Remember the Copenhagen Summit climate change debacle? The terrific Spiegel Online has fascinating material said to be extracted from tape-recordings of the key meeting between Merkel/Brown/Sarkozy/Obama and the Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister, there because the Chinese Prime Minister did not deign to join the gathering: Now, for the first time, […]
Some random thoughts on latest dramatic developments in the UK, all the more random for lack of sleep. First the Really Good News. As for the feverish politics, note the following. It is not only that the new Parliament is ‘hung’, ie no party has an overall majority. It is […]
With Nick Drew and others, I’ll be joining Iain Dale on LBC tomorrow night from midnight through to 0600 on Friday to offer thoughts on the UK elections. My niche will be foreign thoughts/angles. If any readers out there – especially people overseas – want to send in any observations […]
Here is the long Mail Online account of the encounter between Gordon Brown and Mrs Gillian Duffy. It squeezes more than maximum juice out of this fleeting encounter, yet the words of Mrs Duffy and the accompanying pictures are touching: ‘There’s been a development,’ she was told by a reporter from […]
Tim Collard, (a retired British diplomat who spent most of his career in China and Germany. He is an active member of the Labour Party) offers a jeer in the Telegraph at William Hague’s sensible comment on the FCO Popegate fiasco: William Hague, who expects to be in charge in King […]
Let’s start with a brilliant resource for all Brit bloggers: localmouth, a way to find local blogs wherever you are in the UK. Hover somewhere near Oxford and you might find mine. A wonderful example of the way intelligent networked pluralism helps mobilise human creativity without busybody official statist help. […]
Here (below) is the text of my appreciation of the life and times of Lech and Maria Kaczynski, now up at Radio Free Europe. Welcome Steyn Online readers. * * * * * I attended a smart Warsaw dinner party in 2006, not long after the Kaczynski twins and their Law […]
UPDATE Welcome Guido readers. This (below) was written before the Smolensk disaster. My considered thoughts on Lech Kaczynski and what his death means for Poland will follow. * * * * * Always a pleasure to penetrate deep into Guardian territory and plant a different flag. As here today, where […]
I twice have written on this site about one of the most remarkable nights of my FCO career. This posting – my first ever published on this site – described how I single-handedly as FCO Resident Clerk crushed press freedom in Scotland late one night. And then this more recent […]
Plenty of excellent articles at Spiegel Online about the Eurozone’s problems as seen by intelligent Germans. Such as this one which argues that far from bringing countries of the Eurozone towards economic convergence, the single currency has locked in profound problems of competitiveness and so is forcing them apart. Or […]
