and so they may not have time to alight on you, so please do not feel offended? Something else?

I have sent a message to Customer Relations to ask. Always nice to know what is going on.

Update: almost instantaneous and friendly replies from Aquatica saying that indeed the point is that the lifeguards need to be looking everywhere so may not have eyes for you when talking. I have pointed out that that is not clear from the way the warning is phrased. Over to senior management.

After my exciting red pen adventures at New York airport immigration desk in May, I am taking no chances with my forthcoming family holiday in Orlando.

I have registered all of us with the new ESTA website run by the US Government to make easier (in theory - let's see the practice) getting into the USA. In 2009 it will be obligatory to use the site, so get registered now and avoid the rush.

The site asks for the basic information previously required on that immigration form previously filled in on the plane. But once e-authorisation is given - for the three Crawf children it was instantaneous, for two Crawf adults it took 72 hours - in principle it lasts for two years.

Yay.

Quirky US foreign policy point.

In the various dropdown menus on the site as you fill in your nationality and telephone contact details etc, Serbia is listed. So is Yugoslavia. But not Kosovo.

Endearingly retro.

When we get all worked up (pr not) about British blunders and hypocrisy, we tend to lose sight of where they fit in to the greater scheme of things.

Pointing to others' even viler behaviour does not legitimise or make right one's own.

But it just is the case that some horrors are bigger and worse than others. And that different systems and political cultures are ... different.

Some find it easier to contemplate and launch outlandish behaviour. And safety mechanisms for stopping Bad Policies once they start kick in at different points.

So, is there anything in modern UK practice to compare to the French performance in Rwanda:

Drawing on documents recently released from the Paris archive of Mitterrand, the commission clearly describes the motive for French policy in Rwanda ... The RPF was a part of an “Anglophone plot”, involving the President of Uganda, to create an English-speaking “Tutsi-land”. Once Rwanda was “lost” to Anglophone influence, French credibility in Africa would never recover...

... The French created a secret command of the Rwandan Army through what he called a “légion présidentielle”. This was a group of elite operatives that was answerable only to Mitterrand and which drew up battle plans and military strategy, and built a psychological warfare capability with operatives trained in the manipulation of public opinion.

My own work has shown that not all French military operatives left Rwanda when the UN peacekeepers arrived in 1993. When the genocide began six months later there were senior French officers attached to key units in the Rwandan Army - the para-commando and reconnaissance battalions, and the Presidential Guard. It was French-trained soldiers from these units who, early in the morning of April 7, had orders to eliminate members of Rwanda's political opposition - and to kill anyone with a Tutsi identity card ...

The French Senate discovered how policy towards Rwanda had been made by a secretive network of military officers, politicians, diplomats, businessmen, and senior intelligence operatives. At its centre was Mitterrand ... It may be that a true reckoning of France's responsibility will never be possible.

What do other EU governments including ours do now to get to the bottom of this calamity?

Rien.

A creepy Euro-etiquette forbids us even to talk about the issue publicly in any way that counts. Especially when the French hold the EU Presidency.

The French of course insist that to open all this up is intolerable - their motives and actions were 'pure'.

Not perhaps quite the whole story?

For those of you with weak memories, here is Arthur Scargill, defiant miners' leader who crashed to defeat against Margaret Thatcher.

He is still whirring away with the Socialist Labour Party, a lumpen Marxist phenomenon of no consequence.

But as if for old times' sake, here he is in the Guardian getting free publicity arguing the case for coal power as opposed to nuclear power.

Does he make any sense? Hard to tell - depends on how you measure the 'true' costs of coal as opposed to gas as opposed to nuclear calculated over decades.

But he is as defiant as ever:

I challenge George Monbiot to test out which is the most dangerous fuel - coal or nuclear power. I am prepared to go into a room full of CO2 for two minutes, if he is prepared to go into a room full of radiation for two minutes.

