Here’s an astute point I heard at a top FCO meeting recently:”The world of states and the world of people are diverging…”Neatly put, and profoundly true. See also the Eurozone, passim.How does that apply to Russia? Russia is the sprawling space on earth which took to the highest, maddest level […]
A lively day. First, I spent the night in a wonky hotel in downtown Lewes. The room sloped alarmingly in two directions, to the point where anything smooth risked sliding off the table. The sign in the bathroom read thusly: “Shower Mat Ensure the suckers are in contact with the […]
Here in powerful fluent form is Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, speaking today in Berlin about Europe and the Eurozone. If anyone can find a better peacetime speech by any Polish Foreign Minister or any Polish politician ever, let it be produced! Not that it is perfect. Too many rather […]
Talking of speeches, the problem with being a speechwriter is simple. The better you are, the less anyone should know. Why? Because if you help write a speech for someone and it goes down well, that someone is likely to want to claim all the credit for the fine words […]
Today family friend Oliver Cromwell has married Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Hurrah! The best man needed some support with the speech, so I helped out. Best Man (BM) speeches are among the most important any male may have to give in life. They are even more occasion-specific than other speeches. Some weddings involve […]
This appears to be a well-sourced Telegraph piece revealing that the FCO has instructed Embassies to start making contingency plans for a Eurozone crash. If so, it’s startling. Startling! Partly because our much-diminished Embassies across the EU – cheerily cut back by Labour and this Coalition government alike to redeploy diplomats […]
Croatia is next in line to join the European Union. But this sort of thing, circulated by the eminent Centre for Research into Post-communist Economies, shows that beneath the surface – or even bang on it – a lot of nasty habits and people and instincts inherited from the communist […]
From today’s Sun on the poignant story of a very fat woman who was dumped by her fiance for an even fatter one – see the third para: Amanda Hart, 25, had a whirlwind romance with Matt Kemp, 27, when she met him online after struggling for years to find […]
Former FCO Minister Denis MacShane MP has written a small but energetic book praising Kosovo’s independence: Why Kosovo Still Matters (sic). Here it is, a perfect Christmas stocking-filler, the more perfect if bought via this link so that I get a few groats from Amazon: The main interest of the book for […]
The first meeting of the Foreign Secretary’s new Locarno Group ("senior FCO alumni, selected for their breadth of experience and expertise") took place today. The aim, part of an energetic and even impressive series of moves led by William Hague to transform the FCO’s performance at many new levels, is not […]
