I have not added anything on this important subject, as my earlier posting in December said more or less all I have to say on it. This time the Russians have played hardball, actually letting people all over the place get very cold by turning off gas supplies. The accounting […]
Samizdata folk are having a lively exchange over Perry de Havilland’s ringing call for Disunity in conservative ranks. His core demand: I am not calling for the ‘libertarianisation’ of the Republican party along the lines I would actually like, just for the party’s rationalisation. I am in essence calling for […]
One of my theories of personal advancement has things thus. Imagine a room packed full of inflated balloons. One of the balloons has the ability to self-inflate. It does so. It expands. The other balloons squeeze themselves in to accommodate this growing companion. Some may eventually pop under the growing […]
Let’s start 2009 on a high note with free-thinking occasional Guardian contributor Tim Worstall: It’s one of my favourite truisms about economics that we don’t actually have solutions, we only have tradeoffs. Yes, we can make some things better but it will be at the cost of making some other things […]
Back in November I wrote about diplomatic negotiating, including a passage on the Middle East: In the Middle East there is an existential negotiation going on over the very existence of Israel. Either Israel exists, or it doesn’t. The Iranians under current management are contriving to give the impression that Israel […]
Professor Anatol Lieven gets over-excited: A fraction of the trillion and a half dollars now spent on rescuing western economies from the consequences of their elites’ greed and recklessness would have been enough to have greatly reduced African misery, stabilised Pakistan and other Muslim states – or put a human […]
The EU has been beavering away for some years now trying to agree a ‘Directive’ which would limit the number of hours we all work. I am proud to say that I played a walk-on part in helping block this impertinent and damaging collectivist initiative; the British Embassy in Warsaw […]
This is pretty strange. Top EU officials are moved to and fro round the Commission without all Commisssioners being told in advance: European Commission President José Manuel Barroso today (3 December) announced a far-reaching reshuffle of his senior officials, surprising several commissioners and raising questions about how the top jobs are […]
Earlier this week I heard a senior pro-EU UK politician cheerily say that one beneficial outcome of the current financial crisis might be the UK heading for the security of the Eurozone in a few years’ time: ‘Europe as refuge’. What a vision. That after centuries of successfully mastering our […]
The UN Security Council has supported a plan for the deployment of the EULEX mission in Kosovo. Belgrade is happy, since the planned deployment is ‘status neutral’, ie it does not give in principle (and practice?) any encouragement to the idea that Kosovo is now independent. Which is why various […]