The Scargill case rests on the assumption that clean coal is Good and radioactivity is Bad. That said, it's not quite clear to me what a room full of radioactivity is, since all rooms are 'full' of natural radioactivity anyway. Go for it George!

Oh - and coal-burning itself is a handy source of radioactivity.

Whatever. Back to Kraftwerk.

Remember the heroic fight for freedom by Ezra Levant in Canada over his publication of the dreaded Danish cartoons of Mohamed?

He has won!

Sort of.

He didn’t say I was free. He said I merely met his censorship standards, so I may go. Those are two completely different things.

Indeed.

More on the feisty Report by the HoC Public Affairs Select Committee report which came down heavily on FCO rules purporting to limit what diplomats might say after they leave the Service.

Craig Murray calls these regulations 'near-fascistic':

The idea, of course, is that only the ministers' version of truth will enter history. You can be confident that Jack Straw's memoirs will not tell you that he instructed Richard Dearlove that we would use intelligence from torture, or that we colluded with torture and extraordinary rendition in Uzbekistan and elsewhere. You needed my memoirs for that. If Jack Straw had his way, I would not have been able to publish my book telling you the truth; in fact the new regulations were born directly out of Straw's fury at Murder in Samarkand.

We now have a government so despised that it strives to protect itself further and further from scrutiny...

Let's be a tad more dispassionate.

Back to first principles.

The public want - and expect - to know in some detail what Government is up to with their money. 

The public also want Government to Just Get On With It, weighing complex interests and principles and taking hard decisions intelligently. 

As we are a free country, people should be able to comment on and/or write searching analyses of policy issues once they are out of public service, subject to some sort of reasonable cooling off period.  

That said, the public simultaneously like tittle-tattle and 'revelations', but also do not like seeing former officials trading in the public’s information to make a personal profit. 

These fickle public expectations are not invariably compatible with each other, or with real life. 

Foreign policy in particular requires a different quality of common sense confidentiality.

Domestic issues are in a way all 'ours' - disagreements and negotiations are within the British political family, all of whom claim that they want the best for the country.

Foreign affairs are different. Day in, day out HMG are involved in tough negotiations round the planet with people who may be our enemies, or who rightly want to do the best for their countries by exploiting British weaknesses/mistakes. It is madness to show our detailed analysis and negotiating hand to our rivals for ‘UK freedom of information’ reasons, when they of course will not reciprocate. 

At the very hard end of the spectrum are highly sensitive intelligence reports, sometimes gleaned from foreigners risking their lives to share information and insights with us (which NB does not mean that those reports are accurate/reliable).

The public know that the world can be a dirty place. They broadly trust the government to defend British interests by using such material wisely. This means keeping secrets secret, the public respecting limits on the public's 'right to know'. Lost lap-tops containing secret official material convey a sense of fathomless incompetence.

In return for ceding extra government discretion in this murky area, the public react badly to politicians whipping up public sentiment on the basis of inconclusive intelligence analysis, as happened in the run-up to the Iraq intervention. 

You know when you are seeing something Really Secret when its heading is a Greek letter or acronym you haven't seen before: TOP SECRET UK EYES A EPSILON/LOCKTIGHT or somesuch.

During my career I have seen all sorts of highly confidential analyses of controversial issues and countless Top Secret reports. I have written such papers myself.

Now I have left the FCO. Should I be free to use my privileged access to this fruity material to make money or stir up public anger, even if I happen to think the moral case is just?

In my view, no. Certainly not immediately I leave the Service, and for some purposes never.

The 'system' (and here I part company with Craig Murray) does offer all sorts of democratic best practice ways for officials to register substantive concerns, compatible with maintaining the secret methods needed to track foreign spies working against us, or managing threats posed by ruthless terrorist killers themselves armed with high-tech kit.

Have we got everything Perfect? No.

Room for improvement/tweaking? Probably.

Risky business for politicians and the public alike, one way or the other? Yes.

