The legal processes surrounding the attempt by Belgrade to get former BH Presidency member Ejup Ganic extradited from London to Serbia to face war crimes charges rumble on. The latest hearing has ended. According to the Sarajevo media, judgement is expected on 27 July. Needless to say, media reports of […]
Former British Ambassador Oliver Miles is on a roll in the Guardian. After giving Ambassadorial blogs the thrashing they so richly deserve, he now writes with eloquence and good sense about what Ambassadors actually do: When I worked in Belfast, I was warned by a home civil service colleague not […]
The Observer gives us a savage critique of the looming disaster facing civilisation as we know it thanks to the massacres being proposed for the UK’s public sector by the new coalition government. More! It’s written by a senior civil servant. Anonymously. How senior, pray? Can’t be that senior or […]
Now that Cuba has agreed to release – and exile – a goodly number of political prisoners, Spain expects the European Union to ‘respond’ and be more flexible. I have written here on various occasions about Cuba. Maybe the most astonishing thing about this run-down Cold War relic is not […]
Sorry not to have been more active recently, folks. But I have had to travel to Stuttgart, Geneva, Warsaw/Cracow and now Brussels all in the past ten days, while keeping an eye on our attempts to sell Crawford Towers. My latest manoeuvres involved leading a course on Ethical Dilemmas in […]
BBC Radio 5 Live has just been poring over poverty in South African townships and today’s UK Budget. They interviewed some township shack-dwellers in Port Elizabeth where, you will remember, veteran collectivist ANC/Communist Govan Mbeki was all against local self-help. With the dismal results now apparent today, albeit not for his […]
A Polish reader Ludwik Kowalski now long established in the USA has sent in a link to this unusual free online memoir, namely extracts from his diaries which he wrote while growing up in the USSR then Stalinist Poland: This is my “book of life.” It is based on what I […]
A day with my nose press’d hard against the perspiring computer screen writing scenarios for a new course which I lead later this month, all about Ethical Dilemmas in Diplomacy. As far as I know this is a pioneer course, the first of its kind to be taught to professional […]
Brain Barder responds to my posting about Being, Not Producing – and poses some Questions: Don’t you find something just a tiny bit disturbing about the prevailing ethos of all our main political parties according to which those who for whatever reason can’t or won’t hold down a job must be […]
Ben Rogers writes a lengthy piece over at Conservative Home urging an energetic approach by the new UK government on international human rights: The Commission has also recommended the appointment of an Ambassador-at-Large for International Human Rights, who would work with the Minister of State to co-ordinate the efforts of […]
