Dizzy offers a comment on my earlier posting about the security or not of Embassy communications: "The only system that is truly secure is one that is switched off and unplugged, locked in a titanium safe, buried in a concrete vault on the bottom of the sea and surrounded by very […]
The EU has not sat idly by as British democracy reels under the weight of its own loathsome misbehaviour. On 7 May the EU launched its new Eastern Partnership – an attempt to set up a new sort of structured relationship with the obviously (more or less) ‘European’ parts of the […]
Back in October in reviewing Craig Murray’s book I discussed the problem of the insecure communications he had: Basically (as I understand it), he did not have a Confidential email system. He did have an Unclassified FCO email system (which in Tashkent’s circumstances could not have been regarded as secure) […]
So on towards the policy core of Craig Murray’s Murder in Samarkand – his policy disagreement with the FCO over torture and the War on Terror. In Chapter 9 Craig describes an EU human rights Ambassadorial demarche. I have analysed the genre here. His description bears out my earlier point, […]
I dimly recall one of my interviews at the Civil Service Selection Board back in 1979. The issue of Geography and Determinism came up and I recall making a couple of brilliant insights as to how far (and when) the way people behave is shaped by where and how they […]
Craig Murray has graciously has accepted my proposal of a public debate – venue and format to be agreed. He also rightly has pointed out that I never finished reviewing his book Murder in Samarkand including the key passages about his head-on collision with the FCO over torture and the War on […]
Anticant in a comment picks up my previous posting about the dilemmas facing a civil servant when s/he suspects (or ought to suspect?) that the people at the top are pursuing a seriously flawed or even morally wrong: Of course it is impossible for honest people to function comfortably within a […]
Over at anticant’s arena I find an awesome sentence with both my name and that of Camille Paglia in it which just transcends all understanding, or at least mine: “It is this animal craving for something simple and, I daresay, edenic that undergirds our hyperaestheticised pornography in /all/ of its post-modern dimensions. One need […]
Craig Murray has married his partner Nadira . My warm congratulations (and I mean it). Once the honeymoon is over, I invite Craig to think about setting up that debate at long last on Diplomacy and Ethics or something along those lines? One venue has already been kindly offered. But a debate on […]
An Independent reader opines with eloquence on my work as HM Ambassador in Warsaw as described here: It all seems reasonably clear. Charles Crawford is a gutless little tosser who clearly knew that Poland was being used for the illegal torture and interrogation of prisoners – but he did nothing about it. And now […]
