Why does the EU work as it does? One Massive Point about the EU which tends to get lost is that it is all about the biggest member states giving exaggerated and unceasing reassurance to the smaller ones. This explains why the voting weights as per the current Nice Treaty […]
Here is Archbishop Desmond Tutu boldly advising President Obama in an article written for the BBC: In the first days after 9/11, the United States had the world’s sympathy, an unprecedented wave of it. President Bush squandered it. Obama too could easily squander the goodwill that his election generated if […]
Iain Dale carries a well-turned interview with David Cameron. Both interviewer and subject emerge well from a civilised and intelligent exchange. This caught my eye: How will you defend the right to offend?This goes back to the ‘do you listen’ question, because on the one hand you don’t want someone […]
On day one! Otherwise a new British Conservative government has failed! Thus: On the first day of your government, you should close down the BBC. You should take it off air. You should disclaim its copyrights. You should throw all its staff into the street. You should not try to […]
The dreary saga of General Mladic rambles on. Successive Serbian governments have pressed the civilised world that it is not fair to hold Serbia’s European prospects hostage for one crazy war criminal. Some in the civilised world agree. Yet that argument goes the other way too. Why is one crazy man […]
Craig Murray’s site links (approvingly) to a site busy collecting signatures in support of indicting Tony Blair for war crimes. And hurrah!, Noam Chomsky has signed up. As has uber-Darwinian Richard Dawkins, another person who seems to think that his lively insight in one area of science requires us to take very […]
Tintin inspires a lot of metaphysical musing these days. Such as the allegedly overwhelming case for his gayitude. Ou peut-être non. And here is Tintin compared to great literature with psychological depth: … the peculiar brand of obscene surrealism that marks the Pynchonian fantasy is not so far away from […]
The Guardian website headline screams, as if in pain: Whitehall devised torture policy for terror detainees MI5 interrogations in Pakistan agreed by lawyers and government The ensuing text reveals … what? That there was an ‘official interrogation policy’. Directed at a high level in Whitehall. And agreed by lawyers and […]
Once upon a time a distinguished European leader almost described the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy as: … a programme which uses inefficient transfers of taxpayers money to bloat rich French landowners and so pump up food prices in Europe, thereby creating poverty in Africa, which we then fail to solve through inefficient but expensive […]
David Miliband’s protocol problems in India (the risk or otherwise of annoying senior Indian interlocutors by being too ‘familiar’) raise an interesting operational point. What is the role of the in-country Ambassador in such circumstances? In particular, how far should he/she go to brief the visiting Minister on how to […]
