Does Dominique Strauss-Kahn enjoy diplomatic immunity by virtue of his role as the top official at the IMF, so that any American domestic attempt to prosecute him for assaulting a hotel employee gets struck out before it starts? Good question. I don’t know the answer. Missions of international organisations enjoy […]
Here’s a piece I have written for The Commentator picking up a baffling Guardian piece yesterday by Martin Kettle, in which he rightly attacks Labour’s horrible proliferation of new regulation and criminal offences as "an insult to a society of free people", but then bewails the efforts of the Coalition […]
It’s not all doom and gloom with British diplomats. Over at Odessablog some warm words of praise for Judith Gardiner, Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy in Kyiv (Kiev, capital of Ukraine, for those who are not abreast of latest European city names). Thus: It is always good to catch […]
You may not have noticed, but in the last few days/weeks/months/years (depending on how you look at it) Bosnia and Herzegovina has been teetering on the Brink of Disaster. Why? Oh, for all the familiar reasons. Key posts in the central government unfilled, general political deadlock stretching in all directions, […]
Here is a strange piece at Forbes which I picked up via Twitter by Anne Doyle, an American woman who is big on Powering Up! women in general. She quotes what she asserts to be three ‘stunning examples of the cultural headwinds that women are still up against’. What are […]
The Ayn Rand novel Atlas Shrugged depicts a ghastly world in which more and more US government regulation aimed at protecting corrupt special interests drags down creative people who eventually go on strike themselves. They thereby crash the system, which has (it turns out) relied on their passive acceptance of their […]
Network Myanmar, a lively source of information on Myanmar (previously known as Burma) welcomes the FCO announcement that the UK diplomatic presence in Myanmar is going to be increased (a bit), but then does a goodly job by pointing out one by one all sorts of errors on the Myanmar-related part […]
A couple of pieces on the subject of speechwriting, by people with some form. One by Brian Jenner: Any closing questions, comments or additional advice? Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead! The other by Simon […]
Remember the kitschy post-WW2 Yugo-monuments? They are doing the Internet rounds. But … what is this over at Instapundit where Megan McArdle is guestblogging? CREEPY/COOL abandoned Soviet war monuments in the former Yugoslavia. Posted at 12:41 pm by Megan McArdle
The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee today published a searching report on the Role of the FCO in UK Government. Here it is. And here is my own trenchant evidence, submitted in writing. I am not, it seems, grand enough these days to merit giving oral evidence. Sob. But read […]
