Wimbledon gets British people very excited, even though we almost never win anything there. Maybe a bit too excited? But Centre Court is always capricious. Sometimes it seems not so much like a court as a courtesan – beautiful, generous, but always capable of withdrawing her favours for no apparent […]
This post back in May linked to Boris Johnson’s choice of a different sort of person to be Deputy Mayor in London. Ooops.
Nelson Mandela was finally released from prison to global acclaim on 11 February 1990. Despite being First Secretary (Political) at our Embassy in Cape Town at the time, I missed it. My friend and colleague John (now Sir John) Sawers was there in the thick of the action, and was probably […]
In a neat example of government ‘spin’ in action, David Miliband’s speech today about Europe is being trailed in this morning’s Guardian. Once upon a time it was a good enough result to get the speech reported after it had happened. That being unreliable, Labour have taken to a high art […]
This sorry Swedish story attracted fleeting global attention. A school in Sweden confiscated a boy’s party invitations being handed out to his friends as two classmates were not invited: "Two people in class had not been invited, and that is not allowed. The ones who were not invited felt sad […]
… and there is Lileks, in full flow explaining the magnificence of Wall-E.
President Kaczynski of Poland says that ‘for now’ he will not sign the EU’s Lisbon Treaty. The BBC report describes Kaczynski as "a conservative who has long opposed the reform treaty". But what about this? "I really want ratification." One way or the other, President Kaczynski is good at saying […]
Today I spotted this April piece about the decline and fall of the BBC, from More Intelligent Life: Last Sunday wasn’t the most eventful one in world history. But it wasn’t short of news either. In the United States, the Democratic infighting takes a dramatic new twist with Senator Obama’s […]
The Persian pocket empire never had a government or a civil society: it only had a court and a bazaar, which are incapable of managing the affairs of a modern society. There is no political party, no social movement, in fact no form of popular organization of any kind capable […]
We think that we are pretty darn smart these days, what with all our clever new inventions. But in seventy years’ time, won’t we look a bit … quaint?
