Opinion / Public Speaking and Speechwriting

Total Politics Blog Vote 2009

Have you voted in the Total Politics Blog 2009 exercise yet? If you care to do so you can include a vote for this one, now with an added Wikio ‘badge’ (see on the right hand column) which I have earned by soaring unexpectedly for me at least into the […]

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Bloggers Circle:

I have joined the Bloggers Circle group, an initiative set up by Labour supporter Matthew Cain and aimed at getting somewhat more structured debate going between bloggers. Imagine my dismay when one of the first pieces of work put round for possible comment was this one from Raincoat Optimism linking the […]

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Great To Be Back

Numerous Crawfs have made it safely back home after two weeks in sizzling Greek sunshine, freed from the temptation to look at the Meejer via the Internet during this period by the fact that the clueless hotel had no wireless capability and a solitary Internet computer charged out at €5 […]

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Roundabout(s)

The ever-fertile mind of Max Atkinson points out an easy way to avoid wasting fuel and make life better, namely allowing UK cars to turn left at red traffic lights if the road is clear. Traffic norms in different countries take on a life quite independent of common sense. In […]

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British Diplomatic Oral History

I am struck by the solid number of people coming to this site via my Diplomatic Oral History transcript here. Welcome. There is a lot of good vivid stuff there if anyone really does want a Lot More about some of the most memorable moments in my diplomatic career: In Bosnia after […]

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Aestivation

The Crawfs have ended up on a sweltering Greek island where the allegedly sophisticated but certainly expensive hotel has no wireless access and only one scrawny terminal in the basement where I now sit gloomily at 5 Euros per 45 minutes. So this blog formally moves into aestivation mode until 26 […]

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Crawfs To Greece

Assorted Crawfs are off to Greece for a couple of weeks. Back on the day when Craig Murray of the militant PAHMiP tendency soars to victory in the Norwich North by-election. If you feel bored as my postings dwindle to a sun-stroked trickle in the coming fortnight, read Sam the Sudden. And […]

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Product Placements Break New Ground

I always enjoy ruining films being watched by my children by calling out product placement every time the camera lovingly dwells on a can of Pepsi or a specific range of car or a new Sony gizmo. The new James Bond films are almost unwatchable now, such is this junk. […]

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Resignation Letter

In the UK most political letters announcing the writer’s resignation say what they have to say, perhaps with a feigned or even real sentence or two of respect, then stop. Some go into some vital policy detail, albeit in thinly coded and very general terms. See Geoffrey Howe’s letter to Margaret […]

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Sir John Sawers: On The Up

Once again the Guardian talking sense, this time on the Sir John Sawers’ untimely Facebook story: … the revelations of Lady Shelley surely contain very little that those in search of such information could not find somewhere else in the course of an afternoon. And certainly there seems to be […]

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