An anonymous commenter/blogger keeps nagging away at you in comments on your website which you think are annoying or unfair. You find out who s/he is. Are you behaving properly if you announce on your site the person’s name to make them go away or at least calm down, the […]
Alex Massie perceptively wonders whether there is anything to be done with North Korea other than Doing Nothing (Much), as every other option is fraught with problems. He kindly says that he would like to hear from me on the subject. Always pleased to oblige. Here goes. A policy is […]
How to explain the frantic efforts of Gordon Brown to stay at No 10? One seriously insane theory I have heard, and NB it is insane, runs as follows. Remember that idea that Tony Blair wants to be the first ‘President of Europe’ once the Lisbon Treaty comes into force? That […]
Or maybe its corporatistic Socialism? Who cares? Part of the problem here is definitional. No mainstream liberal actually wants government to completely seize the means of production, and no mainstream conservative believes that there’s no room for any government regulation or social insurance. Both sides believe in a "mixed economy" […]
Here is the full text of President Obama’s Cairo speech. It had many strong points. A friendly, open-hearted yet serious and businesslike tone. Lots of inclusive words such as ‘respect’ and ‘partnership’. Some quite firm lines on Israel and its right to exist, to the point of being seen as surprisingly […]
Edwin Dyer was a British citizen captured by Al Quaeda Islamist terrorists in Mali and, now, put to death by them. My sincere condolences to his family and friends. But how did he die? BBC: Al-Qaeda ‘kills British hostage’ Telegraph: British hostage Edwin Dyer has been executed by Al-Qaeda’s North African […]
Last night I was back again at the Frontline Club to hear Allan Little talk to Nick Hawton about the latter’s new book The Quest for Radovan Karadzic: When everybody else seemed to have given the hunt, one journalist doggedly followed his trail, travelling from the snow-capped mountains of Montenegro […]
Last week I was at the fine Frontline Club near Paddington station for a dinner conversation cum presentation on the Internet and the next general election. The lead participants were Guido and Iain Dale broadly representing the Right and Alex Smith (Labour List) and Matthew McGregor (Blue State Digital) ditto for the […]
Not having voted in a UK election since 1987 or thereabouts, I made my way at dawn to the local polling station here in the countryside to be ready to strike a belated but fast blow today for Democracy. I was stunned by what I found. The local village hall […]
Was there a massacre by Sri Lankan forces as they finished off the Tamil Tigers? And did the UN know about it? Seems so. The numbers of people killed look to go well beyond the Srebrenica war crime. Critics of such horrors often miss one of the unspoken points about […]
