On the subject of the media, HM Government made a serious effort to crank up positive publicity for the visit to London of Poland’s President Kwasniewski on a State Visit after Poland joined the European Union in 2004. The visit featured a fun photo-shoot swing by the London football ground where […]
Back from a lively session of specialist media training, featuring a no-holds-barred account of my own encounters with the media down the decades. Highlights included: my disastrous exchange with Peter Fabricius in South Africa on the day Mrs Thatcher resigned my first live broadcast on a global news network – […]
I haven’t ever published here before the full text of my legendary Chinese Alarm-Clock email about the then EU Budget negotiations that was leaked in late 2005 by someone senior (in the Treasury?) to the Sunday Times and caused a vast furore in Poland. It was a spoof speaking note […]
The G20 Summit in Australia ends. The assembled leaders start the long flights home. The results are in the communique, a classic example of a dull, badly written, important text: We have agreed on a set of voluntary leading practices to promote and prioritise quality investment, particularly in infrastructure. To […]
It turns out that there are all sorts of unexpected things that create panic or unease in people. Many of them have fancy scientific names: Fear of buttons Koumpounophobia Fear of doorknobs […]
UPDATE The key zero-zero soundbite in this speech (below) is already causing controversy for being, how best to put this, simply wrong. Ed Miliband has been quick to put out a subtly different version to try to fix the mess! But the original tendentious version is still out there proudly on […]
This week I have been rummaging around in my memory to find examples of where I did some good media interviews, and where things went awry for some reason or another. As if by magic, one high-profile but short-lived mess returned to my life today. I find South African journalist Peter […]
My latest piece for DIPLOMAT wonders what happens when international borders start to melt: … some people think that borders are less and less important. This in turn seems to signify politically (or even morally) that within the European Union so-called nation states are less and less important. As perhaps […]
At last this spectacular new museum in Warsaw is fully open and buzzing. So many sites in Poland recall how Poland’s Jewish community died. Now this one recalls how they lived. Here is a good piece from Timothy Garton Ash: “Mir zaynen do!” (“We are here!”) The defiant Yiddish refrain […]
There I was, over in Geneva at a top international organisation watching officials there make short presentations to improve their public speaking skills. It was notable that some of them (not least those with a French accent) began in a deadening way by breaking down the question posed and defining […]