All that noted, if we agree that I am not to be 'allowed' to use my knowledge of highly sensitive processes/facts as I like immediately on leaving the FCO, how to give effect to that?

And if there are Rules or Principles, how to apply them? What threat should hang over me to deter me, a former British diplomat pecking away at my lonely keyboard, from overstepping the rules, in letter or spirit?

Legal proceedings against potential publishers?  Prison?

Threats to my pension? Ah now you're talking!

Finally, who in the end decides if a line has been overstepped, and what should happen next?

The Public Affairs Committee made a strong point in noting that in Freedom of Information Act disputes a separate outside mechanism has been set up to stop a Ministry being judge and jury where its own information is concerned. Something like that could be used to settle in a gentlemanly way rows over contested memoirs of the Jeremy Greenstock sort?

Ministers! The smart way to lean is towards generosity, creativity and flexibility. Do not appear vindictive/obsessive/defensive.

Few if any 'revelations' by former civil servants do drastic irreparable damage. We are in fact quite loyal for most purposes, most of the time.

Much worse political damage can be done by appearing to cover up and duck the hard questions than by taking some hits, heavy and unfair as they may be at the time.

And, above all Ministers, behave in an honourable, trustworthy and fair-minded way towards your officials and the public alike.

This gives you your best chance of winning their respect and so surviving the inevitable squalls of democratic public life in good shape, maybe even with a reputation enhanced.

Light touch, old boy, light touch – always the safest policy.

The House of Commons Public Affairs Select Committee has now given its thoughts on the FCO/Cabinet Office rules - tightened after the Craig Murray and Sir Christopher Meyer books - on what diplomats can (or not) say after they leave the Service.

Their view:

 ... the results do indeed appear to be excessively wide-ranging and oppressive. Their only saving grace is that they seem to be unworkable.

A bit of a tonking?

I have dashed off some thoughts for the Independent's Open House pages. Here.

More to follow.

Here is Future One. Martin Jacques gloating over 'western impotence' as evidenced by our inability to get what we wanted in Burma or Zimbabwe.

In the parallel moral universe of MJ, South Africa's President Mbeki has "scored a major diplomatic triumph" by getting the two main parties in Zimbabwe to the negotiating table.

If allowing one of the most dismally incompetent and vicious leaders in world history to ignore his defeat in an election and cling on to power is a triumph for Guardian readers, yes, well done Thabo!

Meanwhile In Burma the West could not intervene and ended up quietly channelling its assistance to cyclone-ravaged Burma via ASEAN, "the obvious and desirable course of action".

Yes, Martin, how obvious and desirable it is that thousands of people die for lack of the assistance we generously offered, helpfully to demonstrate Western impotence to Guardian readers.

Here is Future Two. Kevin Kelly talks about the next 5000 days of the World Wide Web and the profound transformations coming our way.

Set aside 20 minutes of your life to listen. And to think.

Future Two will defeat the banal emptiness of Future One.

It rolls out to the planet, including Zim and Burma in due course, the true new power of 'the West': connectivity, transparency and individual freedom.

And sure, as Asia and Africa and the Middle East take up these values 'the West' will have a lot to think about. New syntheses of power and responsibility will emerge. All very complicated.

But the problems we and our leaders face are all about managing Western success and indeed grasping  the scale of it, not managing failure.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at Harvard in 1978:

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations.

Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society.

Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice.

Was he writing the script for The Dark Knight?

Buying things is a redistribution of wealth.

Wood?

Meet Axe.

The role (if any) played by former diplomats in public life depends to quite a degree on how - and how far - they draw on their extensive and unique experiences in the Diplomatic Service.

So, questions.

What are the limits if any on what they can say publicly about information/insights and sheer gossip gained from working for the taxpayer?

And who decides?

Following the noise generated by the memoirs of Sir Christopher Meyer the Government looked again at the rules. And aimed to tighten them up.

