The second gripping instalment of my analysis of the EU Budget is here: In a few months’ time, the familiar weary battle will unfold in Brussels as the next Financial Perspective negotiations get under way. The Commission, cheered on by the profligate European Parliament, will announce an indicative budget increase […]
My long-awaited analysis of how the EU Budget really works is now being posted by Conservative Home, in two gripping episodes. The first one has appeared this morning – here. The second should appear tomorrow. Note especially the analysis of the famous British Rebate: a) It is the wonderful Thatcherite […]
Conservative Home have run an unusually fatuous article by one Max Wind-Cowie of Demos, where he works on the Progressive Conservatism Project. He even has the hair to match. M W-C suggests that UK diplomacy is ailing because we do not apply the American method of appointing friends of senior […]
My talk at TEDxKrakow contained one throw-away observation which raised warm applause from the massed Polish audience. I said that I had studied various languages. Polish is the only one which teaches you the verb ‘to complain’ – narzekać – as one of the VERY FIRST VERBS YOU LEARN. This subsequently led to […]
More haggling over the 2011 EU Budget. Key point to remember. If there is no agreement in December, the EU 2011 budget stays at the level of the 2010 budget. Hurrah? Yes and no. Since money has been committed to various EU schemes during this 2005/13 Financial Perspective period, some […]
Sorry to be a bit quiet here folks. I am working on a major piece explaining the EU Budget and where the UK has leverage (or not). A dirty job, but someone has to do it.
For a notable example of a female Guardian writer with bad glasses delivering a piece of bewildering strangeness and being dumped on by dozens of readers, go no further than this clueless piece about the alleged Tyranny of Marriage by one Lara Pawson: I want to divorce the man I love […]
This is odd. Andrew Heyn as HM Ambassador to Burma has been writing in implausibly frank terms in the Guardian about Burma’s forthcoming elections. Or, should I say ‘elections’, as the form appears to exceed the substance in democratic terms? Thus: People here believe that the vote will somehow be […]
Just read this from the BBC about Iran’s dilemma over whether to stone women to death, or not: The Iranian authorities like to portray an image of a country and a system misperceived and misrepresented in the West. It is an image that plays well with some western liberals, who […]
More confused or at least confusing analysis of the EU Budget in the Daily Telegraph: The Prime Minister last week promised to fight plans to increase the European Commission’s budget by 5.9 per cent and said its 2011 budget should be frozen or cut. Last night, however, British sources conceded […]
