The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority is asking people what they think about its new proposals for MPs allowances and expenses. It’s a well turned set of questions. Join in the fun online. I have bunged in my thoughts, which boil down to "Don’t be Too Bossy" – weed out the […]
Here are my ten entries for this year’s Orwell Blog Prize: 14/01/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/art740 17/03/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/art859 03/05/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/art928 17/06/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/anonymous-bloggers-at-work- 26/06/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/a-musty-needy-eu-speech 04/08/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/NRWKVL599211 21/09/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/russia-s-foreign-policy-psycholgy-contd- 30/10/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/even-yet-more-further-labour-kaminski-nonsense 15/11/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/european-foreign-policy-v-the-iron-laws-of-physics 20/12/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/copenhagen-climate-summit-um-not-un These are a decent sample of my output this year, some more analytical than others. I have tried […]
Is hosted again by a Very British dude with his beautiful eyes. He looks at the genre. Thus: Blogging is not new – it is pamphleteering and essaying with modern technology. Early Modern Whale, for example examines a 16th Century pamphlet about a landslip in Kent, and talks about the writer using this phenomenon to […]
No amount of exhortations that the international community ‘be more robust’ in and with Bosnia can get round the horrible fact that the key problem is profound disagreement on what Bosnia and Herzegovina is (are?). The Bosniac/Serb/Croat communities and their leaders just do not and will not agree on what […]
Many Departments of State in the UK hand out large lumps of cash to NGOs and other ‘community’ groupings for what are said to be noble purposes which advance taxpayers’ interests. The problem is that once that money is handed over, it ceases to come under any Freedom of Information […]
Always good to hear from fellow bloggers who enjoy the product here. Such as Geoff Jones, who is to be found at https://geoffjones.com/ Geoff left school on the eve of his fifteenth birthday and has ended up a successful businessman and electronics innovator. See for example his very practical scientific […]
Imagine how the world would look if people all round the world and at the UN who knew about frauds and other abuses of public funds were really encouraged to come forward and Reveal All. For example, by getting a generous payback from public monies saved or recouped from malfeasants. […]
Remember my rather dismissive account of the UK’s attempt to teach the Russians how to fish, rather than inundate them with free fish? And the ensuing Big Mac Attack? I have just heard from a former member of the UK Agriculture Ministry MAFF (by no means related to naff) who […]
I previously have quoted the famous chess aphorism attributed to the hypermodern chess grandmaster Aron Nimzowitsch back in 1927, the threat is stronger than the execution: The sense is that one can wait for some time to play a strong chess move, letting the threat that it might happen create […]
Chistopher Hitchens looks at some distinctions without differences: My colleague and friend Fareed Zakaria wrote not long ago in these pages that there was a significant difference between, say, the Taliban takeover of the Swat Valley and the launching of suicide attacks on the non-Muslim world. I said to him […]
