The WSJ does a good job at shining a light on the top-level secret machinations which have been trying to keep the Eurozone from falling apart. Some vivid descriptions of how our beloved leaders behave towards each other: When Mr. Sarkozy barreled into one meeting with camera crews and photographers in […]
Mrs Crawf and I have been away for two days, mulling over the fact that we have been married for twenty years. We repaired to the South Coast, namely Christchurch, for some bracing sea air. The hotel was teeming with trim and efficient Polish staff who were so startled by […]
I was back stalking in the long corridors of the Foreign Office today, to give a talk on behalf of ADRg Ambassadors. I put in a word for Mediation as an example of the hard-edged soft power tool the UK now needed to be ffective at a time of growing global uncertainty […]
Read this superb interview at Edge with W. Daniel Hillis about radical new ideas for looking at what cancer does: Instead of saying, ‘I have cance’", we should say, "I am cancering.’ The truth of the matter is we’re probably cancering all the time, and our body is checking it […]
I am fed up. No, I really am. How many more times do I need patiently to explain to this country that Football Fascism is unacceptable. What is Tim Montgomorie doing supporting the idea that the state should loot specific items of private property so that local MPs can show […]
According to Iain Dale, the ‘right-wing’ blogosphere needs new blood: Left-of-centre blogs take up four of the top 10 places and seven of the top 20. Last year there was only one left-wing blog (Tom Harris) in the top 10 and four in the top 20. So does this indicate […]
I have not been past Arts & Letters Daily recently, but it continues to carry a fine range of links. See this one at the NY Times about Truthiness and Proofiness – different forms of approaching or presenting arguments in a specious or dishonest way. Truthiness: “the quality of preferring concepts […]
A delicious insight into the way EU leaders squabble with each other when we can’t watch what they are up to is given to us by Le Monde, as borrowed by Open Europe. The top-level ghastly personal row breaks out over the French moves to deport Roma people. The various […]
The EU is busy setting up its new External Action Service. Vital to make sure from the outset that some of Europe’s brightest diplomats get key positions on merit, not on the trivially irrelevant criteria of where they were born? Hey, we’re all Europeans together after all! Of course not. Let’s […]
The Crawfs are moving house soon. A valuer came round today to look at out furniture, too much of it for the new place. Over many years we have spent, say, £20,000 on these pieces of different shapes and sizes. How to get anything back now? If they go to auction […]
