That letter from President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel to Herman van Rompuy (President of the European Council) has shaken rather than stirred the word’s financial markets. I thought it worth a detailed look. But Protesilaos Stavrou has done it for me. Here is his thorough and interesting fisking by someone close […]
Poland now assumes the six-month Polish Presidency for the first time. Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski sets the scene: “EU success story” gets some 600 Google News hits. “EU crisis” gets 14,000 hits. What has gone wrong? Some people have a blunt answer: “Too much Europe!” EU structures and policies are […]
As Poland starts its EU Presidency, the long-awaited announcement is made: HM Ambassador in Poland Ric Todd is moving on, to a significant and sunny new posting. All is not (yet) quite lost. Lots of scope for transplanting modern progressive European values to the conservative locals – and flying that flag. […]
Autonomous Mind kindly gave a link and supporting comments to my recent piece about Negotiation Training. And, via Twitter, he asked for More on the Carrot/Stick negotiating paradigm. So, here it is. The psychology of diplomatic negotiating is a vast, interesting and almost unanalysed subject. A couple of years ago […]
Sorry to have been a bit quiet, folks. I have been in Vienna with ADRg Ambassadors giving negotiation training to Senior Inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency. These Inspectors have a unique and important job, namely to help check what is going on out there in the world’s civilian […]
ADRg Ambassadors are now gathering nice momentum. After launching ourselves last year as the world’s first Ambassador-level mediation and consultancy panel, we have now reconstituted the group formally into an LLP. The plan is steadily to build the ‘brand’ by emphasising the way we can contribute to high-level corporate diplomacy. One way […]
Remember my lyrical piece about Left student activism at Oxford back in the 1970s? No, you don’t. So read it now. And marvel at the taxonomy of assorted Lefts: Labour Party members and moderates: weedy, hopeful, useful idiots Broad Left: Labour Party members who sucked up to the Communists Communists: small in number, […]
If you want to die laughing, get over to Twitter and check out #ghettospellingbee. An unfeasibly long string of absurd jokes based on African-American speech puns. Thus: ruedoo CRueL RueL # HARASSMENT- My girl caught me talking to a chic at the club, but I told her, harassment nothing to me.ghettospellingbee […]
A powerful article by Yale law professor Jeb Rubenfeld spelling out for the purely foolish the legal issues (such as they are) surrounding the death of Osama Bin Laden. See especially this: The opportunity to surrender is a cherished, civilized and valuable part of warfare. But accepting an enemy’s white flag in […]
Here is a strange piece at Forbes which I picked up via Twitter by Anne Doyle, an American woman who is big on Powering Up! women in general. She quotes what she asserts to be three ‘stunning examples of the cultural headwinds that women are still up against’. What are […]
