Mark Steyn never seems to lack material on which to base his beyond magnificent rants. Try this new one on the impact of Hurricane sandy and what it shows about modern America: A few weeks ago, I chanced to be in St. Pierre and Miquelon, a French colony of 6,000 people […]
Another sizzling interview with Camille Paglia, who proclaims on her latest book and life in general: I don’t like reality shows and have never watched them, but I’m addicted to “Real Housewives” because it’s authentic old-time soap opera reborn! But beyond that, the shows are all about glamour — make […]
A tongue in cheek (so to speak) Tweet by me this afternoon led to a micro Twitter spat on Gender and Sexuality. Cor! This is what started it: Charles Crawford@CharlesCrawford If it’s ok for women not to have men frisk them at airport security, why is it not ok for me […]
I have quoted Australian satirist Tim Blair here now and again. He is famous (justly) for Blair’s Law: … a theoretical construct that claims an alliance or shared empathy between far right and left groups and extremist Islamists. Blair describes this perceived alignment as an "ongoing process by which the world’s […]
As a former diplomat turned wannabe speechwriter I have studied closely the latest Conference speech by Labour Party leader Ed Miliband. How to assess it from a technical point of view? And what does it tell us about a possible future Prime Minister’s approach to the great foreign policy issues […]
An interesting and instructive visit to Riga for this year’s Riga Conference. Thoughts. First, Riga itself. Latvia took an enormous (and partly self-imposed) hit as the Euro zone crisis began, opting for radical austerity measures. Views now differ. Yes, the economy is growing once again at a pretty good rate. […]
A super resource for looking at demographic trends as between 1950 and 2100 – a graph that allows you to follow the trends in 50 countries and world regions and easily make comparisons. Thus (say) in 1950 Egypt and Pakistan combined had some 60 million people, not that many more than the […]
Here is my Telegraph Blogs piece on the terrible attack of the US Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens: There is no easy diplomatic response to such atrocities. Blaming the host country for poor security does not go far – usually they are as appalled as the rest of us at […]
Here is former UK Ambassador Craig Murray being rightly pleased with himself that his blog is right up there among the most influential blogs in the UK at least according to ebuzzing: According to the ebuzzing (formerly wikio) rankings, this is the third most influential political blog in the UK – […]
My various postings and pronouncements on the rights and wrongs of the UK government’s ‘threat’ to remove the diplomatic immunity of the Ecuador Embassy in London to enable J Assange to be nabbed have prompted Brian Barder to weigh in. And when Brian weighs in, he does so thoroughly. His […]
