This polemic by Simon Jenkins hits many nails on the head. Anyone who has seen the ‘international community’ in action in a troublespot can not but be dismayed. Generous tax-free salaries and fleets of expensive 4x4s contrast luridly with the surrounding poverty. Armies of local and imported female ‘sex-workers’ setting up camp nearby. […]
Controversy rages (zzzzz) over plans (or not) for the EU to have its own Embassies within the new External Action Service. As previously described, this proposal of course is being hotly debated in Brussels, not least because hundreds of EU officials’ jobs as currently funded are at stake. This latest […]
Tim Worstall (again!) links to a couple of examples of Pollard-like behaviour, namely hiding messages in a seemingly normal text. This has been done in the FCO too, of course. Telegrams have been sent with the first or last letter of each new line spelling out a cryptic message. Plus […]
A ‘buzz’ is being generated a new documentary film about Roman Polanski’s flight from the US legal system. This is what the original case was all about, way back in 1977. Not a nice story. Since then Polanski has not set foot in the USA and has kept well clear […]
Could excessive/unwise EU regulation of the power sector cause the UK power generation sector ruinous problems? The problem in this complex policy area is that the lead times for taking decisions are necessarily long (power stations cost a lot of money), and decisions once made have to be lived with […]
One of the Basic Points I tried to teach my Embassy teams as I ascended through the FCO ranks was, "Never mind all that policy stuff, which will tend to be OK enough. Your job is to get it 200% right on the day!" The best-planned visit or event can become […]
Imagine a very hypothetical situation. You are in New York, the UN Ambassador of a country which has just been hit by a vast natural disaster which has killed thousands of your fellow-citizens. But the regime running the country is refusing to let international assistance into the country, probably causing thousands […]
I have established contact with the excellent Tiri, an organisation which works with governments, business and civil society to find practical solutions to making integrity work. Improvements in integrity offer perhaps the single largest opportunity for sustainable and equitable development worldwide. Which reminds me of Robin Cook’s famous visit to Sarajevo in […]
My observations on Poland’s Diplomatic Ball were picked up by Bartosz Weglarczyk’s fine blog in Poland and have raised an eyebrow or two. (Note to non-Polish speakers: every time you see a Z in a Polish text, remember that it serves much the same function as an H in English. Thus cz […]
As I return to Poland today I am reminded of a revealing episode back in (if I recall correctly) early 2006. The Polish Foreign Ministry announced that it planned to revive an earlier tradition of an annual ball in honour of the Diplomatic Community, with a ‘First Post-War Diplomatic Ball’ (ie […]
