Opinion / Public Speaking and Speechwriting

“Prolier Than Thou”

Always good to see a writer going for a big shot and sending the ball loftily out of the ground. Meet Nick Cohen weighing in to the current British leadership. But his concluding point is the key one: But Britain isn’t a police state or anything like one. In real […]

Continue Reading

The Leading FCO Sock-puppet On The Internet

Oh Lordy. Craig Murray has called me the leading FCO sock-puppet on the Internet. Read his characteristically muddled piece for yourselves. Here is the reply which I have posted on his site (Note: links added for ease of reference): Craig, Dear. Oh. Dear. Are you really insinuating that somehow I […]

Continue Reading

More Wealth, Less Waste

The animation movie Wall-e depicts in stunning colours a silent abandoned Earth buried deep in towering human garbage, with only a perky little garbage-crushing robot plus a friendly cockroach moving about. An environmentalist metaphor for human destructiveness! Wrong. BBC radio today carried a story about tinned food, mentioning in passing […]

Continue Reading

Crawford’s Diplomatic Oral History

Can you have too much of a good thing? In some instances, yes. But not when it comes to my Oral Career History as recorded for the British Diplomatic Oral History Programme (part of the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge). Here is my entry. It looks to be […]

Continue Reading

Britblog Roundup 219

The latest BBRU tersely hosted by Matt Wardman is posted. Various handy links, including this to the vividly designed Andrew Ian Dodge website which in turn links to a fatuous EU Quiz. As Andrew points out, the eccentric questions are loaded in a trivially anti-libertarian way. Or is the EU […]

Continue Reading

Western Civilisation – Worth Defending?

Update: Welcome readers from Mark Steyn and Deborah Gyapong. This issue – can Western Civilisation be defended? – is aired a lot these days. A big part of the answer lies in one’s assessment of the value of that civilisation – and its intrinsic strength/resilience. If you think that something is […]

Continue Reading

Ooops

A posting by me earlier today about the Frank Lampard / James O’Brien story was just wrong in important respects, so I have deleted it. Thanks to those who so promptly let me know. Apologies. It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on […]

Continue Reading

No 10 Petition On Gordon Brown

Various bloggers are trying to crank up interest in an online No 10 petition politely asking the Prime Minister to resign. Just over 6000 people have supported so far. Not bad – but also not so many, given the state of the country? Fear not. There is still lots of time for […]

Continue Reading

Britblog Roundup 218: Complexity v Simplicity

Here is BBRU 218, collated by Redemption Blues. This caught my eye. Feminist Suzi FemAcadem gives her robust thoughts on more HMG food and health nagging, but includes this line: It should not be cheaper to go to Iceland and fill your freezer with frozen, processed foods than be able […]

Continue Reading

Protectrix Of The Lowly Negro

The other day I heard a BBC Radio Five programme coyly playing the BBC broadcast of the moment back in 1975 when Arthur Ashe won Wimbledon. The commentator hailed this success: "congratulations to the first Negro to win the competition". It turns out that that success was not enough. Arise, White […]

Continue Reading
Newer EntriesOlder Entries