Great piece on the mess created by the US Embassy in Cairo, Tweeting away in defiance of State Department instructions. FCO social media bunnies: beware what you can unleash. What seems profound, important and even witty on a far-flung computer screen may look glib, inappropriate and utterly irresponsible once the […]
Off tomorrow to this year’s Riga Conference, the distinguished Northern Europe security and wider policy forum. My first time at this event. Plenty of meat on the menu, including legendary Polish economist and intellectual Lesek Balcerowicz on the subject of the Eurozone. I appear in full hoot at Night Owl […]
Here is my Telegraph Blogs piece on the terrible attack of the US Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens: There is no easy diplomatic response to such atrocities. Blaming the host country for poor security does not go far – usually they are as appalled as the rest of us at […]
Here is former UK Ambassador Craig Murray being rightly pleased with himself that his blog is right up there among the most influential blogs in the UK at least according to ebuzzing: According to the ebuzzing (formerly wikio) rankings, this is the third most influential political blog in the UK – […]
My latest Commentator piece tries in very broad terms to explain exactly why it is foolish to say that Libertarians and Socialists are ‘bedfellows’: Basically, there are only two forms of government: (a) Those (very few) deriving explicitly from the US Declaration of Independence: Governments are instituted among Men, deriving […]
A beautifully turned article by Rebecca Hamilton on the wisdom and technique of fatherhood: I had been caught red-handed, abusing my horse. I had no idea what Daddy was going to do, but I expected something massive. What he did instead was much more effective. “Becky Ann, you know better […]
One of the wonders of modern life brought via one’s iPhone is to hear far-flung interviews with one’s favouritest musicians while walking the dog in the middle of nowhere. Here is Nick Lowe on Chicago radio WBEZ talking wittily about his music and his lifelong aversion to musical earnestness. (He […]
Here is my latest DIPLOMAT article, this one about my own modest experiences in Africa: Malan’s book concluded with the staggering true story of Neil and Creina Alcock. Neil Alcock was a white farmer in Natal who dismayed his family and neighbours by getting involved with the local Zulu community, […]
Off to seek my fortune at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague. Then my extended summer holiday for three days or so in Cornwall. So, one for the road from the Commentator on why Pussy Riot and Nelson Mandela are by some chance not at all related.
Richard Murphy is a hyperactive socialist/collectivist whose main role in life is to expand the state in all directions. He even calls this expansion ‘courageous‘: The result is that the Courageous State needs to have policies to: Constrain the world of feral finance that has so dominated the economies […]
