Here is Clarence B Jones, contributor to Martin Luther King’s speeches, on the subject of great oratory. His key point is spot on: … the measure of or index of a good speech is not merely the words that are festooned together and spoken – presumably by someone who has […]
Max Atkinson has been inviting readers to submit draft speeches for Doomed Dictators. Here are the seven entries, with three distinguished judges having to work out who wins. Of course it all depends quite how doomed the dictator thinks he (and it is usually a ‘he’) thinks he is. If […]
Utterly unbelievable! I just can’t believe it! I’ve won the 2011 Doomed Dictator Speech Twitter Challenge! With pithy little numbers like this: We will kill on the roads and in the fields. We’d kill in the hedgerows if we had any. We’ll never surrender. Until we run away To run, […]
A sharp-edged piece by James Rogers at European Geostrategy on what Cathy Ashton’s recent Budapest speech tell us about the EU’s vision of itself, or not: "The strength of the EU lies, paradoxically, in its inability to throw its weight around. Its influence flows from the fact that it is […]
Here is Poland’s Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski yesterday in Washington: Events in the Middle East show that we are fast entering a new phase in the spread of democracy, or at least a new pluralism. People living under dictatorships are finding out who they are. They are realising that the […]
We haven’t heard from Mark Steyn for a while. But he’s back. And firing on all cylinders (emphasis added): Last year, The Times of London reported: The President of Greece warned last night that his country stood on the brink of the abyss after three people were killed when an […]
Mary Beard at the Guardian writes a mainly interesting piece about Great Speeches, but look out for her peculiar idea that "there is something problematic about the very notion of "great oratory". For a start, it is an almost entirely male category." Huh? This is more like it (apart from the […]
I appeared on Press TV today in a pre-recorded Agenda programme due to go out on Saturday/Sunday. The subject was Libya, so everything we said probably will be well out of date by then. Press TV, for those unfamiliar with it, is Iran’s official international TV station and so steeped […]
The idiom ‘shooting fish in a barrel’ describes an easy job – you just can’t miss. Mythbusters helpfully experiment with different sorts of guns and containers to show what works best. (Advisory: best not to watch if you are a sensitive fish): But that is a hard task indeed compared […]
Are closely and efficiently monitored here: I wasn’t amused to spend an hour this morning waiting for a bus that didn’t arrive. But I was amused after I gave up, went home and checked the Thames Travel website. Please be aware there are severe delays to our services due to […]