My former colleague Sir Edward Clay has come out especially strongly against this move:

It remains to be seen whether future retirees will flout the FCO's legally dubious gag; the FCO clearly intends to hear progressively less from its retired and senior members, unless it approves of what is uttered. It suppresses valedictory despatches from retiring ambassadors, afraid of criticisms. There have been whispers of an attempt to get mandarins to sign over copyright on anything they write - novels and poetry, as well as despatches.

The FCO tells retirees that the rules applying to their serving colleagues also apply to them, for ever. Books, articles and lectures have got to be cleared months ahead. But the real rub comes with the requirement to give five days' notice of what they intend to say in any appearances on, or articles in, the media: any public comment based upon any of their professional experience is covered, far broader than previous strictures on official secrets or confidentiality. Unspecified civil or criminal proceedings are threatened for transgressors.

Sir Edward's and other vigorous interventions have prompted Parliament to take a look. The HoC Public Administration Select Committee is expected to pronounce today. A trailer.

In case you are wondering, before I left the FCO I told them that I was planning to write this Blog. I would use my judgement as to what I did or did not publish. I did not plan to seek publicity for myself via self-indulgent gossip or hot policy 'embarrassing revelations', mainly as I had none to reveal.

Rather I planned to talk about the diplomatic and political world in a quizzical, sometimes sharp way, to cast light on processes in public life and the professional dilemmas that arise.

Sounds good to us, they said.

Not a peep from them since.

Basically, the argument from some former Ambassadors is that they can not trust the Government to enforce these rules fairly.

Is not the problem that the Government these days can not trust senior civil servants to respect them?

Whence this decline in mutual trust?

A fish rots from the top.

Looking at the FCO website on the David Miliband Blog page is this curious list of links (presumably there to indicate Mr Miliband's own inclinations) to non-government sites:

New media and e-government

Personal

Politics and business blogs

Is not there something a bit grotesque about taxpayers' money going to pay for an FCO site which links to Arsenal FC?

Iain Dale is there. But does the Foreign Secretary really not keep a very close eye on Guido?

And should he not link to the websites of distinguished former British Ambassadors?

War criminals are war criminals only when they are convicted of war crimes.

Until then they are 'war crimes indictees', 'people suspected/charged with war crimes' or some such neutral phrase.

Why?

Because it is true.

And because it is unwise to give such people any excuse to claim that they have been 'condemned in advance' and so can not get a fair trial even at an International Tribunal.

So here we quickly see Radovan Karadzic insisting that he can not expect a fair trial because the sustained Balkan and international media witch-hunts against him.

He would say that, wouldn't he?

Yes. But let's not pass him high calibre ammo to make it sound more credible.

Even then, it is one thing media pundits or his political enemies claiming that Karadzic is a war criminal. The court can loftily tune out from such background noise.

Much worse when a Minister from a European government which has actively supported ICTY says in so many words on a Government website that Karadzic "has blood on his hands ...  He organised the murder of thousands of innocent people in a vile campaign of ethnic cleansing."

Luckily his Boss got it right.

Via Brian Barder, this really good - and meaty - assessment of the current plight of Kosovo by Jeremy Harding.

It in fact headlines the Kosovo situation, but really it is about the Limits of Diplomacy - how far can countries on their own or in teams act deliberately (a) to change things and (b) for the better?

A couple of my own speeches have attempted to tackle this Limit from different Balkan angles. But the arguments apply just as well to 'assistance' for Africa, or intervention in Iraq, or the Korean War or whichever example you choose.

The awesome fact about Kosovo is that many billions of UN dollars and EU Euros have been poured into this tiny territory not much bigger than North Yorkshire.

And the results? According to Jeremy Harding, not good:

If intervention was supposed to bring about development, which optimists see as a prelude to civility, it has not been a success. The most startling features of Kosovo, now that the cleansing of the Serbian minority is on hold, are the poverty of the province – for Albanians and Serbs alike – and the pitiful economy that keeps it locked in.

