Here is a brisk piece by Tim Harford on Causation and Cigarettes, where he looks at how Big Data help (helps?) us see patterns that were not obvious before or confirm our previously unproved hypotheses: We cannot rely on correlation alone, then. But insisting on absolute proof of causation is […]
This afternoon I finished my first online course for the United Nations on the general theme of drafting talking-points and speechwriting. Running any course through successive webinars poses interesting new challenges. Above all, how to get the participants to do something useful between sessions and during the sessions. In this […]
After all the tomfoolery getting this iMac 5K Retina delivered, it did finally arrive. And what a device it is. Talk about minimalism. The computing power is built into the screen. Yet the screen at the edge is about the thickness of the pencil. You lift it from its box. You plug […]
Actor Michael Sheen makes a ‘blistering’ speech about the UK National Health Service. Hurrah! If only our milksop politicians would have a bit of that passion and sincerity! Or not. Here is the speech. It’s a fine example of a good but very bad speech. Rather like the ill-fated Neil […]
So, in the past two weeks I have spent a week in chilly Kazakhstan (Astana) where the road-signs are rather difficult to fathom. Does this mean that public drinking while ten-pin bowling and carrying a primitive smartphone is banned? If it isn’t, it should be. In Astana I gave two […]
Sir John Sawers has given a significant speech at King’s College London on the Limits of Security. Here is the ‘official’ website version. And here is my piece for Daily Telegraph Comment mentioning it with (as you can see) my disclaimer mentioning that I worked with Sir John on his speech, his first after […]
I’ve been busy writing this and that and getting ready for my next trip to Kazakhstan – leaving for the airport in an hour or so. This time it is give TWO courses in Speechwriting and Public Speaking. Kazakh oratory is set to explode! Check out my longer piece in […]
Back from watching the world from the fascinating vantage-point of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that one of our Negotiation Skills specialist imaginary roleplays had been almost exactly what happened to OPCW inspectors at a tense suspected CW site in […]
Here is my look at the speech at the 2005 Auschwitz commemoration by Vladimir Putin: I was there as British Ambassador to Poland, standing behind the rows of world leaders. It was dark and cold: a painful minus 8 degrees C. We lucky lesser VIPs at the back could move around […]
I’ve been scrutinising public speaking disasters in preparing for a forthcoming online course that I am running for the UN on Drafting Talking-Points and Speechwriting. I found this handy list of horrors compiled a while back by Scott Berkun, with help from his readers. This one is good: Moscow, 1997. […]
