My old classmate from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Jay Pollard, is still well and truly locked up for espionage. Mention his name at Fletcher and everyone looks away, nervously. What, was he here? Surely not. He never graduated? So how can he have been here? Yet there […]
A few weeks ago I spotted on Twitter that LSE wanted more book reviewers. Within an hour I was signed up, and a few days later my first book appeared. Economic Gangsters by American professors Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel: Here is my first LSE review of it, just up: So […]
The agonies continue at the LSE over the fact that it took Libyan money. Here is the sensible memo which an unhappy Fred Halliday wrote on the subject in October 2009. It reads quite well now. Here briskly defending what New Labour did by way of opening up to Libya is […]
OOOOOOH Douglas Alexander lands a supposedly devastating blow on William Hague over the Libya mission: "The British public are entitled to wonder whether, if some new neighbours moved into the foreign secretary’s street, he would introduce himself by ringing the doorbell or instead choose to climb over the fence in […]
Umair Haque at the Harvard Business Review says a lot which chimes with my own thinking on the fact that in almost any policy area you choose, the main problem is the over-heavy institutional legacy of industrial-age organisation: What stands in the way of the future, most often, is the past. […]
The Guardian gives us a handy reminder on Uprising Etiquette: A senior member of Benghazi’s revolutionary council told Martin: "they were carrying espionage equipment, reconnaissance equipment, multiple passports and weapons. This is no way to conduct yourself during an uprising. Gaddafi is bringing in thousands of mercenaries to kill us, most […]
Craig’s made a big effort to change his website. Here’s the result. Definitely a cleaner, sharper ‘look’, although some might wonder about his self-description: Former Ambassador, Human Rights Activist The experts in such matters always say that it’s best to brand yourself in terms of what you do now and […]
A meagre Guardian article by glum Lucy Mangan pulls together some disparate material to argue the case for International Women’s Day. This tended to be quite a big deal in communist Europe, featuring men generously buying flowers and chocolates for their women, then hoping to sit down to a good […]
Here is Clarence B Jones, contributor to Martin Luther King’s speeches, on the subject of great oratory. His key point is spot on: … the measure of or index of a good speech is not merely the words that are festooned together and spoken – presumably by someone who has […]
I have not had anything to say so far on the Alternative Voting referendum here on 5 May. Which is fine, since Brendan O’Neill at spiked says what I more or less intuit about the whole business: Which political party will risk standing a hardcore individual – a deep-blue Tory or […]