Despite the creation of a small millionaire class, 45 per cent of its inhabitants are below the poverty level (unable to meet basic needs). Around 15 per cent live in extreme poverty, earning less than a euro a day ... Earlier this year, the British government put infant mortality in Kosovo at ‘35 to 49 deaths per thousand live births’ – at least twice as high as the rest of Serbia and greater than that in Mexico or the Occupied Territories.

How much have we paid to get this outcome?

Much of the disappointment centres on the fact that UN expenditure, now in the order of £25 billion, was ill judged: too much spent on traineeships and seminars – ‘institution-building’, ‘capacity-building’, ‘technical assistance’ – not nearly enough on infrastructure.

Let's recall the wit and wisdom of Major General Gen Raul Cunha:

The situation here is not brilliant and we are a lot to blame. We, I mean the western international community. We have maybe invested here in the worst way and we were not very careful with the money. Each time I take a look at the numbers, I notice that 80% of the investment was made on consultancy and capacity building and, practically speaking, we didn’t build any capacities.

Commenting on Brian Barder's gloomy Kosovo analysis, another former British Ambassador Jeremy Varcoe argues for ... Even More:

I consider the EU now has a duty to orchestrate assistance on a sufficiently large scale to kick-start development and to try to rekindle a sense of hope for all the communities, not forgetting all the minority groups, in this limpingly independent state.

No.

No!

Let's try Much Less.

If we start reducing EU assistance to the level we have given eg to Serbia, we begin finally to compel the Kosovo population and its leaders to think long and hard about how they might use the modest resources of their bleak Balkan plateau to make something like an honest living in today's Europe.  

This will mean some painful political and other sacrifices. Not least a stand by the mass of the population against the violence and corruption presided over by a few powerful Albanian clans. And adopting a much more realistic attitude to how they need to cooperate with their neighbours.

There is only one thing worse than being abandoned by the International Community.

Being rescued by the International Comunity.

Here's something new.

A husband-and-wife couple doing a job-share at Ambassador level, for the first time ever, anwhere.

Tom Carter and Carolyn Davidson are off to represent HM The Queen as High Commissioner in Zambia, taking it in turns to run the High Commission for four months at a time.

Here are their careers so far.

Ignoring if we can in the Guardian piece the witty and unexpected reference to Ferrero Rocher chocolates (and the vacuous innacuracy over another senior diplomatic husband and wife team mentioned who are no longer Ambassadors at Post in Bratislava and Vienna respectively), we ask ourselves: is this a Good Idea?

The Guardian article does not tell us. It tweebles on about the grimness of the diplomatic spouse's role, the handiness of the arrangement for the married couple themselves and the 'positive feedback' they had as job-sharing Deputy Head of Mission in Slovakia.

Nothing serious about the main issue: how to advance hard-headed British interests in that tricky part of the world? 

The point of course is that it is, mainly, not a Good Idea. Or at least that it is an idea whose goodness applies only in marginal cases which (HMG hope) do not matter overmuch.

The point of an Ambassador or High Commissioner is to represent British interests in the country concerned. Judgement calls are constantly being required. More often than not, they do not make much of a difference. But sometimes they matter hugely. Even in Africa.

Remember Sandline?

Say that there had been a husband-and-wife jobshare in Sierra Leone during that crucial period. Or in Uzbekistan trying to work out how best to balance all the moral and policy factors Craig Murray was tackling. Or for that matter in Warsaw when the UK EU Presidency was trying to negotiate a complex EU Budget deal.

Is it really likely or even desirable that two professional people in tough situations like that are going to agree fully on the analysis and on the recommendations on tactics and strategy, and will have equally good relations with key local interlocutors and in Whitehall?

One of them will be more credible and effective. When his/her four-month stint ends, is Whitehall going to be pleased to see him/her standing down to do an Open University course rather than grip the crisis?

