I have been sent this noteworthy message (expletives deleted): /blog/south-africa-and-mandela SOVIET-WORSHIPPERS???? YOU FAT NAZI ******* TURD!!!! NO WONDER YOU WERE FIRED FROM THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE, YOU WORTHLESS ****!!!! IP address: 188.123.252.24 My modest grasp of technology lets me look up IP addresses on the Internet. And this is what we […]
My latest piece for Telegraph Blogs looks in (very) broad terms at Ukraine: In 1994 the EU Ambassadors had a meeting in Moscow at which they opined on the then reforms under President Yeltsin. The Belgian Ambassador grumbled that Russia was just too big, too communist and too “Asian” to […]
My latest piece for DIPLOMAT is out. It recalls in some detail my happy time in the Foreign Office dealing with the end of the USSR and then the Russian transition from communism: I was posted to Moscow as Political Councillor in 1993. We watched this giant country start to […]
It’s a very rare honour to be quoted by Mark Steyn. But it can happen: This is what happens when you elect someone because he looks cool standing next to Jay-Z. Putin is cool mainly in the sense that Yakutsk in February is. In American pop-culture terms, he is a […]
My piece for Telegraph Blogs this morning: Days ago Washington was gearing up to hit hard at the Assad regime because of its crimes against humanity in using chemical weapons. An almost impossible political case to sell (why will it make anything any better?) but at least it drew on […]
How was President Obama’s latest Syria speech for you? Here it is. Points to note. He attempts to make the case that by failing to act against the use of CW in Syria now new risks for us will appear down the line: If we fail to act, the Assad […]
My piece at Telegraph Blogs boldly asserts that yesterday was the worst-ever day for Western diplomacy: Think about what will happen if the Russian initiative starts to fly. Chemical weapons are relatively easy to make and store (and fire), but much harder to dismantle safely. The chemicals themselves are fiendishly […]
An interesting old CIA analysis of Tito’s strangled Yugoslav grammar and pronuciation concluded that he probably was a Polish or Russian imposter. The CIA opined that this fact “does not matter a great deal” as his rise to world prominence occurred after any substitution. Evelyn Waugh famously fretted that Tito […]
It’s pretty obvious that the ill-fated Russia re-set button produced before a bemused Sergey Lavrov by an excited Hillary Clinton back in 2009 is now sitting prominently in the Russian Foreign Ministry’s famed Museum of Diplomatic Curiosities, an exhibit put there for young diplomats to show them how not to […]
Imagine you’re a member of the public mulling over EU issues and the future of the UK/EU relationship. Your heart must sink at the prospect of assorted former Ambassadors hooting mournfully at each other on these questions. Over at Telegraph Blogs is my latest piece on this subject, pointing to […]
