Some people have concluded that my thoughts on the Sturgeon Memo as previously posted were amiss – see the Comments. Am I accusing key people of lying? No. This first: “It seems to me the overwhelming probability is that this document, whether it purports to be a FCO or Scottish […]
A lovely English cartoon summing up the X Y Z Affair, a famous row between the new United States and revolutionary France. Basically, the French Foreign Minister Talleyrand demanded a big fat private bung as a condition for serious bilateral negotiations. And, of course, the principled Americans turned him down flat. […]
Off to Budapest tomorrow for a debate at the Danube Institute: Do Russia’s Ukraine policies threaten European stability? You might think that that falls into the QTWTAIY category fairly easily. That’s the side I’m arguing, ably assisted by James Sherr. But two hardy souls will be opposing this proposition. Vlad Sobell, […]
My latest Ukraine/Russia piece for Telegraph Comment today must have been good – it has smoked out an unusually nasty set of Russian trolls. Here it is: Negotiation is often presented as a choice between carrot and stick: what can one side do to affect the positive or negative incentives […]
Just look at this. A Guardian report about a large and rather over-excited football banner brought into a Belgian football stadium: The banner which said Red or Dead referred to the Standard colours and also showed a drawing of a masked man with a knife and the head of Anderlecht […]
I’ve been scrutinising public speaking disasters in preparing for a forthcoming online course that I am running for the UN on Drafting Talking-Points and Speechwriting. I found this handy list of horrors compiled a while back by Scott Berkun, with help from his readers. This one is good: Moscow, 1997. […]
Part of the problem we have with talking about anything is achieving an agreed sense of perspective on what we are talking about. Recall my piece about cycling and risk: It all boils down to our old friend ‘striking a balance’. As a society we have proclaimed that ‘using a handheld […]
A question about top-end public speaking technique. Say you’re President of France. You are visiting Bosnia a few months after the US President was there. He made a winning, moving keynote speech. You want to do the same. Or, ideally, do much better. How to set about this task? You […]
Very sad news this morning. Jozef Oleksy, one of Poland’s smartest politicians, has died. Oleksy (see a Wikipedia summary here) was one of those smart former communists (he was for a while a secret informer for Poland’s communist military intelligence) who smoothly made the transition to European social democracy after […]
Back in the mists of time I wrote this: In a city there’s a nice large green public park, where families and individuals stroll around happily. One day a group of leather-jacketed aggressive foul-mouthed types and some snarly dogs turn up and postion themselves prominently in one corner. This happens […]
