Opinion / Masterclasses, Coaching and Teaching

Diplomatic Training: Writing With Impact (And Speechwriting)

Still, the actual training in Den Haag on Writing with Impact went well, with lots of praise from the participants for my dynamic, eye-opening presentation on good diplomatic writing technique: Witty, clear, practical  Lively, entertaining, convincing Funny, memorable, practical Great. I particularly liked the humorous presenting. A lot of information, […]

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Travel in Europe: Hell

This morning I staggered home at 0200 hours after a horrid journey back from The Hague, where I had been busy training sassy Dutch officials on the dark arts of Writing with Impact. Thanks to the UNITE union’s antics, my BA flight was cancelled so I had to switch to […]

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Can The EU Change Course?

John Redwood MP puts it tersely: Its first task, as stern budget superviser urging member states to rein in deficits, should be to make dramatic reductions in the EU budget. From each member states point of view the money spent on EU matters and projects is of more marginal importance […]

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Was Albert Einstein In Fact A Bit Thick?

As readers will have noticed, someone describing himself/herself as George Dutton is now following this site closely and commenting with oh-so-clever remarks celebrating Socialism. He quotes from a remarkable essay by Albert Einstein on Why Socialism? from 1949. Here is Albert fretting over the survival of the human race (as well […]

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FCO Popegate ‘Diversity’ Training Horror

The Heresiarch links to my thoughts on the FCO and its Popegate scandal, but wonders if I have it right – maybe the causes are … even deeper: It’s easy enough to blame New Labour, with its love of targets and hatred of anything traditional or elitist, for this sort […]

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Malta’s Dramatic Blogosphere

It’s always good to mention Malta on this website, as everyone in Malta then comes here to remonstrate in one direction or the other and my ratings shoot up. I happened upon Daphne Caruana Galizia’s site when I visited Malta only because someone there mentioned it. It turns out that […]

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Malta Rubbish

My name sporadically pops up on a trashy Maltese site Taste Your Own Medicine set up specifically to lambast Daphne Caruana Galizia. My attempt to post a comment of clarification on this site has (as far as I can tell) failed: Dear TYOM,           I see that I am mentioned […]

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Malta: For The Record (Again)

Here is the strange piece by an austere-looking Marie Benoit mentioning me in Malta Independent Online. And here is the message I sent yesterday to Ms Benoit and others at MIO, plus to the website of Daphne Caruana Galizia who also writes for the Malta Independent media family. As far […]

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Crawford Independent: More on Ejup Ganic and Bosnian-ness

Back from Brussels. Here is a short article by me in the Independent today about Ejup Ganic. It’s always a pleasure to get material into a British national newspaper – work published there pops up all over the planet. But the end product is not necessarily what was sent in. In […]

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Fame. In Malta

Oh dear. I have achieved media prominence of a sort in Malta today, becoming a leading story in the Malta Star. This publication does not like the current Malta government. Its article boldly asserts that I am the Maltese Prime Minister’s new ‘Spin Doctor’, brought in to help the PM ‘deal with […]

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