The FT has an interesting but perhaps rather mischievous piece (££) by Kishore Mahbubani (distinguished dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore) that argues for President Obama learning from centuries of wise diplomatic practice by ‘picking up the phone’ to talk […]
I have opined here on various occasions on the subject of Football Fascism, the strange way that collectivist politicians lose their minds and start meddling in private activity and private property just because it involves kicking a ball. Now we see something new: a football manager who has claimed to […]
How many readers have not sat through a truly horrible PowerPoint-style presentation in the recent past? Those precious seconds of your life. Lost. Forever. Luckily I have taken it upon myself to work out exactly why so many PowerPoint presentations end up so awful: The problem lies in the very […]
My latest piece at Punditwire, where I note with horror that the Milibandistic dry rot of filling speeches with meaningless – but also intellectually shifty – musty/needs exhortations has spread all the way across the Atlantic to President Obama’s speechwriters: … his [Obama’s] recent well received speech in Israel, where […]
One of the themes of this blog is the idea of Uncertainty (and indirectly Causation) and how policy responds to it. Take this example: … insofar as this new set of norms or something like them come into force, they will have Consequences. Some of those will, as defined by […]
Sydney Kentridge QC is at last retiring. Here is a Wikipedia summary of his remarkable legal career. And here is my account of watching him in action in Bloemfontein back in 1988, when the case of the Sharpeville Six (six Africans sentenced to death for the ‘common purpose’ murder of […]
Here is an interesting (but not altogether clear) piece about Cyprus and ‘national insolvency’ by Stephen Kinsella at Harvard Business Review: … national borrowing on the modern scale really only began around the seventeenth century. Before that in the monarchical era, so-called “court bankers” provided cash-strapped sovereigns with loans and […]
Further thoughts on the speech by President Obama in Israel (scroll down to see the earlier post from my PunditWire piece below). This time prompted by analysis over at Foreign Policy. First, Hussein Ibish who thought that he did a terrific job: The psychological, communication and political skill that was […]
My new piece at Commentator on how these new press ‘regulations’ might or might not tackle ‘egregious practices’: So we have no lack of sanctions in this area, formal and informal. Just as we have the strictest laws against killing people. Yet in a country of some 60 million people […]
Swing by National Review Online to catch up on conservative views on President Obama’s visit to Israel and what do you find? Not much. In fact almost nothing. Which goes to show just how strikingly well Obama did in behaving warmly towards Israel. Yes, the ‘optics’ of Obama appearing under […]
