It is justifiable if a British entrepreneur sets up a cheese business in France so that French cheese can be sold to the French. But it is not justifiable if that French cheese is sold to the British, undermining the British cheese industry! The wise words of Nicolas Sarkozy, president of France. Or […]
David Miliband’s protocol problems in India (the risk or otherwise of annoying senior Indian interlocutors by being too ‘familiar’) raise an interesting operational point. What is the role of the in-country Ambassador in such circumstances? In particular, how far should he/she go to brief the visiting Minister on how to […]
You are a Prime Minister. You throw overboard your Defence Secretary in a Cabinet reshuffle. But you feel you owe him. And it’s always better to keep ex-Ministers ostensibly busy, lest they start to chaff at their obviously ‘ex-‘ status and cause trouble in the Party. Maybe push him for the top […]
Blush prettily as I do to link to it, here is the Independent: Despite reading it closely, I’m still not convinced of how on earth Charles Crawford is allowed to blog as he does. Which recalls this memorable exchange, when sardonic architecture student Howard Roark is being expelled for insisting […]
While we are thinking about who ‘allows’ what, the British Government have announced that Dutch MP Geert Wilders will not be allowed to enter the UK, as his very presence will ‘threaten national security’. The public debate appears to be focusing on this man’s right to speak his mind. Not […]
The point of the crushing and monumental brutality against Hama by the then Syrian leadership was to send a message to Islamic extremists: Do not mess with us, and if you do we will respond with crushing and monumental brutality Which has more or less worked quite well, as far […]
There’s a lot of it about now. The FCO has a goodly bunch, albeit with tone of unrelenting ‘corporate’ cheeriness, eschewing anything controversial/awkward in policy or philosphical terms. When I was in Warsaw the FCO timidly experimented with some blogs for internal FCO consumption only, allowing some of us a […]
The new Obama administration has made a fine old mess of this one: When the vice president, the secretary of state and the national security adviser all say you have been tapped to be the next United States ambassador to Iraq, odds are it’s a done deal, right? Apparently not […]
More high-pitched noise on the status or not in the Catholic Church of Bishop Richard Williamson, with Chancellor Merkel ploughing in: "This is not just a matter, in my opinion, for the Christian, Catholic and Jewish communities in Germany but the Pope and the Vatican should clarify unambiguously that there […]
Recalling my posting a few days ago about moral hazard I espied this glum account of the Eurozone’s woes: For a long time, they all looked the same. The reckless and the virtuous, the sneaky and the upfront, all the member countries of the euro-area were treated identically, or nearly […]
