Opinion / Public Speaking and Speechwriting

Speechwriting Rule No 1: (Don’t) Be Predictable

You’re a great leader. You make speeches. In our Tower of Babel world, is it better to keep hammering away on the same themes (and often using the same words and phrases) to get your message across? Maybe. But don’t overdo the clichés. Or people will start listening to you […]

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Help! My First Daphnelanche

Once upon a time I was honoured to be noticed by the great Instapundit. Readership shoots up fleetingly if the Professor links to you on his site, as his readers run into the hundreds of thousands. Ditto Guido. An Iain Dale link too is much prized. But to get a […]

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Crawf Elsewhere: EU Solidarity Meets The Prodigal Son

Over at Business and Politics. Thus: Remember the Bible parable of the Prodigal Son? He squandered his fortune but saw the error of his ways and crept back home. He was warmly welcomed by his father, who explained the significance of his repentance to an older brother unimpressed by the […]

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Nick Hogan Is Free

Nick Hogan has been released, in an interesting example of Blogger Power (of sorts). Anna Raccoon helped lead the charge – well done her and Old Holborn. Some of the detail on the case as they report it is striking. I don’t smoke and don’t like being in smoke-filled places. […]

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USA TV News Ratings: Fox v CNN

Simon Heffer ponders the decline of the Obama Administration’s credibility, arguing in part thus: "Obama’s big problem," a senior Democrat told me, "is that four times as many people watch Fox News as watch CNN." The Fox network is a remarkable cultural phenomenon which almost shocks those of us from […]

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USA TV Ratings: Cume Again

A reader argues that I am underestimating the impact of Fox News in the USA: Thus the numbers of people ‘reached’ in America are not the paltry 2.8 million you purport, but rather 80% of the total viewership for the day, 18,166,000, (again ridiculous, 20% of 18 million people did […]

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Ayn Rand Visits Greek Islands

Over at the latest Crawford Diplomatic Despatch: It all boils down to a profound infantilisation of public life. Government has turned into feckless dim-witted parents who treat their children like spoiled brats. The children themselves duly morph into something neurotic, angry and sly. To win the public’s loathsome brattish affections […]

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Ejup Ganic – Another Week In Prison?

Dnevni Avaz in Sarajevo reports that the UK court has ordered that Ejup Ganic stay in prison for a further week, apparently to give Serbia more time to present evidence against him for the Dobrovoljacka St massacre in 1992. A protest demonstration is to be held outside the British and […]

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Ejup Ganic: Political Manipulation Of The UK Courts?

I have just given a short interview to Radio Free Europe in Sarajevo about the Ganic problem. The interviewer asked a question about the abuse of UK courts for political purposes. I pointed out that there are two completely different issues here, which may (understandably) be merging into one in […]

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What You Deserve

My Google Spam is doing a noble job in heading off lots of emails from somewhere or other purporting to issue diplomas: BECAUSE YOU DESERVE IT! Is your lack of a degree holding you back from career advancement? Are you having difficulty finding employment in your field of interest because […]

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