The BBC website picks up the musty tone of David Miliband’s recent speech on Europe in a headline which strongly suggests a direct quote from something or someone: Iran ‘must free UK Embassy staff’ The ensuing piece about an EU Foreign Ministers statement on the arrest by Iranian police of […]
A final thought on that David Miliband speech in Poland. It’s his use of the words ‘must’ and ‘need’. This is what he says the EU ‘must’ do. It must: adapt once again to the changing geopolitical context we face set itself a goal of creating a single, low-carbon, energy […]
A question is asked re my previous (peevious?) posting on the Foreign Secretary’s visit to Poland: On david’s grandfather, are you sure he fought with the red army? Are you referring to ralph’s father samuel? Good question. How do I know? I wasn’t there. But rummaging around through Google finds […]
My first thought on the Foreign Secretary’s Warsaw speech was that the opening ‘historic passages’ were clunky. This is what happens. The speechwriter is pretty familiar with the broad rhetorical lines of policy on EU issues. But knows nothing about Poland or the UK’s relations with it. So s/he does […]
UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband has visited Poland. Various Foreign Secretaries have swung through Poland for commemorative or other events. But straightforward bilateral visits by British Foreign Secretaries have been few and far between in recent years. None in my time from 2003-2007 (although Jack Straw took part in the […]
Dan Hannan argues that Lord Mandelson’s manoeuvres to keep the Labour Party staggering on are all about Brussels, not about the UK interest or even the Labour Party’s own mistunes: So what the devil is he playing at? Viewed from the Westminster lobby, it seems an impenetrable mystery. From the […]
Mark Steyn picks up my earlier piece on Iran but is disinclined to offer the Obama Administration the benefit of any doubt: Our concerns are largely irrelevant: Obama? They don’t care about his speeches. The nukes? They’ll happen regardless, with wide support. This election was stolen for reasons of internal […]
Welcome to BBRU 226. First things first Can you bake a good cake? Misssy M is struggling. Does the Objectification of Women via the explosion of pornography really lead to bad outcomes for women? Not at the Himmelgarten Café. Update: And, to get us into the swing of what follows, a magnificent example from Liberal England of European […]
There is a lot on this site about the problems we and the people of the former Yugoslav region face in where precisely the borders of new states should be, and how those new states should be defined. Try this. Or this. Former US Ambassador to Bulgaria, Croatia and Serbia/Montenegro […]
Back in 1973 I was at Oxford University with the likes of notorious toxophilist Tony Blair and Benazir Bhutto. It was a time of student so-called unrest, with a mass sit-in at the Schools Building in autumn 1973 to demand a Central Students Union. Basically, see, the point was that the […]
