A tongue in cheek (so to speak) Tweet by me this afternoon led to a micro Twitter spat on Gender and Sexuality. Cor! This is what started it: Charles Crawford@CharlesCrawford If it’s ok for women not to have men frisk them at airport security, why is it not ok for me […]
Shock! A ‘spy’ accused of sexual assault is granted anonymity in court as for some unspecified reason there could be a threat to his life. Hard to say how far that might make sense without knowing a lot of facts about the case and any operational background But wait. The ‘spy’ […]
I have quoted Australian satirist Tim Blair here now and again. He is famous (justly) for Blair’s Law: … a theoretical construct that claims an alliance or shared empathy between far right and left groups and extremist Islamists. Blair describes this perceived alignment as an "ongoing process by which the world’s […]
Over at Slate Farhad Manjoo has second thoughts about the iPhone 5 – and regrets his earlier cynicism: I’ll go even further: When I pick up the iPhone 5 and examine it closely, I find it difficult to believe that this device actually exists. The iPhone 5 does not feel like […]
You are a senior politician. How to stay sharp in public debates? Here’s a clue. Don’t spend four years running away from difficult questions: "Obama was out of practice and unprepared to be challenged. The White House had supposed that Obama’s forays into social media — town hall meetings with […]
Even the BBC has to concede: Romney ‘won’ the debate, massively. As diligent readers here know, it’s not what you say – it’s what you hear. And much of what you hear when someone is speaking is subliminal – all about eye-contact, body posture, energy, openness, positive enthusiasm. Mitt Romney […]
As a former diplomat turned wannabe speechwriter I have studied closely the latest Conference speech by Labour Party leader Ed Miliband. How to assess it from a technical point of view? And what does it tell us about a possible future Prime Minister’s approach to the great foreign policy issues […]
One of the point of this blog is that I write in detail only about things I know something about. So if you want detailed analysis of politics in Latin America or Sri Lanka or Nigeria (and above all in the Middle East) you’ll just have to go somewhere else. […]
Pretty much all you need to know about bringing children up well. This is very sound: As a street judge, Dredd doesn’t just find criminals and bring them in. He judges them on the spot. If guilty, he assigns the punishment. If the punishment is death, he becomes the executioner. […]
Over at the FT is a magnificent article by Samuel Brittan that with unerring precision demolishes certain arguments often put forward for why the European Union ‘must’ be supported. I subscribe to the FT online edition so it may be paywalled and unable to be seen by some readers. If so, […]
