The Tax Justice Network is a lot of busy people keen on extracting more taxes from all round the planet: … our approach does not fit easily into either of the old political categories of left and right. We do not argue generally for high or low taxes (that is for […]
A Spent Copper offers this thought on my posting below about Fake Charities: May I nominate ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) for such exposure Charles? The Government like to use them to float their ideas for policy, and they are extensively publicly funded, but they have changed their legal […]
I did not make the Orwell Prize ‘longlist’. Sigh. You’re right. I am twisted and bitter about it. A good number of the blog entries submitted by the Longlist winners have little if anything to do with politics, and in certain cases little if anything to do with good writing. […]
Iain Dale carries a well-turned interview with David Cameron. Both interviewer and subject emerge well from a civilised and intelligent exchange. This caught my eye: How will you defend the right to offend?This goes back to the ‘do you listen’ question, because on the one hand you don’t want someone […]
David Miliband’s protocol problems in India (the risk or otherwise of annoying senior Indian interlocutors by being too ‘familiar’) raise an interesting operational point. What is the role of the in-country Ambassador in such circumstances? In particular, how far should he/she go to brief the visiting Minister on how to […]
A reader writes about FCO blogs: FCO bloggers try to keep to policy areas they have responsiblity for. Diverging from this has caused the odd frantic call from London to the offending blogger. There is nothing to say that staff cannot advance national interest behind closed doors AND engage in […]
Simon Heffer takes a polemical pot-shot at David Cameron, accusing him of succumbing to socialism in his recent Davos speech: … one of the most shallow speeches by a supposedly serious politician that I have ever read. It should also terrify anyone who might feel he or she should vote […]
Lots of media coverage today of a UK High Court ruling against release of US-originating papers held by the British Government which might show evidence of torture of a British resident in US custody. As usual when legal matters are reported, it is not easy to work out precisely what […]
My observations on President Obama’s inauguration speech picked up his strange claim that the question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works… Ilya Somin at Volokh Conspiracy goes into this matter with some energy: Taken seriously, this argument leads to […]
Recalling my posting a few days ago about moral hazard I espied this glum account of the Eurozone’s woes: For a long time, they all looked the same. The reckless and the virtuous, the sneaky and the upfront, all the member countries of the euro-area were treated identically, or nearly […]
