There’s a lot of it about now.

The FCO has a goodly bunch, albeit with  tone of unrelenting ‘corporate’ cheeriness, eschewing anything controversial/awkward in policy or philosphical terms.

When I was in Warsaw the FCO timidly experimented with some blogs for internal FCO consumption only, allowing some of us a few days to record our views and experiences. Thus my own brief moment of FCO blogging fame. I’ll ask for the text of my musings to be released to me under FOI and let you know what happens.

The blogging work of FCO staff Philip Barclay and Grace Mutandwana is praised by US State Department blogger Diplopundit:

What is striking about these posts to me is how real and natural they are; no attempt at glossing over and how they prick at your heart with their utter lack of adornment in explaining the state of things … Can you imagine a Second Secretary in our Foreign Service or one of our locally engaged staff writing these posts in Dipnote? Frankly, I can’t. And yet, such details and sense of “real life happening” is probably what is needed in our diplomats’ discourse with the American public.

Fairly put, although knowing P Barclay as I do I can sense his frustration at being obliged by professional circumstances (and good sense) to pull his punches in describing in this format what is actually happening in Zimbabwe.

Diplopundit has lots of links to other diplomatic/diplomacy blogs for anyone having a lot of time to spare.

Here is an energetic left-of-centre blog by a former State Department officer: Undiplomatic.

Or try the "adventures and musings of an American Indian, Public Diplomacy-coned Foreign Service Officer" in Life after Jerusalem on the subject of Hillary Clinton’s plans to improve the lot of gay US diplomats.

And here is a newish blog by a young diplomatic wife Diplowife and her Misadventures. She tells the world more than maybe the world needs to know about her biological functions, plus she maybe could work on some hard-end negotiation technique:

Unfortunately,  kids don’t like me. I don’t believe in physical discipline, which is why I don’t spank my nieces/nephews/younger cousins when they’re being difficult; they probably know I don’t have the heart to hurt them, which is why most times – they spank me.

I wonder if Russia or China allows serving diplomats to blog. I suspect not. They may prefer their diplomats to focus hard on advancing national interests behind Embassy doors.