Opinion / Poland

Radio Orla: Charles Crawford

Here is my long interview (in English) with George Matlock over at Radio Orla, a successful London-based radio station with a strong Polish angle. I normally can’t bear to watch or listen to myself after doing such media slots. But I started to listen to this one – I found it […]

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The End Of The EU (As We Have Known It)

Update: The EU (improbably) as … Dirty Harry. Click through to the wonderful link. * * * * * If I were a diplomat from Mars reporting back to HQ on the wheeler-dealings of the pitiful earthlings in this part of the planet, I’d be starting to suggest that the […]

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The Psychology Of Coalitions

Question          What’s the only thing on any political party’s mind after winning an election?   Answer            The next election   Why?   What else do political parties think about?   Having won an election because their policies and style had the most appeal, the winners think only about how best to […]

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Charles Crawford: Radio Orla

If anyone needs something different from life, and/or wants to hear me talk at some length about my time in Poland and other issues, here are details of my long interview last week with London’s excellent English/Polish radio station Radio Orla.fm. Broadcast tomorrow (Sunday) and again on Monday, and available thereafter […]

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A Well Hung Parliament

Some random thoughts on latest dramatic developments in the UK, all the more random for lack of sleep. First the Really Good News. As for the feverish politics, note the following. It is not only that the new Parliament is ‘hung’, ie no party has an overall majority. It is […]

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Labour’s Love – Lost (Narcissism In Red Polyester Socks)

Election Day across the UK looms. The Labour Party are set to lose power. Hurrah. But will they lose badly enough to be obliterated? Or somehow only enough to stay in business and start scheming anew after some ritual blood-letting? Here’s my own New Labour Story. I joined the FCO […]

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Labour v Bigots: The International Perspective

Here is the long Mail Online account of the encounter between Gordon Brown and Mrs Gillian Duffy. It squeezes more than maximum juice out of this fleeting encounter, yet the words of Mrs Duffy and the accompanying pictures are touching: ‘There’s been a development,’ she was told by a reporter from […]

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FCO/Papal Visit: Tim Collard – Disgracing ‘Former Diplomats’

Tim Collard, (a retired British diplomat who spent most of his career in China and Germany. He is an active member of the Labour Party) offers a jeer in the Telegraph at William Hague’s sensible comment on the FCO Popegate fiasco: William Hague, who expects to be in charge in King […]

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The Crawford Leaked Email: Collateral Polish Damage

I have just spotted this tragic story from 2005, describing how my own leaked email about the EU Budget Negotiations led to someone resigning from his media job in London! With Polish emotion rather than western diplomacy, Kris wanted to recall Crawford to Britain “a country he does not know” […]

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Poland’s Black Box

With the state funeral of President Kaczynski completed, attention now will turn to the cause of the crash at Smolensk airport. Not before a surprisingly weak article by Denis Dutton and Adam Chmielewski appears at Open Democracy: The air-crash which decapitated Poland’s state elite may owe something to reckless behaviour, […]

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