The energetic campaign to reform the British libel laws is making progress. Yesterday the three largest UK political parties all indicated wilingness to make significant changes. And see Jack Straw in the Guardian: … perhaps most importantly for the media – we’ll be looking at whether to introduce a statutory […]
Sometimes Mark Steyn surpasses himself. See for example this essay about declining civilisations in general and ours in particular. Angry, insightful and full of vivid language. Examples: Permanence is an illusion — and you would be surprised at how fast mighty nations can be entirely transformed. But, more important, national […]
The whole business is all about the French Presidential election cycle and the double-dealings of the key protagonists? Bien sûr!
While I was HM Ambassador in Poland I was accused of improper lobbying of Parliament. (Slavist linguistics note: Polish has lifted the English word lobbying and incorporated it into Polish in a strange form – lobbing) I forget now exactly what the issue was about. Maybe a complicated dispute between the then […]
The Obama administration’s ruthlessness in driving through its healthcare so-called reforms has to be admired in its sheer boldness. Now what? Mark Steyn: You can say, oh, well, the polls show most people opposed to it, but, if that mattered, the Dems wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing. Their bet […]
On BBC Radio Five Live yesterday there was a significant piece about Labour lobbying revelations. It dwelled at some length on the general problems of principle arising from what Stephen Byers and other senior Labour politicians have been offering, but without placing the blame firmly on Labour in general or […]
Plenty of excellent articles at Spiegel Online about the Eurozone’s problems as seen by intelligent Germans. Such as this one which argues that far from bringing countries of the Eurozone towards economic convergence, the single currency has locked in profound problems of competitiveness and so is forcing them apart. Or […]
Families are strange things. Just say you have a wayward sister who has never quite settled down, and fritters away successive generous attempts to help. She starts to drink herself into alcoholism, but asks you to give her several thousand pounds to help her get through a detox clinic to […]
Reaction from around the world to my unfortunate collision with Malta is flooding in. Such as this link sent from the USA to Maltese proverbs. For example:
Republika Srpska’s leader Milorad Dodik has come up with a crafty way of dealing with the fact that the ethnic-territorial definition of the three-person BH Presidency has been proclaimed to be an abuse of human rights by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. He proposes a simple change. […]
