Here’s a question. If country X grows its economy 1% faster than country Y over ten years, what’s the difference in outcomes? I previously looked at Serbia and Zimbabwe in this sense, trying to calculate the True Costs of Stupidity: Thus the Cost of Milosevic(ism) can be accurately measured. It is […]
I’ve been writing my new piece for PunditWire on Vladimir Putin’s long State of the Nation speech. I’ll link to it when it goes up. The speech was a full 1500 words longer in the English version, showing how the Russian language is good at using endings of words to […]
Tomorrow at LVS School in Ascot I am giving a presentation to the public on the general subject of Spies. Always a fascinating theme down the centuries. Plenty about the subject here on my website, including my piece for DIPLOMAT in 2010 that looked briefly at the differences between HUMINT, […]
The G20 Summit in Australia ends. The assembled leaders start the long flights home. The results are in the communique, a classic example of a dull, badly written, important text: We have agreed on a set of voluntary leading practices to promote and prioritise quality investment, particularly in infrastructure. To […]
UPDATE The key zero-zero soundbite in this speech (below) is already causing controversy for being, how best to put this, simply wrong. Ed Miliband has been quick to put out a subtly different version to try to fix the mess! But the original tendentious version is still out there proudly on […]
My latest piece for DIPLOMAT wonders what happens when international borders start to melt: … some people think that borders are less and less important. This in turn seems to signify politically (or even morally) that within the European Union so-called nation states are less and less important. As perhaps […]
At last this spectacular new museum in Warsaw is fully open and buzzing. So many sites in Poland recall how Poland’s Jewish community died. Now this one recalls how they lived. Here is a good piece from Timothy Garton Ash: “Mir zaynen do!” (“We are here!”) The defiant Yiddish refrain […]
Here’s my latest piece at PunditWire, looking at President Obama’s UN speech (both substance and technique) and what it says about negotiating: Even the President of the United States drifts into the tritest clichés on such occasions: We come together at a crossroads between war and peace; between disorder and […]
In case you’re all wondering, my eBook Speechwriting for Leaders is coming along very nicely. A bold and amusing cover is being designed (every e-Book needs a bold and amusing eCover) and the substance is entering the layout and final edit phase. The problem for any great artist with any work […]
Mulling over my latest piece for PunditWire I started to look at one of President Obama’s rhetorical tics: his use of the word ‘clear’. Take, for example, his 10 September statement on US policy towards ISIL/ISIS. Three hits! Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not “Islamic.” Our objective is […]
