Likewise I also write a while back several pieces for Business and Politics about Football Fascism. Now gone! Here’s the first one, written before the previous UK General Election in 2010. Its wise message still holds: According to my watch it is 29 March. April Fool’s Day is not yet […]
Back in 2010 when I was young and optimistic and had more time than nowadays, I poured out work for a website called Business and Politics. That site has vanished, as sites do. So my work is no longer accessible. But some of the pieces are still a jolly romp […]
A lovely English cartoon summing up the X Y Z Affair, a famous row between the new United States and revolutionary France. Basically, the French Foreign Minister Talleyrand demanded a big fat private bung as a condition for serious bilateral negotiations. And, of course, the principled Americans turned him down flat. […]
I have emerged from my various Public Speaking sessions with different United Nations colleagues, Only to be plunged into a new venture: an online course on Diplomatic Protocol and Etiquette. Today’s principles of diplomatic protocol including the idea of diplomatic immunity itself trace back over 2000 years. The core principle […]
This afternoon I finished my first online course for the United Nations on the general theme of drafting talking-points and speechwriting. Running any course through successive webinars poses interesting new challenges. Above all, how to get the participants to do something useful between sessions and during the sessions. In this […]
After all the tomfoolery getting this iMac 5K Retina delivered, it did finally arrive. And what a device it is. Talk about minimalism. The computing power is built into the screen. Yet the screen at the edge is about the thickness of the pencil. You lift it from its box. You plug […]
A grotesque situation of post-modern techno-bureaucracy unfolds live, before your very eyes! On Wednesday I ordered from Apple a wonderful new iMac 27″ Retina machine. Naughtily expensive, but VERY nice. I was told to expect it on the following day via UK Mail, “but if for some reason it doesn’t arrive, […]
Actor Michael Sheen makes a ‘blistering’ speech about the UK National Health Service. Hurrah! If only our milksop politicians would have a bit of that passion and sincerity! Or not. Here is the speech. It’s a fine example of a good but very bad speech. Rather like the ill-fated Neil […]
So, in the past two weeks I have spent a week in chilly Kazakhstan (Astana) where the road-signs are rather difficult to fathom. Does this mean that public drinking while ten-pin bowling and carrying a primitive smartphone is banned? If it isn’t, it should be. In Astana I gave two […]
Off to Budapest tomorrow for a debate at the Danube Institute: Do Russia’s Ukraine policies threaten European stability? You might think that that falls into the QTWTAIY category fairly easily. That’s the side I’m arguing, ably assisted by James Sherr. But two hardy souls will be opposing this proposition. Vlad Sobell, […]
