And here is a first part of an online discussion I’m having with Frances Coppola about The Morality of Atlas Shrugged: CC OK, now we start to disagree! There are of course miserable, over-written passages. But let’s also praise the wonderful writing and insight that are beyond remarkable for someone […]
My latest piece at Telegraph Blogs – on state eavesdropping: What safeguards might we want within this wide range of different activities so that the government does all these things reasonably but does not overstep the mark in using information technologies improperly against its own citizens? Something like this: • […]
One of the nicer things about the New Year is a tendency for people to step back and look at the Big Picture. Here is a fine example from Jonathan Capehart at the Washington Post. He takes three game-changing trends: US energy independence, 3D-printing, and the rise of global scepticism […]
Long time no blog. Family, Christmas, weather, website upgrades, more weather. the usual. Here I am in my most recent DIPLOMAT piece, on East v West and the benefits or otherwise of the Asian Model of Development: For most of the past 100 years or so, it looked as if […]
The heroic achievement of Nelson Mandela was to end apartheid‘s evil racial legal categorisations and associated injustice in South Africa, right? Alas not: The idea of defining and rewarding citizens by race continued. The argument was that drastic measures were needed to help the mass of people who had lost […]
As long-standing readers know, when I left the FCO back in 2007 I qualified as a professional Mediator and had ideas about developing that line of work. It turned out not to be easy to do that if one lived well away from a seething centre of serious disputes such […]
I have been sent this noteworthy message (expletives deleted): /blog/south-africa-and-mandela SOVIET-WORSHIPPERS???? YOU FAT NAZI ******* TURD!!!! NO WONDER YOU WERE FIRED FROM THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE, YOU WORTHLESS ****!!!! IP address: 188.123.252.24 My modest grasp of technology lets me look up IP addresses on the Internet. And this is what we […]
I have written three pieces about South Africa, Nelson Mandela and all that. Two for the Commentator. The first here: South Africa’s peaceful transition to democracy was indeed a miracle that captured the imagination of people all over the world. Fine, soaring sentiments. And quite untrue. Between 1985 and 1996 […]
My latest piece for Telegraph Blogs looks in (very) broad terms at Ukraine: In 1994 the EU Ambassadors had a meeting in Moscow at which they opined on the then reforms under President Yeltsin. The Belgian Ambassador grumbled that Russia was just too big, too communist and too “Asian” to […]
Helpful as I am, I have written a short but comprehensive guide for Universities on the issue of inviting External Speakers. It is intended to replace the wretched rambling 44 page effort put out by Universities UK that after much huffing and puffing came down on the side of accepting […]
