You have to doff the cap to some of the Guardian’s leading columnists. They come out day after day, whirling their delicate arms in a pugnacious defiant way, only to be knocked flat on to the floor by Tim Worstall: As we’re all surveying the rubble we’re agreeing that the root […]
A reader asks: Do you approve of the current US and UK policy to appease nationalist Albanian threats of violence? There may be people out there who do not follow the Kosovo problem with close attention. Just to remind them that the long-running attempt to the EU’s bright young Laura […]
An interesting discussion last night with someone looking hard at Values in British public life. It seems that senior civil servants are now brooding on the existential aspects of their relations with Ministers in an attempt to identify the Core Values of public life, which latterly are thought to have […]
As world leaders grapple with rival ideas for tackling the global financial crisis, keep an aghast eye on what the EU under France is up to in redefining European security. President Sarkozy and President Medvedev have come up with a proposal to hold a major OSCE summit in mid-2009 aimed at […]
What makes for brilliant writing, in English at least? A subtle combination of perhaps three big things. Clarity, Energy and Wisdom. Clarity of message, combined with clarity in delivering it. Energy in both thought and language. Wisdom in cutting through the infinite hubbub of facts and arguments out there and looking bluntly at things that […]
It is always a pleasure to see a leading Singaporean politician in top form. See this elegant and ideas-rich speech to the Asia Society on 11 November by Singapore Senior Minister Mr Goh Chok Tong. Several lively judgements: For the last two hundred years or so, the international system has […]
This elegant analysis by Theodore Dalrymple on the horrible Baby P story – read it, overseas readers, and despair about modern British underclass life – looks hard at why many of our bureaucratic structures are dysunctional. Including this fierce passage: … [the] purpose of the British public service is to provide a […]
Is here, the Audacity of Hazel edition in honour of H Blears MP and her demented ginger weeble views on blogging.
The Guardian (Adrian Pabst) helpfully gives us one, by blowing thick layers of dust off the ideas of one Karl Polyani, a Hungarian who in the 1940s (says the Guardian) repudiated market liberalism and state socialism. What he advocated, according to this bewilderingly strange article, is this: Crucially, Polanyi’s vision […]
Russia, says the Guardian, is opting for a charm offensive to try to see off the deployment of sophisticated US missile defence systems in Poland and Czech Republic. It did not take long for the Obama team to encounter the complexities of Poland and points East: President-elect Obama has spoken […]
