Back from training EU officials in Mediation techniques, with an eye on the role of mediation at the international level. One of our role-play examples featured an attempt by an imaginary Head of Mission in an imaginary country trying to mediate between his Deputy and a younger Political Officer over […]
Are there levels of Evil? If over the course of a couple of thousand years Hitler and his mass extermination policies represents the deepest level reached so far (only a tad deeper than Stalin/Mao, but, yes, deeper), is there anything still deeper waiting to emerge? This is a great piece […]
Not because the public money was slipped into the pocket of someone working in government. But because it shows a total lack of self-restraint about spending money put in to the public purse by taxpayers. Not to mention being pitifully self-indulgent. And totally unnecessary. Shameful. Outlandish. Make him pay it […]
Reader Norman Fraser takes me to task for disagreeing with David Aaronovitch: No Charles this will just not do. You are attempting an act of heroic sophistry here and you are clearly not up to it. Quibbling about the words in one article is just not enough. There is too […]
David Aaronovitch (who like David Miliband comes from a family steeped in High Marxism) has a vigorous go at David Cameron this morning over the Jedwabne/Kaminski issue. There are already three David’s in this story. But what to do? Co zrobi
Former senior diplomat Sir Christopher Meyer is busy describing what he sees as a decline in the influence and technique of British diplomacy: New Labour’s obsessive reliance on the alchemy of consultants has infected much of Whitehall. The culture of targets, set by the Treasury, has acquired the madness and […]
Here is a must-read analysis by William Voegeli on the long-term results of tax competition between Texas and California. Many tough passages: It’s not surprising, then, that an intense debate rages over which model is more satisfactory and sustainable. What is surprising is the growing evidence that the low-benefit, low-tax […]
Here for those of you with a few minutes to spare is an eloquent Lord Mandelson pressing the case for Tony Blair to become the first ‘President of Europe’ (and swiping at the UK Conservatives’ EU policy). The politics of it are familiar enough. What struck me was his assertion […]
Former President of Republika Srpska Biljana Plavsic has left her prison cell in Sweden to return to Belgrade: a land where war criminals are heroes, according to Nenad Pejic: Serbia has been — and continues to be — in a state of denial about the 1990s wars for more than […]
