The Ayn Rand novel Atlas Shrugged depicts a ghastly world in which more and more US government regulation aimed at protecting corrupt special interests drags down creative people who eventually go on strike themselves. They thereby crash the system, which has (it turns out) relied on their passive acceptance of their […]
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 […]
The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee today published a searching report on the Role of the FCO in UK Government. Here it is. And here is my own trenchant evidence, submitted in writing. I am not, it seems, grand enough these days to merit giving oral evidence. Sob. But read […]
Just when you thought that the Canadian elections had brought to power people making some claim to be ‘conservatives’ (and therefore, perhaps, taking individual liberty seriously) along comes a new draft law which inter alia makes you a criminal if you post on your own site a link to a […]
We have returned from Florida and I am emerging from jet-lag, just in time to appear today on the BBC World Have Your Say radio programme this afternoon on the rather incoherent subject of Privacy. If you are interested the link to the programme is here, until it fades away. I […]
What is a financial bubble? Too many people believing in their own cleverness as the structures they create slowly but surely depart from reality. Here is Michael Jennings at Samizdata musing on the comparison between the telecoms sector overcapacity bubble of a few years ago and the current plight of […]
Here’s a bold idea. That the peoples of the ‘Western Balkans’ (ie mainly the former Yugoslavia area) push out the febrile internationals and sit down for some hard talking: With the Powers pushed out the locals – assuming they actually want to settle their disputes – could then grapple with the choreography […]
Back in deepest Oxfordshire, after a week in which I gave five set-piece presentations. One was at a Wilton Park conference on the general theme of Russia and Social Media. The second was at TEDxWarsaw, a coaching session in public speaking for some of the speakers at the main event. Then […]
The text of the Libya UNSCR is here. Key point as Sir J Greenstock has just pointed out on Radio Four is this (emphasis added): Authorizes Member States that have notified the Secretary-General, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, and acting in cooperation with the Secretary-General, to take […]
Have a look at these impressive figures for the surging Facebook phenomenon across the ‘Muslim world’. Egypt has added 450,000 new users in the past month. Saudi Arabia (a much smaller country) has added 420,000. These are absolutely big numbers, the more so since (by definition) they represent better-off web-savvy […]
