Latest posts
Game changer time: China’s working age population is now in decline
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Last year saw a big tipping point in China that went relatively unnoticed: its working age population shrank, kicking off a trend that will carry on over the next 20 years. The head of China’s national statistics bureau, quoted in the FT, caref...
Europe and Obama: no miracles ahead
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ECFR has just published a brief multi-authored paper looking at what President Obama’s re-election means for Europe (I was one of the contributors). The paper highlights that there are still many areas – from the Middle East to clim...
How much humiliation can Spain cope with?
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The FT’s Gillian Tett reports today on a conference presentation given by historical sociologist Dennis Smith, who’s been working on the question of how humiliation operates at the cultural / collective psychological level – and wha...
Let’s be Norway (part 3)
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Continuing an occasional series about why the UK could take a leaf out of Norway’s foreign policy book on, well, pretty much every front (previous instalments here and here), here’s the BBC’s Richard Galpin on how Norway is dealin...
Cows versus squirrels: a mammalian metaphor gone mad
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What on earth is all this about? When the winter comes in the squirrel has already stored 3000 nuts in different tree holes that provide the food storage to overcome the harshest season of the year. The nuts have been collected in past months...
The end of impunity for bankers? How Spain’s indignados are using crowdfunding to bring them to justice
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Following the collapse of the bank he was running until earlier this year, Rodrigo Rato probably thought he would be able to slip into a quiet, if tarnished retirement. A former managing director of the IMF and minister of the economy during Spain...
Will the Eurozone crisis finally get EU leaders to address its democratic deficit?
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The FT has this as lead story this morning: The European Union would gain far-reaching powers to rewrite national budgets for eurozone countries that breach debt and deficit rules under proposals likely to be discussed at a summit this week, accordin...
The EU says it is “doing nothing” in Kosovo
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The EU rule of law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) is adopting an unusual PR strategy: “EULEX is doing nothing in the fight against high level corruption” is the slogan of a new campaign that has just been launched on TV stations in Kosovo. The campaig...
Syria: send in the Red, sorry I mean Blue, Army!
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Here is a curious story from the Voltaire Network, a new website that seems to mainly deal in anti-Western anmd pro-Muscovite arguments: The President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir V. Putin, plans to deploy a peacekeeping force to Syria to prev...
Goldman Sachs’s three scenarios for Greece
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From a GS research note published this morning: Scenario #1: Muddling through In the most likely scenario, the new Greek government emerging from the June 17 election neither chooses to exit the euro nor agrees unconditionally to implement the existi...
Nick Clegg and the deformed parsnips
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Nick Clegg spoke at the British embassy in Berlin today. The audience was impressed by his fluent German. But why on earth did the Foreign Office decorate the embassy with what appear (to be very generous) to be two gigantic deformed parsnips?
Is the Eurozone crisis a threat to democracy?
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Here’s a piece I’ve done for Yale Global magazine on democracy under strain in Europe. Politicians in power since the 2008 financial collapse, regardless of their political stripes, find themselves in peril. Analysis of the recent French...
So Conrad Black, tell us what you really think about France…
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A while back I posted an excerpt from an essay by George Orwell about Hitler that, for me, was a perfect piece of political commentary. It was concise, sharp and witty even though it was written during the Second World War. Today, I have stumbled a...
Those magnificent presidents in their flying bathrooms
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There was mild amusement yesterday when newly-minted President Hollande had to delay his arrival in Germany after lightning struck his government jet. The jet in question (seen back on the tarmac above) looks quite modest from the outside. Let...
Is the EU about to stuff it up on international climate change (again)?
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So near, and yet so far – as so often in EU climate policy. Back in December of last year, at the Durban climate summit, it looked as though the EU was finally getting on the front foot and managing to set the agenda for once on international c...
When NATO was cool
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Robert Silvers is best-known for editing the New York Review of Books since its foundation, but he started out at The Paris Review, the classic “little magazine”. But how did he get there? It all began with a posting to NATO HQ in the...
Repatriated – and gagged with packing tape
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That’s a snap from Alitalia’s 0920 Rome to Tunis flight yesterday morning, taken by Francesco Sperandeo and posted on his Facebook page. He comments, Two Tunisian nationals deported from Italy and treated in an inhumane way. Brown wrap...
The Luxembourgers are coming!
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The New York Times has just published a genuinely wonderful (if just a little humorous) piece about Luxembourg’s revanchist dreams of dominating its neighborhood. Read it in full, but first enjoy this map of the Grand Duchy’s potential...
Highlights from the 2012 Kazakhstan-China-Russia Table Tennis Friendship Tournament
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The Washington Diplomat, a magazine focusing on diplomats in Washington, brings us exciting sporting news: On Feb. 25, Asia’s time-honored tradition of “ping-pong diplomacy” took on a whole new meaning when [Chinese ambassador to th...
