How the EU is wrecking one African farming sector after another? It can not be said often enough: the CAP is “the most stupid, immoral state-subsidised policy in human history, give or take communism”. But as usual the countless snoughts in the trough of public money across Europe combine to thwart […]
For the first time in my life I have a garden to look after – myself. It is a Big One. In it and around it swirl buzzards, kites, owls, badgers, deer, foxes, rabbits, hares, frogs, hedgehogs, bats, moles, more moles, even more moles and all sorts of other phenomena. […]
Back on languages again. Slav languages make a distinction in their verbs between Perfective and Imperfective ‘aspects’. Thus in Russian/Serbian/Polish there are different verb forms denoting (a) when an action has been done and is now complete, and (b) when an action is continuing or repeated. Here is a fairly straightforward […]
Could excessive/unwise EU regulation of the power sector cause the UK power generation sector ruinous problems? The problem in this complex policy area is that the lead times for taking decisions are necessarily long (power stations cost a lot of money), and decisions once made have to be lived with […]
Confused and worried by the turbulence in global financial markets? This explains it in terms even Germans – and the rest of us – can understand. Not comfortable reading: The monster is not the financial system, crooked and stupid as it may have been. The monster is the burgeoning horde […]
South Africa’s wave of violence against foreigners is vile and depressing. Not so much because ‘black’ South Africans should love and respect foreigners from elsewhere in Africa. Why should they? But the fact that South Africa’s uniquely horrible live burnings are back. Remember necklacing? The practice of placing a petrol-filled […]
The Cuban authorities are accusing US diplomat Mike Parmly of passing money from Cuban terrorists living in the USA to Cuban mercenaries living in Cuba. I knew Mike in Sarajevo. Tough operator. As with diplomats in Zimbabwe trying to operate during that country’s madness, Western diplomats in Cuba have to […]
One of the Basic Points I tried to teach my Embassy teams as I ascended through the FCO ranks was, "Never mind all that policy stuff, which will tend to be OK enough. Your job is to get it 200% right on the day!" The best-planned visit or event can become […]
Echoing as if by magic my thoughts earlier today on Junk Diplomacy, some trenchant observations from Mark Steyn: Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies. It’s one thing to talk as a means to an end. But these days, for most midlevel powers, talks are the end, talks […]
Poland claims to have the EU’s longest ‘external’ border. Hmm. Our coastline is an external EU border. It is over 12,000km long, far longer than Poland’s EU ‘external’ eastern borders with Russia/Belarus/Ukraine and its maritime border combined. But (with so many islands) Greece’s coastline borders are over 13,000km, and on […]
