An ever-alert reader picks up this curious sentence on the usually well written Samizdata, where Paul Marks is laying in to an Economist article (emphasis added): Still the Economist does not let the truth stand in the way of its articles, so it then outlines its position. "Starting from scratch their (sic) […]
First Craig Murray Candidate discovers that he does not exist in real life. Then, worse, he discovers that he does not exist on the BBC, apart from a perfunctory mention as per the relevant rules. The fact is that in a strange, unspoken, even unanalysable way the Story just Moves […]
A reader writes re my posting on Locally Employed Embassy Staff: Yes, but you are rather glossing over the fact that a brutal regime can be far more brutal to its own nationals than it can to foreign diplomats. Indeed protection from brutality is the origin of the convention of […]
Let’s leave it to Devil’s Kitchen to tear to shreds the latest utterances of the government in its plans to spend money it does not have on even more profligate scales than now. Let’s instead focus on something missed by D’s K in the offending Telegraph article. A juicy eggcorn: […]
Mary Dejevsky (who should and I suspect does know better) has written about all the problems we create for ourselves by employing local staff in our Embassies. Read it for yourself. My reply as posted in a comment on the site: Most of this is a forlorn attempt to crank […]
I have written previously about the Slippery Slope metaphor: The metaphor itself is so striking that it leads to confusion, giving a sense of momentum and inexorability which are not necessarily there. Still, it captures the idea of one thing leading to another with no real way of staying Stop. […]
A pertinent comment from Spy Blog (Watching Them, Watching Us) on my posting below, asking about diplomatic gossip about expellees and asking whether the absence of names of expelled diplomats ‘taints’ others who might be leaving normally. First, gossip. You can’t and shouldn’t and won’t stop gossip. But it’s not […]
The UK’s diplomatic problems with Iran have featured mutual expulsions of diplomats: Britain is to expel two Iranian diplomats as a tit-for-tat response after Iran forced the same number of British diplomats to leave, Gordon Brown revealed this afternoon. "It is with regret that I should inform the House that […]
Stephen Robinson in the Evening Standard looks at the Iranian Embassy in London and the capacious UK Embassy in Tehran, with a rather gloomy assessment of the current Iranian Ambassador: Shortly after Ahmadinejad’s electoral victory, Hossein Adeli was recalled and replaced with His Excellency Rasoul Movahedian Attar, who the Foreign […]
The BBC website picks up the musty tone of David Miliband’s recent speech on Europe in a headline which strongly suggests a direct quote from something or someone: Iran ‘must free UK Embassy staff’ The ensuing piece about an EU Foreign Ministers statement on the arrest by Iranian police of […]