Obviously not. It is weird even to pose the question.

Thus a job-share at this Ambassadorial level looks to rely on one core and unspoken assumption.

That in the greater scheme of things the job they are sharing is relatively unimportant to permit an experiment of this nature; that the UK's relations with the country concerned - here Zambia - can take some knocks from the obvious inefficiency/inconsistency the arrangement involves.   

Would we try this with China, or Russia, or Pakistan, or India, or France, or the USA?

No. 

And if we did, the countries would ask us to come back in three years or so after the job-share posters left, when we had decided to behave seriously again.

That said, if (as must be the case) the Zambians approved the shared posting, they carry a share of the cost of any mishaps and missed opportunities which occur. 

And, last but not least, good luck to Tom and Carolyn themselves. I am sure they'll give the job their best shot.

Does not all this remind us of the famous Gay Flag problem? How - and where - can the modern Foreign Office safely 'tick the boxes' of political correctness and 'diversity' while expecting to be taken seriously?

Memo to next Government:

• Just Say No to artful diversity dodges of this sort.
• Treat all countries with equal and significant respect
• Take diplomacy seriously

It is not obvious to me what is wrong with the argument that says, “The criminals already have guns; gun control disarms the rest of us.” I don’t know how many times I have heard that view sneered at, or laughed at, or pointed to as an infallible marker of stupidity. But I haven’t ever heard it seriously confronted, let alone refuted.

An open-minded Brit visits a US gun show and comes away ... changed?

But of course there is a political dimension. Aside from other motivations–sport, self-defence – the gun-show universe is about pride, self-reliance, and resentment at being bossed around. Distinctively American traits, wouldn’t you say? Best in moderation, no doubt – but still, where would the country be without those attitudes? I may get thrown out of Georgetown for this, but I say, good for them.

"Here in the UK we need more pride, more self-reliance and much more resistance to being bossed around."

Discuss.

Radovan Karadzic appears before the Hague Tribunal today.

Kurir (a Belgrade newspaper with pronounced populist tendencies) quotes his lawyer as saying that Karadzic will not accept the start of ICTY proceedings until his laptop and 50 disks are returned to him. These items containing all the elements of his defence and evidence of his innocence of all charges were (says his lawyer) seized by the Serbian internal security police when they arrested him and he was not given the proper receipt.

50 disks of poetry and psychic healing remedies to plough through.

Should not take the Serb authorities and MI6/CIA too long?

The words "modern management techniques" and "whelk stall" come to mind:

Labour was plunged into open warfare as Gordon Brown's allies launched a series of highly personal attacks on leadership rival David Miliband.

Did 'sources at Number 10' and 'Brown's allies' and 'an MP close to Brown' really say stuff like this:

• "If he has not got enough work to do then maybe he needs to be given another job," ... "He [Miliband] needs to calm down and shut up. He also needs to grow up,"  
• Mr Miliband has "one more chance" to "clarify" his position when he appears on radio today. after refusing to rule out challenging Mr Brown four times
• "He [Miliband] has behaved disgracefully and disloyally. People will be surprised that he has chosen to write an article like that at a time when the Prime Minister is under attack after last week's loss.
• "There have never been any real warmth towards David in the Labour party, but people did respect his ability. However, I think he has overreached himself here in a major way."
• "David had the opportunity to close this story down and he didn't take it. I am afraid his ego has clouded his judgement.

Seems they did!

Should they be sacked? Yes!

The dysfunctional operation in Number 10 only adds to the distracting din ... That is not exactly the way of calming a story down. The former minister, Denis MacShane, told me that the briefings were far more damaging than Miliband's article and that whoever made them should be sacked. He is not alone in his concern at the Downing Street operation.

Have I got this straight?

Number 10 are putting it about that the British Foreign Secretary whom the Prime Minister appointed is an immature egoist, lacking in judgement?

