My long-awaited analysis of how the EU Budget really works is now being posted by Conservative Home, in two gripping episodes. The first one has appeared this morning – here. The second should appear tomorrow. Note especially the analysis of the famous British Rebate: a) It is the wonderful Thatcherite […]
Conservative Home have run an unusually fatuous article by one Max Wind-Cowie of Demos, where he works on the Progressive Conservatism Project. He even has the hair to match. M W-C suggests that UK diplomacy is ailing because we do not apply the American method of appointing friends of senior […]
A super, sharp little analysis by Frank Furedi of the way the state appropriates responsibilities and then redistributes them, wrecking almost every value we ought to hold dear in the process. Look at this devastating passage:: … the public has become a project, a project of inclusion. New Labour loved having […]
More haggling over the 2011 EU Budget. Key point to remember. If there is no agreement in December, the EU 2011 budget stays at the level of the 2010 budget. Hurrah? Yes and no. Since money has been committed to various EU schemes during this 2005/13 Financial Perspective period, some […]
Here is the link to the video of my TEDx presentation in Krakow on the Physics of Diplomacy. Pretty gruesome watching yourself in action. But I have done so in the name of Science. Some interesting public speaking points emerge. First, I don’t want to cross swords with Max Atkinson […]
Here’s a depressing piece at Open Democracy by Turi Munthe, who summarises for us an analysis by Dr Martin Moore and the Media Standards Trust of the steep relative and absolute decline in foreign news coverage in the British newspapers: The statistics make frightening reading. They compared foreign news coverage […]
Over at DIPLOMAT magazine is my latest piece on the highs and lows of diplomatic public speaking. See this excellent example when Queen Elizabeth I chastised the new Polish Ambassador – in fluent Latin: The first speech any Ambassador makes in her/his own right is the formal address to the […]
It’s not easy to get the BBC to apologise for making a major blunder, but it happens. For example today: The BBC has apologised over reports claiming millions of pounds raised by Band Aid was used to buy arms. In March, World Service’s Assignment said cash raised by charities to […]
This is odd. Andrew Heyn as HM Ambassador to Burma has been writing in implausibly frank terms in the Guardian about Burma’s forthcoming elections. Or, should I say ‘elections’, as the form appears to exceed the substance in democratic terms? Thus: People here believe that the vote will somehow be […]
Just read this from the BBC about Iran’s dilemma over whether to stone women to death, or not: The Iranian authorities like to portray an image of a country and a system misperceived and misrepresented in the West. It is an image that plays well with some western liberals, who […]
