My latest DIPLOMAT piece looks at the similarities (or not) between chess and diplomacy: One cliché of diplomacy is that it is like chess. It combines patient strategic manoeuvring with sudden flashes of sharp decisive action. In chess, as in diplomacy, there is ‘objective’ strength: political and economic assets and […]
Becalmed in Olympic Glory and mulling over a gruelling September that might include a passing visit to Tajikistan. Contact established with Helen Sewell at Simply Speaking. Helen looks at public speaking with the keen eye of journalism and science – a mighty combination. Here she analyses the performance of UK […]
One of the great issues in Jurisprudence is the Hierarchy of Norms. Where exactly does law find its moral legitimacy? Can a legal system’s legitimacy be traced back to one ‘Groundnorm’ as Hans Kelsen argued? Legal science, as Kelsen would like it to be, has to describe a legal norm […]
You don’t have to go far in the seething Brexit debate to find that ‘migration’ is a Big Deal, not least as the Labour/Guardian side of the argument smells its own panic. Thus this: Ed Balls’s latest intervention in the EU debate is striking. In today’s Daily Mirror, the former […]
Remember my football negotiation thoughts on the sundry attempts by Tottenham Hotspur FC to buy Saido Berahino last year? That possibility rumbles on in the 2016 UK winter ‘transfer window’, a month when clubs can buy or sell players mid-season to try to improve their chances in the coming race […]
+++ Update+++ Is this one now off? The West Brom Chairman has gone very public explaining why Mr Berahino will not be moving any time soon: “I have informed Saido that he will not be transferred during this summer window and that he is staying at the club” said Peace […]
Football transfer negotiations are fascinating as examples of Technique. Alas we mortals never knows the detail of how the negotiations go or the specific clauses in the final contracts, but the tensions between different ways of doing the business are often obvious enough in the final outcomes. Take, for example, […]
Why am I looking at all those old Football Fascism pieces? Because I heard young Liverpool football player Raheem Sterling on BBC radio the other day, being pressed to respond to alleged complaints from alleged fans that he is being ‘greedy’ by turning down a fabulous new contract with Liverpool […]
Finally, this other one from the now-defunct Business and Politics website. How many times do I have to rail against Football Fascism before people in this country get the point? It started off with Labour’s Football Fascism. Now it’s spread to the unlikely pages of Conservative Home and Tim Montgomerie […]
Here’s another one from 2010. Although can we really say that five years on the Conservative-led UK coalition government really sent out any of the right messages? There has been an oddly half-hearted, pessimistic tone throughout. Jeremy Jacobs thinks that I am being too harsh in saying that it is […]
