Mr. President, Members of the Court, I am a devoted but disgruntled South Australian. “I hereby declare the independence of South Australia.” What has happened? Precisely nothing. Have I committed an internationally wrongful act in your presence? Of course not. Have I committed an ineffective act? Very likely. I have […]
Let’s pull together some news about the UK Foreign Office in the word’s first blogged FCO Roundup. Or is the news that it has … gone AWOL? * * * * * What has the FCO to say about the elections in Honduras? Not much. HM Government do not have […]
Now we get Europol’s announcement that carousel fraud has cost EU taxpayers €5 billion: The European Union (EU) Emission Trading System (ETS) has been the victim of fraudulent traders in the past 18 months. This resulted in losses of approximately 5 billion euros for several national tax revenues. It is […]
More on European Foreign Policy – and Physics (or maybe Maths). Take two tennis balls, A and B. A is twice the size of B. By which I mean that the diameter of A is twice the diameter length (the straight line across the widest part of the inside of the ball) of […]
Remember carousel fraud? Those scams operating on such vast scales that everyone … looks away? Bearing in mind, of course, that this is not money held back in the grey economy by people not declaring tax, but rather money looted from the public purse from tax money already paid in. […]
The Times leader on President Sarkozy’s insistence that the ‘European’ economic model must now prevail over the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ model: This is economically illiterate populism. No policymaker in the English-speaking economies believes in totally unconstrained and unregulated capitalism. You need to go to some fairly obscure corners to find anyone at […]
The Advisory Opinion hearings at the International Court of Justice on the Serbia/Kosovo question have started. The curious thing about this one is the actual question which the ICJ is tasked by the UN General Assembly to address: Is the unilateral declaration of independence by the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government […]
An alert reader points out that I mischaracterised the ringing words of Edit Herczog in the European Parliament, as she compared UKIP’s Nigel Farage MEP to a tree-ascending monkey revealing its bottom for all to behold. She did not say Mr Farage, I’d like to say something, Hungarian quotation for […]
Physics-free David Miliband: The idea that the UK can maintain its influence in Beijing or Washington or Delhi or Moscow if we marginalise ourselves in Europe is frankly fanciful. In fact I would say the opposite; through leadership in Europe we augment our bilateral ties with other countries. Alone, we […]
Honduras has voted and in significant numbers. A good round-up here. The US State Department: We commend the Honduran people for peacefully exercising their democratic right to select their leaders in an electoral process that began over a year ago, well before the June 28 coup d’etat. Turnout appears to […]
