Liam Murray notes that the Department of Health has four speechwriters, one for each Minister. Plus 35 other people in the PR/Spin area. This is ridiculous. Cut. Then cut harder.
Liam Murray notes that the Department of Health has four speechwriters, one for each Minister. Plus 35 other people in the PR/Spin area. This is ridiculous. Cut. Then cut harder.
Being a serious former Ambassador Oliver Miles manages to give the lame FCO diplo-blogging genre the thrashing it richly deserves AND do so in an elegant Guardian article: Why do diplomats (and Whitaker’s article quotes some examples from Americans as well as the British) feel the need to let it […]
Over at DIPLOMAT magazine is my light-touch article looking at the whys and wherefores of ‘interfering in internal affairs’. My original draft was wittily called Where Diplomacy meets Gynaecology but for no obvious reason this web version is called Diplomacy Meets Affairs of the State, which alas makes little sense.
Democratist replies to my earlier posting: I have a number of points to make about the following statements you made in "International Election Monitoring: Keeping Democracy Honest?" "The problem is that observers necessarily observe the observable, and only a tiny proportion of that." What about LTOs and the Core Team? They are […]
The Observer gives us a savage critique of the looming disaster facing civilisation as we know it thanks to the massacres being proposed for the UK’s public sector by the new coalition government. More! It’s written by a senior civil servant. Anonymously. How senior, pray? Can’t be that senior or […]
Is neatly hosted by Philobiblon. Who leads us to two stories of state-sponsored appallingness here in England. The tale of the non-equipped ambulance. And the grotesque behaviour of Hackney Council. Yes, we pay taxes so that these people can get paid to treat us with contempt.
Democratist is someone who follows the goings-on across the former Soviet Union in some depth. Here he takes up William Hague’s recent speech on UK foreign policy, and makes an interesting point about how the UK invests in foreign policy outcomes in that complicated region: OSCE election observation is about the best […]
Most issues boil down to a simple number of questions: what’s the problem? what’s at stake for the various sides arguing about it? is any given outcome likely to be seen by all concerned as both fair (enough) and sustainable? And above all: who decides? Many key international disputes (Israel/Palestine, […]
The Week too looks at the spy story Winners and Losers. And cites this site as giving one of the Best Opinions on the issues concerned.
A reader from New York writes: I must add that I thoroughly enjoy your blogoir. I suspect it is the air of friendly exasperation that tints so much of what you write (can’t they just see?) that I find so engaging. I had never thought of my output in that […]