That will help the British arguments dominate the room next time Mr Miliband has to meet eg his US or Russian or Chinese opposite numbers to tackle something serious.

This report as picked up by Iain Dale and others asserts that:

Internet users will be protected from abusive bloggers and malicious Facebook postings under proposals to set up an independent internet watchdog, The Daily Telegraph has learnt. The body, made up of industry representatives, would be responsible for drawing up guidelines that social networking sites, the blogosphere, website owners and search engines would be expected to follow.

The recommendation is one of several that the House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee is expected to make in its long-awaited report on harmful content on the internet and in video games.

The Report itself is here. Its overwhelming focus is "the use of social networking sites and chatrooms for grooming and sexual predation."

I have gone through the document. There is only one single reference to blogs/blogging:

One of the things British diplomats do in foreign parts is study the local media, to keep up with the obvious news but also to follow in a deeper way what makes those societies tick.

Armed with good basic background understanding, they then fan out to talk to the editors and pundits and politicians to ask the Big Questions.

Then they send (or at least they should send) terse, insightful reports to London with recommendations on what HMG should be doing.

Meanwhile foreign diplomats in London are studying our press too, to see what makes us tick.

And what do they make of - and report home about - pieces like this?

Iain Dale urges his vast army of fans to read Total Politics Issue 2 - and one article in particular.

Indeed.

I suspect that few readers of this Blog have ever heard of Jovan Divjak.

Here he is.

The point being that while we think about Karadzic and Mladic and all the horrors they helped create, let's remember one true Bosnian, born as a Serb in Belgrade, who fought against them in favour of a truly democratic Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Divjak's case is all the more striking as he was a senior officer in the Yugoslav Army - for him to abandon the 'Belgrade' cause and join the Bosnia cause as a soldier was all the more remarkable.

In fact he was so remarkable in being an honest man that the Izetbegovic Bosniak-Muslim elite of course did not trust him, and sidelined him after the conflict ended.

Had they been truly interested in creating a modern pluralist Bosnia he would have been a central iconic figure. Instead they opted for a policy of No Ethnic Disarmament for 50 Years.

Once everything is defined primarily in such strategic immutable 'ethnic' terms, someone honest and independent who does not fit (or choose to fit) tidly into one or other Category has few chances to make a difference.

And these people tend to be just what is needed to build a reasonable shared future in a bitterly divided society.

Zdravo, Jovane

EU Referendum do a number on a judgement by the European Court of Justice which sets a precedent

for thousands of other couples residing in Ireland and, more widely [and] better defines the rights of EU states to manage their own immigration policies.

Under the EU directive on free movement of citizens, all citizens may reside in another member state as workers or students if they have sickness insurance and sufficient funds that they do not become a burden on the social welfare system.

Family members of a citizen of the European Union also have the right to move and reside in the member states with that citizen.

The ECJ ruled today that application of the directive is "not conditional on their having previously resided in a member state".

"The directive applies to all union citizens who move to or reside in a member state other than that of which they are a national, and to their family members who accompany them or join them in that member state. The definition of family members in the directive does not distinguish according to whether or not they have already resided lawfully in another member state," the ruling stated.

The court also held that a "non-community" spouse of an EU citizen who accompanies or joins that citizen in the host country can benefit from the directive "irrespective of when and where their marriage took place and of how that spouse entered the host member state".

EU Referendum:

So, what we have here is an open door for illegal immigrants. As long as they can get themselves over here – or to any other member state - and evade the authorities long enough to find themselves wives who are EU citizens (who themselves may have been recent immigrants, as was Metock's spouse), EU law gives them an absolute right to stay here or anywhere else in the EU.

Whatver happened to Ex turpi causa non oritur actio ?

Martin Kettle in the Guardian on Labour's horrible byelection loss in Glasgow yesterday:

Almost no Labour MP, including Brown, is now safe. Glasgow East was Labour's 25th safest seat in the UK and its third safest in Scotland. The seat had been Labour since t