The Weinergate scandal soared to a spectacular new level yesterday in New York, when Congressman Weiner admitted to a press conference that he had lied about his obscene Twitterish activities. Not that that made his situation much better. Pressed on what he knew about the young women with whom he’d been ‘communicating’ […]
A few days ago there was a flurry of gruesome media coverage of the appalling death in Crimea (Ukraine) of a local Muslim girl who had been a beauty queen, and stoned to death by an enraged boyfriend for breaching Islamic Law. Only one problem. It wasn’t true. Apparently. Read […]
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 […]
How has the FCO managed the Libya and other emergency situations? The only true test of how well the FCO has done is, of course, the absence or otherwise of shrill and ignorant moaning from the Daily Mail. So the FCO clearly passed the Tunisia and Egypt hurdles quite well. What, […]
Help! Villagers are ordered by the police not to use wire to protect their sheds against burglars! Outrage! What actually happened here? If you read the article it seems that some community police officers warned local residents that "there have been cases where criminals have sued for injuries they have […]
Attentive readers recall that a year ago I joined a group of former British Ambassadors in setting up ADRg Ambassadors, a new panel selling professional diplomatic consulting, training and mediation skills to support ‘corporate diplomacy’. Here is what I wrote at the time. Since then we have been busy ‘building the brand’ to […]
Aaaaaarrrrrgggghhhhh. The BBC is cutting some language services on the World Service: The Macedonian, Albanian and Serbian services will be axed, as will English for the Caribbean and Portuguese for Africa, in a bid to save £46m a year Pa kako je to uopste moguce, bre? Sramota! One of the […]
New world records for drivel and shameful dishonest nonsense have been set following the Tucson shootings. As far as I can see, the only thing President Obama wants to ‘heal’ is his own dismal ratings, and his speech to some extent may have done that – for a while. But the […]
Sorry, I was distracted from packing to spot this strange headline on the BBC web-page: US ‘revokes Venezuela envoy visa’ Why have they put most of that in inverted commas, as if it’s not true or somehow qualified or in doubt? The BBC’s own article on the subject reports a State […]
Have been running around, including appearing on a live BBC World Service programme World, Have Your Say on Wednesday which spent the best part of an hour looking at different issues of secrecy/privacy and the limits or not thereof. Here is the programme if you are interested – listen soon […]
