An interesting pair of Ambassadorial letters to newspapers have appeared in recent days. First, HM Ambassador in Poland Ric Todd wrote in July to the Polish paper Rzeczpospolita about the death in a plane accident in 1943 in Gibraltar of General Sikorski. Various Poles continue to insist that this death was suspicious, […]
Here’s something new. A husband-and-wife couple doing a job-share at Ambassador level, for the first time ever, anwhere. Tom Carter and Carolyn Davidson are off to represent HM The Queen as High Commissioner in Zambia, taking it in turns to run the High Commission for four months at a time. […]
A noteworthy sub-plot in the Kosovo situation is a plan by Serbia to ask the UN General Assembly to refer the issue to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an Advisory Opinion. Serbia looks to be getting some handy noises of support for this manoeuvre from eg Russia and India. […]
Craig Murray responds to my previous post: Charles, You brush very lightly over the fact that you praised in the warmest terms at the time the telegrams you now rubbish – as did numerous other Ambassadors including Jeremy Greenstock who commended the to his New York morning meeting. I think […]
There’s still time to do so, either here or via Iain Dale’s site. But you do need to vote for 10 UK blogs, so get cracking. Plenty to choose from on the TP Blog Directory. Guide to Political Blogs 2008-9: Vote for your Top Ten Blogs Take Part & […]
Pressing on through Craig Murray’s Murder in Samarkand, we reach Chapter 4 – Diplomacy. Craig has to present his credentials to President Karimov to assume the full rights and responsibilities of HM Ambassador. These credentials traditionally are formal letters in flamboyantly old-fashioned courteous language language from HM The Queen to […]
A bit more on Karadzic, alas. Dick Holbrooke says that there was No Deal struck by him with Karadzic under which if Karadzic left political life he would not be sent to the Hague Tribunal. Karadzic in his first appearance at ICTY tried to get this claim established, but failed. […]
These celebrity revivals are sooooo exhausting. First we have the long-awaited return to the stage of Joker Karadzic, although without his funny costume and disguise he was really not that scary. And with him returns Batman Holbrooke, the distinguished former American diplomat whose considerable ego and ruthlessness helped bring peace to the […]
It is not obvious to me what is wrong with the argument that says, “The criminals already have guns; gun control disarms the rest of us.” I don’t know how many times I have heard that view sneered at, or laughed at, or pointed to as an infallible marker of […]
John Redwood aims to correct in brisk fashion some ‘Continental Misunderstandings’ about a future Conservative Government’s policy on further EU integration (and indeed the EU integration we already have). Eg on the Lisbon Treaty: “We assume the Conservatives will go along with the European project and with the Lisbon settlement […]
