One of the (few) points of writing this website is to provide a forum for intelligent thoughts for people interested in how government works or not in practice, especially in the foreign policy area. This is why I refer quite often to the pronouncements of former UK Ambassador Craig Murray. […]
Craig hits back with usual energy and rudeness at myself and Brian Barder. Worth a read if you can face yet more on Torture, Policy and all that. I have posted a long comment there: Craig, You accuse me of Attention Deficit Disorder? Excellent. As per the private email exchanges […]
I have just been sent a nice letter from Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne inviting me to be a witness before the new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Foreign Affairs when it launches its first inquiry into UK foreign policy. Any ideas on what I should say? (And no, NC, I am […]
Remember Jane Cordell, the deaf FCO diplomat who was taking the FCO to an Employment Tribunal after they refused to pay for her posting to Astana on the grounds that the ‘reasonable adjustments’ needed to make her posting work were just too expensive? She has lost her claim on all […]
Brian Barder and I are deadly ideological rivals. He hews to a number of Old Labour-style positions which (for me) are like the sort of exhibits you find in the gloomier rooms of the Natural History Museum which no-one visits. More foreign aid! No to swingeing cuts in public services! […]
Update: see now also this Economist piece by Edward Lucas. * * * * * Yesterday I attended an ecumenical Mass of Reparation in Great Missenden, organised with the strong support of the British Slovene Society led by Keith Miles. The Mass was held to pay tribute to the thousands of […]
Lib Dem Ministers Complicit in Torture Scary, huh? I always thought they were prim, well-meaning political vegetarians, not raging carnivore fascistoid extremists. But Craig Murray knows different. (Warning: he displays a large picture of an Uzbek torture victim.) Behold Craig’s attempt at analysis of Sir John Sawers’ speech yesterday: These are […]
More confused or at least confusing analysis of the EU Budget in the Daily Telegraph: The Prime Minister last week promised to fight plans to increase the European Commission’s budget by 5.9 per cent and said its 2011 budget should be frozen or cut. Last night, however, British sources conceded […]
Sir John Sawers has become the first ever Chief of MI6 to make a public speech about the Secret Intelligence Service and what it does. Good extracts from what he said this morning here: Sir John added that it was essential for MI6 agents and other intelligence agencies to be […]
Disclosure note: John Sawers and I have known each other since we worked together in South Africa in the twlight years of apartheid. * * * * * Here on the SIS website is the full (and presumably authorised) text of Sir John Sawers’ speech this morning. The very fact […]
