I try to market myself as a public speaker and speech-writer. But I can’t dream of riches like this from mere oratory: Mr Miliband records that he received a “payment of £25,000 for lecture at Sir Bani Yas Forum on Future of Middle East, Abu Dhabi”. … His travel and […]
A brisk bucketful of ice-cold reality for the European Union, generously delivered by Barry Eichengreen of UC Berkeley: The economics is really quite simple. Greece has a budget problem. Ireland has a banking problem. Portugal has a private-debt problem. Spain has a combination of all three. But, while the specifics differ, […]
Is England not corrupt enough to survive? Straight dealing in almost any international forum these days is utterly non-existant, says Simon Heffer Simon Heffer regularly gets furious with his sub-editors’ illiteracy* at the Telegraph. He can have another whack at them now. Thank goodness that Crawf Minor is battling on […]
As England groans under snow and howling icy gales, I am heading for Mauritius. On a training expedition for a UN organisation. ADRg Ambassadors have been asked to give their senior officials some expert training in Diplomatic Skills (Making an Impact) and Negotiation (Reaching the Deal). What are so-called diplomatic […]
While I am away, swing by Spiegel Online for an optimistic analysis of the underlying strength of the Eurozone by Sven Böll: European governments are serious about austerity, while in the US there is no sign of how President Barack Obama plans to get his country’s trillion-dollar deficit under control. […]
Developing the theme of correct punctuation, reader jdmyeepa steers us to this superb essay about the Philosophy of Punctuation by Paul Robinson, who used to keep goal for Tottenham (and alas England) but then became a prominent American intellectual. Or maybe it’s two separate P Robinsons. Whatever. Anyway, this deft […]
A reader has sent me this trenchant message about the state of affairs in Slovenia concerning justice for the victims of communist atrocities: Your article "Regret is not enough in Slovenian tragedy" is spot on as is your analysis of the political situation in the Central European country of Slovenia […]
Well turned piece by Simon Heffer in the Telegraph this morning. He’s been talking to one of ‘one of our most intelligent diplomats’ (not me – I am an intelligent ex-diplomat haha) about the Eurozone: On a shimmering day last June, I was talking to one of our most intelligent […]
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 […]
Exhibit A: Trust: the behavioural challenge PwC Point of View paper, Oct 2010 Exhibit B: The Rational Optimist Let’s start with Exhibit A, a recent paper put out by PwC which looks at the role of Trust in corporate culture. Underpinning the analysis is the “ethicability” methodology advanced by Prof Roger Steare, a fellow Business and […]
