Earlier this week I heard a senior pro-EU UK politician cheerily say that one beneficial outcome of the current financial crisis might be the UK heading for the security of the Eurozone in a few years’ time: ‘Europe as refuge’. What a vision. That after centuries of successfully mastering our […]
Does a new career beckon? I was asked today to help craft a speech for a leading actress to use in addressing a small gathering for a good cause. Done. There must be lots of celebrities out there needing some deft light-touch words of this sort to draw on, but […]
Is here. In Total Politics. And if you want more, have a look at the latest issue: TP 6 (registration required). I write about Diplomatic Memoirs and all that. Are there signs that the FCO is going to try to put out new rules which are not oppressive and unworkable? […]
A good friend of mine died on Tuesday, after a long life (not quite 100) and a fairly short final decline. I was there. She had been in hospital in London for some weeks, suffering from accumulating ailments brought about (I suppose) by sheer old age. I had tried to […]
Thus the Guardian leader this morning describes the political race now on in the UK following the financial debacle: Everything is possible now. An extraordinary, history-changing contest has been got underway. A sentence of pitiful illiteracy. Over in the Telegraph a snappy writer, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, asks a tragic question: is […]
So little time, so many genders, so much immorality. Dr. Sa’d Al-’Inzi: A man is not allowed to expose the area between his navel and his knees. Nobody is allowed to see his private parts. Someone who goes to these parlors and exposes this part of his body is, undoubtedly, […]
A poignant and powerful essay cum film review by Myles Harris asks: … Why do we not despair when as children we learn we are eventually going to die? The film gives this conundrum an extra twist by examining how the whole human race copes with learning it is about […]
Former British Ambassador Brian Barder writes to the Guardian: Lord Bingham’s authoritative declaration that the attack on Iraq was illegal raises very important questions and you are right to call for an inquiry (Time for a full inquiry, Leaders, November 19)… … Any inquiry also needs to establish an authoritative […]
Should the UK see the current global and domesticv financial turmoil problems as the clinching reason join the Eurozone? No: The reason for having a floating exchange rate is that it should float. In an uncertain world, an economy needs mechanisms of adjustment. The exchange rate is the most powerful […]
Carne Ross (former British diplomat) urges urgent reform of the UN: It is depressing how little creative thinking goes on at the UN to remedy its many deficits. Diplomats posted to the UN tend to come and go for three or four-year tours making little impression, and often leave demoralised […]
