e-Diplomacy in action? Or e-Diplomacy inaction? Here is a version of the piece I wrote for the latest issue of DIPLOMAT magazine on how I invented e-Diplomacy and tried to put it into effect in a nervous FCO, too many years ahead of my time… e-Diplomacy: Who Isn’t My Neighbour? Where Julius […]
Some interesting thoughts on that subject in the Guardian (always a pleasure to see the word desuetude) and Sharpe’s Opinion: Reading between the lines of ‘Smeargate’ (can we really not have a better name) and the expenses scandal, we see Maximus Decimus Meridias removing his helmet and standing up to Commodus. […]
Never mind all this Earth-bound rubbish. How to expand ourselves across the universe? Quickly, or at least exponentially! Not so easy.
What does something cost? In the biggest, most abstract sense. You buy a bicycle. What are you buying? Not just a bike. The market price includes an element for all the myriad components included. The metals, rubber and paint. The innovation which went into creating those metals and rubber and paint, […]
So here’s a new idea. People who have essential services get to pay a cutesy new tax to fund provision of those services to people who do not have them: The Prime Minister said a fast internet connection is now as vital as electricity, gas and water, and will help […]
I previously wrote about the ethics or not of one US blogger ‘outing’ an anonymous (to be precise pseudonymous) blogger who had persistently criticised him. Now we have Orwell Prize winner Jack Night revealed to be Detective Constable Richard Horton by the Times. Iain Dale is sickened. FleetStreetBlues is/are pragmatic: […]
Welcome to BBRU 226. First things first Can you bake a good cake? Misssy M is struggling. Does the Objectification of Women via the explosion of pornography really lead to bad outcomes for women? Not at the Himmelgarten Café. Update: And, to get us into the swing of what follows, a magnificent example from Liberal England of European […]
Obama fan Camille Paglia looks at that Cairo speech, and is less impressed than she had hoped to be. Thus: Obama’s speech (which I read rather than heard) seemed to my teacher’s eye like a strong first draft rather than a polished final product… The Cairo speech is well-organized, ticking […]
Last week I was at the fine Frontline Club near Paddington station for a dinner conversation cum presentation on the Internet and the next general election. The lead participants were Guido and Iain Dale broadly representing the Right and Alex Smith (Labour List) and Matthew McGregor (Blue State Digital) ditto for the […]
The goings-on in and around North Korea and its nuclear ambitions takes us back to our old friend Negotiation. See eg this early piece I wrote in April last year about Power and Purpose: Part of getting what you want is projecting a sense of Power and Purpose, so that when […]
