Once I send a witty telegram to the FCO from Sarajevo entitled: Bosnia: The Plot Thickens – And The Thicks Plot The deep problem in Bosnia is that the place is rotten with feckless Yugoslav communist self-management philosophy. The idea that you can talk and talk about ‘politics’ and borrow […]
Things are accelerating as the scale of the Eurozeone’s self-delusion emerges. And read this good piece by German TV anchor Tom Buhrow in the IHT: Most European governments wanted the cake and eat it, too — remain nation-states politically while expecting solidarity economically. That’s like having your own checking account and […]
Tim Collard, (a retired British diplomat who spent most of his career in China and Germany. He is an active member of the Labour Party) offers a jeer in the Telegraph at William Hague’s sensible comment on the FCO Popegate fiasco: William Hague, who expects to be in charge in King […]
The Guardian tells us about a serious police raid in California: California police have taken six computers and other items from the house of Jason Chen, the editor of the gadget blog Gizmodo who appeared on a video on the site showing off a lost Apple iPhone prototype which, it […]
I did not get it quite right in ascribing responsibility for the FCO/Pope fiasco to young officer Steven Mulvain. It looks instead as if a more senior colleague, one Anjoum Noorani, is the Guilty Man. Here is the Telegraph account: Mr Noorani, who, like Mr Mulvain, is a graduate of […]
Iain Dale interviews Adam Boulton and does a good job: What about Alastair Campbell’s briefings? You only need to read his diaries to see how many times he would mislead the lobby. While I admire much of Alastair Campbell’s professionalism, the problem was that he introduced a culture where it […]
I have just spotted this tragic story from 2005, describing how my own leaked email about the EU Budget Negotiations led to someone resigning from his media job in London! With Polish emotion rather than western diplomacy, Kris wanted to recall Crawford to Britain “a country he does not know” […]
The FCO has been quick off the mark to get on its website a piece about the ‘small explosion’ near the car of HM Ambassador in Yemen this morning. And, stop the presses, there is to be a new UK Ambassador in Macedonia. Yet nothing appears there under News on […]
The leak of the supposedly droll FCO email suggesting ‘far-fetched’ ideas for the programme of the Pope’s State Visit to the UK has prompted a flurry of comment. Yesterday I had an exchange with an FCO colleague to ask who was responsible for the email and was told that the […]
Let’s start with a brilliant resource for all Brit bloggers: localmouth, a way to find local blogs wherever you are in the UK. Hover somewhere near Oxford and you might find mine. A wonderful example of the way intelligent networked pluralism helps mobilise human creativity without busybody official statist help. […]
