Long time no blog. Family, Christmas, weather, website upgrades, more weather. the usual. Here I am in my most recent DIPLOMAT piece, on East v West and the benefits or otherwise of the Asian Model of Development: For most of the past 100 years or so, it looked as if […]
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 […]
Telegraph Blogs have published my piece on the latest deal on Iran and its nuclear programmes: All negotiations boil down to a few existential issues: Security, Resources, Control, Reputation/Recognition and Time/Risk. Plus, depending on how the other aspects are tackled, Trust. Skilful negotiators trade both within and between these ideas. […]
A horrible new addiction enters my life: live World Championship Chess. The Anand/Carlsen match is being played in India, but now you can watch it live on the Internet with streans of analysis and expert Grandmaster commentary as each game proceeds. See eg on Chessdom the Hindustan Times site. Open […]
My latest piece at Commentator is up, this time about Iran and why it is so difficult to build trust: Have sanctions against Iran worked as intended, by causing intense economic and other pain to the point of persuading Iran’s population and leaders alike to change course and cooperate normally […]
My creative juices are at a low ebb these days. It must be Global Warming. Hence the feeble presence here and indeed everywhere else apart from off forays on to Twitter. Anyway, I am off to Budapest today to give a presentation on Eavesdropping and Diplomacy. The gift that keeps […]
Reader Nigel Sedgwick reminds me of his long insightful comment here back in mid-2011 on the subject of where or not to draw the line when it comes to state eavesdropping. I reproduce the whole comment here. See especially his concluding thoughts (my emphasis) An understanding of the current issue […]
In case you missed it, and I have done my best to miss it, there has been a puny but noisy row in the UK media over a piece in the Daily Mail that pointed out that Ed Miliband’s father, Ralph Miliband, was a communist whose ideas – has they […]
I have been waiting to upgrade from my iPhone 4S to something notably better. That moment arrives with the appearance of the iPhone 5S and its fancy new operating system and fingerprint technology. It turns out that I can trade in my two-year old iPhone 4S for £175 or so, […]
Here on the BBC Football web pages is a video of former footballer Pat Nevin waffling on about the correlation between the size of a soccer pitch and the likelihood of goals being scored as a game draws towards the end: BBC Sport’s Pat Nevin explains how a variation of […]
