Back in writing business after a few days of running around trying to earn some money. Here is a piece I have written for the Telegraph Blogs on the moral case for the Syrians doing what it takes to defeat the regime oppressing them: One of the iconic principles of the […]
Leading UK journalist Angus Roxburgh has written a book about Putin and Putinism, drawing on his extensive experience in Russia (including a stint as a media adviser to the Putin team): The book is good in revealing all sorts of fascinating stories about the Putin period. My favourite is the […]
Here’s my piece at Telegraph Blogs this morning on the Russian Presidential elections: One reason why Zyuganov is doomed never to win an election in Russia lies in the country’s problematic demographics. Thanks in part to Putin’s policies, the gap between the number of Russians being born every month and […]
The story that emails sent from Education Secretary Michael Gove’s wife’s email account might count as official emails for Freedom of Information purposes rumbles on. This is an interesting point: Department for Education spokesman said: “Emails are not automatically considered an official record. Special advisers are not required to maintain […]
I fear that the Prime Minister was ill-advised to allow his name to be attached to an astonishly bad and strange letter sent to ‘Presidents’ Van Rompuy and Barroso by twelve national EU member state leaders. Parts of it was written by the EU’s version of our old friend the […]
Always fascinating to see self-styled progressives retreating in confusion, trying to cover their errors by (of course) blaming someone or something else. Preferably the Tea Party tendency in the USA. Take John Weeks (economist and Professor Emeritus at SOAS, University of London). Here he is over at Social Europe Journal […]
When we look at the savage ‘cuts’ in public spending (not), why not start at the top? Namely the FCO’s busy anti-bullying industry? This is what you taxpayer suckers are spending your money on! Powerpoint slides for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office describing what to do to avoid bullying or […]
What a nice day. Just had a most positive and friendly email out of the blue from Ivana Nohel, who illustrates my articles for DIPLOMAT magazine. As you can see, she’s very artistic. Here’s an example of her work for a piece I did on War Crimes. And here’s her self-portrait. Whoooooosh!
Over at Commentator I gallop through some of the issues arising from the splitting-up of countries, drawing on the examples of the collapse of the USSR and SFRY, and seeing how far they apply to Scotland. The division of Czechoslovakia into two units might well be more relevant, as a commenter fairly […]
Here’s my latest LSE book review, on a new book by Charlie Beckett with James Ball describing the rise and fall of Wikileaks: One of the key advantages of WikiLeaks as seen by its avowedly radical ‘hacktivist’ creators led (loosely speaking) by Julian Assange is that it subverts all existing […]
