My latest piece over at Dale & Co looks at a possible spiral down into the next global conflagration: In short, the planet’s legal and moral order looks and feels weak. For the first time in centuries the USA and Europe are increasingly unable to define, let alone set the […]
Here is what the Express says is the text of a strange letter from PM David Cameron’s political private secretary Laurence Mann to a ‘Conservative activist’ (that one seems like a contradiction in terms, but never mind) on the subject of the UK’s membership of the European Union and why an […]
Andrzej Lepper, turbulent leader of Poland’s left-populist Self-Defence party, yesterday was found dead. Apparently by hanging himself in his party office in Warsaw Where to start? The English Wikipedia page gives the basics of his lively career, describing how he came from a modest rural family background and with little formal education […]
Another sharp piece by Tim Worstall, this time over at Forbes: For labour and product market protectionism, decent public sector wages and benefits, are the “European Model”. And what’s being said here is that you can either have the European Model or you can have the European Currency. His article […]
A handy round up of some of my wise and prescient thoughts from the past year on the state of the European Union. 1 18 October 2010 … Which prompts me to post this extract from my Krakow presentation, a slide entitled Will EU Diplomacy Survive? Indeed, such are the […]
Julian Borger at the Guardian has written a long and well-sourced piece about the hunt for Bosnian war crimes suspects. It even quotes me a couple of times (no great surprises for diligent readers of this site). The key policy dilemma point is here, tucked away in the middle of the […]
As I peck at the keyboard there is plenty of scrambling in Washington to try to get together the votes needed to pass the ‘compromise’ package agreed by President Obama and Republican/Democrat leaders. Hardcore Democrats bewail the ‘cuts’. Hardcore Republicans/Teapartyers bewail the fact that the cuts don’t go far enough […]
Many of my loyal readers will not follow cricket. Nor do I, tuning into it fleetingly every few years when England manage to do something better than hopeless. But now, armed with Sky HD TV, a fiery England side and nothing else to do, I am enthralled by this England v […]
Remember the Smolensk air-crash which killed President Lech Kaczynski and so many other senior Poles? Disagreement has rumbled on about how far mistakes or misjudgements made by the Polish aircrew and/or Russian control tower were responsible, but a major Polish report has now accepted that a good slice of the […]
Here are our holiday snaps. First, no Turkish resort seems to be able to avoid littering the place with freakishly kitsch ancient Greek-style statues. Try this one of Harvest Goddess, with a creepy white head seemingly stuck on a couple of inches out: Not to forget two examples worthy of a […]
