My latest piece over at Telegraph Blogs looks at how far if at all we can fathom out whether any given EU Budget outcome represents a ‘cut’, and if so a cut of precisely what: The key thing to look for this time is (a) the baseline used for any […]
My latest piece over at Telegraph Blogs looks at how far if at all we can fathom out whether any given EU Budget outcome represents a ‘cut’, and if so a cut of precisely what: The key thing to look for this time is (a) the baseline used for any […]
Decision time (or not) for the EU Budget for the period 2014-2020. I have written extensively on this subject. Here is my classic analysis (in two parts) from 2010 at Conservative Home on the whole process. Read it to get up to speed. More recently I was opining at Telegraph […]
My post about looking at terrorism in terms of both legitimacy of outcomes and legitimacy of process has prompted a friendly reply from Eddy Canfor-Dumas (Head of Secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Conflict Issues, of which John Alderdice is a Co-Chair): An interesting response to what I think […]
For no obvious reason the Browser is recycling a strange 2010 interview with Lord Alerdice, who played a significant part in negotiating the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. The subject is about terrorism, causes of: For me it isn’t a moral term. In other words, I am not using terrorism to […]
Here I am after a long gap (spent trying to earn some money) back at Telegraph Blogs, offering my thoughts on the various EU Budget rows now unfolding: The EU has annual budget rows. But the big row comes around every seven years, when the so-called Financial Framework for the […]
Back in 1998/99 I was one of the first people to point out that Bosnia’s new post-war Constitution as promulgated by the Dayton Accords had a unique feature. The Constitution was unconstitutional! It included obviously discriminatory clauses working against the interests of many citizens who were denied the chance to […]
Worrying news for Greece and for other countries looking for major bail-outs. Treat all sides fairly! Or else the lawsuits start. But what if treating all sides fairly just isn’t possible? A mess. But much more than a mere mess. A mess that changes the rules: Reuters’ Felix Salmon, who […]
Pretty much all you need to know about bringing children up well. This is very sound: As a street judge, Dredd doesn’t just find criminals and bring them in. He judges them on the spot. If guilty, he assigns the punishment. If the punishment is death, he becomes the executioner. […]
Last week I had the pleasure of going to Blenheim Palace to watch Poland’s Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski deliver a powerful speech about Europe – and the UK’s increasingly unhappy role in it. Here is the full text. Some extracts: While you are an important market for the rest of […]
Hmm. Is the UK going to try to ‘repatriate’ powers from Brussels? And if so, what are the chances of success? It isn’t clear to me why the other EU member states would go along with this, unless we block something horribly important to them (such as the next Budget) […]
