Another tiresome night in hospital (at least until 0330 or so) getting treatment for a horrible cough. I had a saline nebulisation which seems to amount to spraying my nose with misty sea water. Rather bracing. Feeling better now. Off tomorrow to the 2011 UK Speechwriters Guild conference in Bournemouth on […]
In the 2011 Total Politics Blog Survey I have made it to the giddy heights of 11th in the UK Non-Aligned Blog category, mainly in very grand company: one behind the BBC’s Nick Robinson (but only one ahead of the scary teeth and fetid breath of underdogs bite upwards). I […]
Last week in the Krynica Economic Forum in deep Poland, a highlight was the exchange between former German President (and former IMF Director) Horst Köhler and Polish Finance Minister Jan Vincent-Rostowski. In essence, Kohler argued that the time had come to stop throwing good money after bad in the Eurozone – […]
I returned to the Embassy in Belgrade to be told to watch on TV what was happening in New York. I did. The Twin Towers crashed. My thought then is still valid: This level of Islamist madness is quite different. It can’t be defeated by normal means. Only moderate Muslims […]
Here at Project Syndicate is Poland’s Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski: Ten years later, it is clear that the fanatics behind those attacks miscalculated in two central respects. They regarded Western democracies as weak – unwilling or unable to respond to their evil extremism. And they expected Muslim communities and countries […]
My latest DIPLOMAT piece is up: The UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) has an imposing suite of UK-based and e-learning training courses for British diplomats. Some aim at improving skills (Diversity; One Team, Many Cultures; Communication and Assertiveness; Performance Management; First Aid); others look at thematic policy questions (Advanced […]
Is here. It looks at The Secret History of Democracy by Benjamin Isakhan and Stephen Stockwell (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). And finds it more tendentious than enlightening. Basically, straining to demonstrate that the ‘Western narrative'( sic) of democracy is seriously incomplete, the editors define democracy in a dumbed-down prim post-modern way which […]
Here is the full text of the interesting submission made by the Prosecution team in the infamous Dominique Strauss-Kahn case asking that the case be dismissed. The prosecution case for this complete change of tack in DSK’s favour is simple. The lies and contradictions in the hotel-maid’s testimony were so considerable […]
I have done some changes to the rear-end (so to speak) of this site to make things easier for myself. One novelty is that my posts here are now numbered. This one is the 2367th posting since the website began in early 2008. The preceding piece on the DSK case […]
One of the greatest passages in the Bible: Then the Lord said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?""I know not," he replied. "Am I my brother’s keeper?" When – and to what extent – is X responsible for Y? German President Christian Wulff might be expected with his first […]
