After leaving the FCO in a noisy cloud of sparks, my former colleague Craig Murray has made a name for himself as an activist promoting all sorts of Progressive Causes. This BBC account from 2004 does a good job in summarising some of the professional issues the Murray saga threw up […]
Via Arts and Letters Daily this compare and contrast clash between two modern women and their attitudes. In one corner: writer Rebecca Solnit on how men patronise women. In the other: anatomically all-present-and-correct(!) Amy Alkon, Advice Goddess, on how Rebecca Solnit is "subjective, delusional, overwrought, dishonest" (not to mention sniveling, meek, mewling and many […]
The Sunday Times today writes about expensive Sunningdale courses for civil servants on how to comport themselves and look nice. The case for the defence? A spokesman for the school said: “Many senior politicians have had training in how they present themselves, right back to Margaret Thatcher and Bill Clinton. […]
Greetings, readers from EU Referendum, who have seen the interesting comment there by Helen (I assume Szamuely) on one of my earlier entries about different national negotiating styles. Helen calls me on whether the Russian approach to negotiating in fact works, giving some examples where the picture at best is mixed. […]
One of the very worst aspects of returning to the UK after many years abroad is the sense of a serious loss of respect for the quality of public spaces. Plenty has been written about the dirty disorganised WCs at some of our airports. When I left my posting in Warsaw in September […]
On my Foreign Office travels I have picked up a goodly selection of ‘European’ languages to add to my distant A-Level French and Latin and O-Level German and Spanish. First, back in 1981 I learned lot of Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian (then called ‘Serbo-Croat’). After that I reached a reasonable standard in Afrikaans – […]
My observations on Power and Purpose attracted this interesting thought from someone in the Mini containing my ever-growing army of readers, himself once closely involved in British government sharp-end business: It always struck me that the FCO was truly excellent when faced with a bad situation. They could be relied […]
The British Government’s approach on the BAE/Saudi corruption problem (see below) in a deeper way is all about how a country pursues its interests. Part of getting what you want is projecting a sense of Power and Purpose, so that when a negotiation starts others feel cowed by your self-confidence. You establish up-front […]
This fierce piece by Sam Leith weighs into the British Government’s handling of the Al-Yamamah fraud enquiry: There was enough evidence of corruption in the Al-Yamamah deal to warrant an independent investigation. That investigation … was stopped after an explicit threat to withdraw a big arms contract, and an implicit threat […]
Having worked for the FCO for nearly 30 years, I now tend to brood in a maudlin sort of way on the Big Picture. Not for me any more the excitement of the next Ministerial visit or the latest meeting of world leaders. See for example the outcome of the recent Progressive […]
